Kiwi Chow
Stunning Colleagues,
I've been wanting to write about how the transformation of our industry -- from Hollywood film & TV to Big Tech content streaming -- could present us with a new obstacle: censorship, both official & self-imposed.
But I don't know how to write about it straightforwardly, make it feel urgent, or come off anything less than conspiratorial. It's been a yuge frustration for me, because I feel like there's bad shit already happening and the forces are lining up for more. But talking about it immediately gets sort of abstract, because I wind up in a few different contexts in ways that are, well, a little abstracted...
--corporate governance: the companies that run Hollywood are bigger than ever --> they'll be less tolerant of & face more risks than their predecessors --> they'll self-censor;
--mass entertainment: they're attempting to reach unprecedentedly big numbers of people --> they must always be in lock step with the status quo --> they'll self-censor against anything outside it;
--again, mass entertainment: they're trying to reach unprecedentedly big numbers of people --> they can afford to lose niches --> they wouldn't have any incentive to support a radical voice that was important to a niche (...so this is one reason that no streamer has attempted to replicate cable news: they want wide swaths of people on both sides of the aisle...)
--foreign policy: these companies already are & aspire to be unprecedentedly global --> there are more governments they can't risk offending --> they'll get censored more & learn to self-censor.
And I'm already drawing on things about which I'm not really an expert and sounding pretentious. I don't want to write something that's like a letter to the editor in Foreign Affairs -- which I subscribed to as a sophomore in high school & associate with neoconservatism & dark virgin energy
There's also the problem of how some of the vectors here -- "censorship" "Big Tech? Big Brother!" "China" "cancel culture" -- risk throwing me into American internet culture war territory that I actively run from.
But last week, I read about a filmmaker whose movie could land him in prison for life. In case you missed it, I wanted to share that situation here. And now, even though I don't feel like I know how to do this right, I feel like I need to give it a shot, because, well, these are pressing concerns for human freedom that involve our industry & just aren't getting their due. So I'm going to try making sense of this filmmaker's nightmare in the contexts of 1) the decline of democracy and 2) the rise of the streamer, how those global trends intersect, and whether there's anything for us to do in the face of new censorship.
Last week, The Hollywood Reporter ran a long piece about a surprise screening at Cannes of a new documentary, "Revolution of Our Times," that follows a group of activists at the front lines of protests in Hong Kong in 2019, which were sparked by China's swift imposition of authoritarian rule on the cosmopolitan & semi-democratic province. The filmmaker, Kiwi Chow, has taken an extraordinary risk given the climate for speech there: a publisher of a non-radical Hong Kong newspaper that ran a mild critique of China's rule was recently sentenced to life in prison. Nonetheless, Chow just gave an interview, where he talks through his experiences making the film and mentally preparing for a possible arrest.
The coverage, written by Patrick Ritman & Alex Brzeski, has been unusually good for the trades, so I sent it to a Hollywood Forever reader who also happens to be a high priest of Washington's foreign policy establishment (his favorite movie: Crimson Tide). I was reminded of a conversation we had a while back, where he stared at his feet and said, "I still can't believe we lost Hong Kong."
It goes without saying that "we" may have stood back as China took over Hong Kong (without imposing costs in the form of sanctions etc.!), because the business interests that still dominate our politics didn't want to ruffle feathers.
Some of our industry's overlords are increasingly reliant on China, none more so than Disney. The piece on Chow's film highlights Disney's hypocrisy, by way of contrast with the controversy surrounding another film's release: "Chinese actress Crystal Liu, star of Disney’s China-set action tentpole Mulan, created an international backlash when she voiced her support for the Hong Kong police force’s crackdown on protestors. The activist movement in Hong Kong called for a boycott of Mulan, but Disney, an ardent supporter of social movements in the U.S., such as Black Lives Matter, remained completely mum on the topic of democracy in Hong Kong. Many analysts pointed out at the time that the entertainment conglomerate would very likely see its multibillion-dollar Shanghai Disneyland theme park shuttered by Beijing if it were to speak out on the issue."
Hollywood won't and couldn't save Hong Kongers or the Uighurs or stop human suffering in China or in any other country.
But movies shape our imaginations. It's hard to even imagine American conservatism without the western. And it's also hard to remember how we thought about white liberals before Get Out. So, Hollywood has a moral responsibility not to let straightforwardly evil regimes determine what gets made & what gets seen.
...which is already happening. It's infinitely fucking pathetic that no streamer had the gumption to pick up The Dissident, an alarming documentary from a successful filmmaker about Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince's murder of a Washington Post journalist. So it goes without saying that none will touch "Revolution of Our Times" either.
These are just clear-cut examples of cowardice we've experienced so far.
