Tuesday, September 08, 2020

Hollywood has always loved totalitarians.

First it was letting Nazis censor scripts in order to keep those sweet Deutsche Marks flowing.

Then it started a love affair with communism, which never really ended

Now, in an exemplary example of American efficiency, Hollywood has decided: why not both?

Xi's China has Hollywood on a choke chain, and the moguls are pantingly-happy to roll over.

Disney just dropped the live-action version of Mulan on its streaming channel.

And it's Sino-fasctastic!

The Chinese regime pre-cleared the script, and it was filmed in Xinjiang, the center of the Uighur ethnic cleansing operation. Oh, and Disney profusely thanks Communist Party agencies for their assistance in the credits.

After the film’s release last Friday, observers noted another controversial element: in the final credits Disney offers “special thanks” to eight government entities in Xinjiang, including the public security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang where several re-education camps have been documented.

The film also expresses thanks to the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee”, the Chinese Communist party’s propaganda department in Xinjiang. Disney has been approached for comment.

China has faced international scrutiny over its treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where it is estimated at least 1 million residents have been detained in extrajudicial internment camps. Uighur women have reported forced sterilisations and birth control as part of a government campaign to suppress birthrates, in what experts have described as “demographic genocide”.

According to media reports before its release, Mulan was shot in about 20 locations in China, including the Mingsha Shan desert, part of which is in Xinjiang, and the Tuyuk Valley, an oasis village east of Turpan.

Filming took place in 2018, the same year China’s “strike hard” campaign in Xinjiang ramped up with the construction of the camps. According to researcher Adrian Zenz, Turpan was the first documented case of “re-education” or political indoctrination used against Uighurs to “eradicate the soil for the breeding and spread of religious extremism”.

Activists calling for a boycott of the film are now highlighting its links to Xinjiang, while other researchers noted that the public security bureau in Turpan oversees at least 14 internment camps in the area.

Human rights advocates have called on Disney to be transparent about its dealings with authorities in Xinjiang. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Disney shared its script with Chinese authorities and consulted with local advisers in order to guarantee a release in China.

Bonus: the lead actress loudly praises the Hong Kong police for their crackdown on protesters.

Remember this the next time some celebrity takes a Brave(TM) political stand on something that happened in the West. 

For the right amount of money, the movie industry would film a buddy comedy on a mass grave.

1 comment:

  1. Like I need another reason to boycott Big-Time Show Business. First sports, now this.

    ReplyDelete

Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.

The Secret to Thriving during the Eastern Great Lent.

A couple secrets, actually. The first is Lebanese and Syrian cooking. At our new Melkite parish, the Divine Liturgy has been followed by Len...