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China Bans Horror Movies
KublaiKhan writes "According to an article on Reuters, the Chinese censors have decided that horror movies are verboten. 'Offending content included "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror," the administration said. This is apparently a sort of Chinese version of the Jack Thompson effect, as the "mental health of adolescents" is cited as one of the reasons for the ban. Presumably, this ban — much like the spitting ban — is intended to improve China's image in the rest of the world before the Olympics open; but given the Streisand effect, would this ban perhaps unintentionally spur a surge of horror movie popularity in China?" Blizzard has had trouble with skeletons in World of Warcraft , and I imagine this decision stems from similar objections.
does this include horror movies in ascii?
"And maybe I'm suffering from old fartism, but some of the more shlocky stuff lately seems to be, uh, more of the same gore for gore's sake."
Al Gore:The movie and it's Sequal Al Gore gets gored.
problem with Chinese horror movies is.... they are good and all that, but..... an hour later.....
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I'm aware of this. I'm Canadian and I'm used to people from different geographic regions confusing me for being an American. Just to prove that I'm REALLY a Canadian, I'm going to apologize for your misunderstanding, OK?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Who scares?
Horror monsters as revolutionary heroes anyone? In Glasgow, where I come from, one of the most notorious youth gangs was born in the 70s when a cheesy Hammer horror flick was shown at the local cinema in the poorest area of town. After the film, legend has it the young men of the area emerged shouting "Tongs ya Bass" (tongs the name of the flick's vampire-monsters).. which became their collective moniker.
Historically, superstitious and supernatural beliefs have a tendency to unite rebellious factions within China. This is also the reason why the CCP represses Falun Gong, and also the reason why Marxist materialist dogma is so rigorously enforced there.
The vengeful star-monsters from horror films, especially American ones, could become a metaphor for the people's vengeance against the regime. This is one of the few remaining cultural threats to the CCP, since anything else disseminated on a scale suitable for propaganda is already totally controlled by them.
Since the cultural revolution and the proscription of all classical culture, Chinese youth are also probably in a dangerously impressionable state. The CCP is no doubt terrified about what sort of cultural effect the Western entertainment media could have on them.
Man, being forced to read that sentence should be considered a human rights violation.
Man-made global warming is NOT fiction!
(This post brought to you by a numbers-fudging "scientist"; continual, ubiquitous, and vocal claimer of government "censorship", and recipient of almost $1 million from George Soros whose previous scare mongering involved playing Chicken Little about the coming Ice Age...)
Chinese communications officials saw Army of Darkness and decided that if a single American could travel back in time, make himself a prosthetic arm, defeat an army of his little clones, defeat his evil self, unite 2 warring factions in medieval England, then defeat an army of skeletons, the Chinese are in major trouble from our super-store employees. There's no way the general populace could see that. Also included in the ban are any movies containing an ex-Vietnam special forces agent who makes prolific use of exploding arrows.