The Student Room Group

Brokeback Mountain banned in China

After the ******** topic on all of about one cinema in Utah banning Brokeback Mountain and the anti-US brigade jumping on board whilst the truth was still being found, I thought this was kinda interesting...

Chinese censors 'ban' Brokeback

Oscar favourite Brokeback Mountain has been effectively banned from cinemas in China, it has been reported.

Censors ruled the gay cowboy romance too controversial to be shown in the country where homosexuality is a taboo, industry paper Daily Variety said.

Brokeback Mountain - by Taiwanese director Ang Lee - is a firm favourite to be among the Oscar nominations when they are revealed in the US on Tuesday.

The film stars Australian Heath Ledger and US actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

So far the film has dominated the 2006 Hollywood awards season, taking the best drama honours at the Golden Globe awards and winning the Producers Guild of America's top award.

Also unlikely to show in China is director Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha, Variety added.

While China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television approved the film for distribution, senior government officials reversed the decision amid controversy over ethnic Chinese actors playing Japanese characters.

Anti-Japanese sentiment also remains strong in China, which was subject to Japan's occupation of the country until the end of World War II.

Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the best-selling novel by Arthur Golden, stars China's Gong Li and Ziyi Zhang.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4657052.stm

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
This is the country that CENSORS GOOGLE.
Reply 2
Yes. And?
Reply 3
Yeah! The Chinese people need a little more 'glasnost'!
Reply 4
Jangliss
Yeah! The Chinese people need a little more 'glasnost'!



Quite than socialism will completely fall.
Reply 5
Link?
Reply 6
Source?
Reply 7
Whats wrong with controversial films? It's not the Governments responsibility to intervene with matters like this, especially when bodies like the 'State Administration of Radio, Film and Television' have already approved of the movie.

It must be awful living in a country where a movie can't be shown because it is merely deemed 'controversial' by the Government.

Still, in a country where google is censored, what else can you expect?
Reply 8
Note that Google censored itself to save its share price...

"Quite than socialism will completely fall." - William1986

Besides it not making any sense, I disagree with that statement. In China it might, and good riddance to all totalitarian militaristic oligarchies, but socialism is about more than keeping the party line.
Reply 9
Woah...the Chinese government is censoring a piece of Western art!!!??? HOLD THE PHONES! STOP THE PRESS!
Reply 10
Well, he has a point, no level of the US government did anything to ban Brokeback Mountain. It was the decision of a handful of private cinemas, and hardly reflects upon the US, seeing as the film was created in the first place by Americans.

But yeah, I don't see why he had to start this thread, which has approximatly 0 relevance.
Iago

But yeah, I don't see why he had to start this thread, which has approximatly 0 relevance.


How is this thread 'irrelevant' exactly? :confused:
Reply 12
I think there should be a difference between lack of suprise and lack of care. I simply don't think that States should be given a free-ride on things just because it's 'expected' whilst all criticism gets heaped on others which aren't nearly as bad. It's like 'we all know they commit rights abuses, we don't expect anything else', does that make it any better for the people affected? No.
If a couple of hundred people in Utah having to go a couple of miles further to see the film if they really want - if that - is a thread, then why is over A BILLION people having no access to it anywhere in their whole country, not?
I think that attention should be put on the real offenders and abusers in this world, not the popular targets.
Reply 13
That's true. I do care, it's just that what are we supposed to do about it?
My complaints are more ones of dispair than apathy.
Reply 14
What are you supposed to do about America? I don't think St Albans is a US electoral district yet, being, if memory serves, a couple of Thameslink stops out of London.
Reply 15
I know that... what's your point?
Reply 16
Lone Fox
What are you supposed to do about America? I don't think St Albans is a US electoral district yet, being, if memory serves, a couple of Thameslink stops out of London.

We as may as well be the 51st State the way Blair treats Bush like a straw. Always sucking up.
For more than 2200 years, the Chinese have been ruled by authoritarian governments. Whether it was the old Manchu Empire, or the corrupt Republic and Warlords, down to the PRC, the Chinese have not known freedom for most of their History. Communism has already ended in China, with the Economy moving towards a Scandanavian styles mixed market. But the Authoritarian government will stay, and nothing can change that.
Reply 18
The kids at Tiananmen Square might have something to say about that.

How is this thread 'irrelevant' exactly?


As far as I can tell it was intended as a rebuttal to Englishstudent's thread. Except that the only valid rebuttal to Englishstudent's thread would be to point out that Brokeback Mountain wasn't banned anywhere in the states, which was pointed out a million times within that thread. To state that an incredibly authoritarian government on the other side of the world has also banned the film, to no-one's suprise and everyone's condemnation, is irrelevant. Or at least I can't see how engages with the issue.
Reply 19
Is it not double standards that when a whole bunch of people hit the roof over a dozen people in Utah having to go an extra mile, the forum over here has to have a massive debate on it, but when 1.3billion people can't see it anywhere in the country no-one even makes a peep? It should be just as big and issue, people should complain just as much. Why victimise and find faults in the better countries and give a free-pass to the worst BECAUSE they're the worst?