Hollywood's overlords will have to do more tiptoeing around prickly governments they can't afford to offend, which will lead to hard & soft censorship. We're living through a dark time for democracy, and the streamers are desperate for market share in countries whose governments have turned repressive, notably Russia, Saudi Arabia, and India (keep an eye on Brazil). And those countries, by and large, are in China's sphere of influence more so than America's, and will take their cues accordingly: they'll freeze out streamers who won't censor content that seems oppositional -- who aren't down to play ball. Paradoxically, the industry will likely continue improving its representation of voices it has marginalized in America, while, as a matter of business abroad, siding with the bad guys & excluding voices from marginalized people all over the world.
The situation in America could worsen too. Because now, the streamers -- owned by Big Tech & Yuge Telecomm -- are susceptible to political pressure. Both parties are after them. Their future merging -- their quickest path to scale -- could be stopped by hipster anti-trust, which now runs the FCC.
A hypothetical: What would Apple do if it were set to air a documentary with unflattering revelations about Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer on the eve of congressional hearings about its stranglehold on mobile apps?
It may be a moot point. No matter who was involved, I don’t think Apple would’ve picked up that documentary. And if congress continues challenging Big Tech, I’m not sure any of the few remaining major distributors would either. Relegated, like The Dissident, not for total censorship, of course, but for VOD obscurity. Ooof.
Obscure VOD aside, the streamers — having decimated movie theaters & “linear TV” — have grown so large they’re basically the only game in town. Movie theaters, and, to a lesser extent, cable TV, support little independent ecosystems whose companies don't have to proceed with the risk-aversion of a sprawling multi-national and thus could dare to exhibit work that spoke ill of a murderous autocrat. It goes without saying you can find people speaking truth to power on social media & journalism, and we aren't headed for 1984 in America, but man it's a fucking bummer that in film & TV around the world, there's just so little space for oppositional speech.
It’s not the first time globetrotting Hollywood has come up against thin-skinned foreign authoritarians. You might know where I'm heading, but if not...
In the 1930s, as the studios expanded into Europe, they contended with Hitler. It's an unnerving, complex part of the industry history: The extent to which Hollywood actively "collaborated" with the Nazis is a subject of debate among historians. But there's no question that Hollywood censored the shit out of its movies for fear of upsetting the rising Nazi party, which could've blocked them from an expanding German market. It was largely self-censorship: managing risk.
The most nauseating part is that the studios deferred to a Nazi official who lived in LA, Georg Gyssling, who read scripts, went to screenings, and warned execs about what might offend Hitler. You couldn't have German villains in movies about World War I until 1940, just as you can't have Chinese military (or corporate) villains now.
And yes, the studios were run by Jews -- Jews who knew what was happening in Europe, but feared that speaking up would jeopardize their tenuous status in their new, virulently anti-Semitic home.
Having worked at a studio that intended to finance a movie that took aim at the bad cable news channel (albeit not in a way that resonated with me... or with that many other people when it promptly got made elsewhere), I can tell you that corporate overlords will veto something that feels pretty mild to you for fear of upsetting a business partner that you'd assume had already been disgraced beyond the pale.
Luckily, we aren't bound to documentaries & ripped-from-the-headlines docu-dramas. Film & TV allow room to imagine. We get to represent things as we see & feel them to be, as we fear they could be, and as we hope they could be.
It has been gripping & positively challenging for me to watch movies that present a range of nightmares & futures with regard to race & gender in America, from the techno-utopian Black kingdom of Black Panther to the destigmatized abortion in Obvious Child. And I'm seeing more imagining about climate in narrative fiction too. The work is affecting how we feel about each other & the planet.
Could we do the same for democracy? I think it would be awesome to see vivid analogues for contemporary authoritarianism across genres, from fantasy to comedy, and stories that demonstrate the courage it will take to oppose them, and the broad-mindedness required to foster more just political cultures. It might also be interesting to watch the non-metaphorical versions too: I haven't seen a compelling, non-jingoistic fictional film or TV depiction of a regime that resembles China or Russia or Saudi Arabia, as they exist today: with royal relations & upstart elites jockeying for power, of course, but supercharged by tech, synergizing venture cap & the gulag... Succession season 6?
So, to be specific, while this probably isn't the time for you to try writing a biopic of Alexey Navalny (unless your goal is getting on the Blacklist but not getting a movie made), I'm hopeful his example & his work -- his searing, specific, and funny (at least in Russia) unmasking of Putin -- can inform ours.
And if "Revolution of our Times" becomes available on VOD, which I suspect it will -- may through Briarcliff Entertainment, which only distributes genre flicks & dissident docs -- I'll be buying it.
Hollywood Forever Y'all,
Max
P.S. If I had to get a tattoo of a tweet, it'd be this.
P.P.S. Margaret Talbot's piece about "You Must Remember This" in The New Yorker is fun & sharp. She compares the podcast with past re-tellings of Hollywood lore.