Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Censors Crack Down on Time Travel
H_Fisher writes "Disrespect the Chinese government at your peril ... and this includes anything you do with the past. Time magazine's Techland blog reports that China is banning references to time travel which are disrespectful to the nation's culture and history. No word on whether this includes a travel ban on time lords."
From Friday, April 15, 2011. PS, gas prices went up again.
I wonder if the Chinese traveled back in time to tell themselves to ban talking about time travel because it was possible. Will this prevent the discovery of time travel so that they can not warn themselves? The plot thickens...
If you outlaw scifi then only criminals will have scifi,
meaning only criminals will go on to study physics.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I actually read Chinese Sensors Crack Down on Time Travel ............my hopes were dashed.soon
I was just getting ready to jump into my time machine and go back to kill Sun Yat-sen. How could they have known?
O... wait...
With the way things are run, the state controls and monitors everything shown on your television or your computer. So yeah, China can randomly go back in time and say Marty McFly never existed. Scary, huh? The Doc would be furious. Fortunately, that's not what they're saying. But somehow the government has taken a sudden disliking to the idea of distorting certain historical events, things and people. (Cough.) ....The decision was made earlier this month, with the country's State Administration for Radio, Film & Television stating that "The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."
What's wrong with these shows? They “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.”
So time travel comes in because the article decided to link the concept of time-travel to television and movies that convey alternative histories (Which, to the pedants, can include time-travel). But it the main theme discussed is regarding misrepresenting history. Nowhere does it say sitting in your back-yard and working on that warp-drive is verboten. It seems to me they want to cut down on media that strays from the government dictated and allowed 'historical context'. Far from a ban on time-travel. Censorship...Yes...Sensationalist...Unfortunately.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It seems to me that their real fear is people latching on to the idea that things could ever have worked out differently. If people explore alternative histories and conjecture what would have happened if the ruling regime didn't come to power, how things might have been changed... perhaps for the better.
Better to nip those flights of fancy in the bud and keep everyone's horizons nicely blinkered and focused on the factory assembly line.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I think I smell the birth of a new meme.
Just "most" of us only travel forward in time.
A favorite SF story of mine is Walter Jon Williams's "Foreign Devils," which was part of an anthology of stories taking place in the setting of HG Wells's War of the Worlds, but taking place in other parts of the world. WJW's contribution depicted the reaction of China's royalty to the tripods etc. Not time travel per se but definitely cast the Chinese court in a less than favorable light.
That's as close as I can get to a story which might draw ire from the PRC; any others? According to TFA they're down on stories which “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.” All of those at once sounds quite entertaining, actually.
This is just a historical revisionism / always at war with Oceania / business as usual thing.
They even bothered to get a picture of the Delorean to go with the extremely tenuous headline.
June 4, 1989
Is here
to have someone like the US dumping billions into your pocket, then you can come up with crazy shit all day long cause you do not have a real concern anymore
A government that does not tolerate free speech, including art that for example ridicules certain aspects of culture or history, is simply telegraphing the weakness of its power over its people, and the tenuousness of its legitimacy.
True power comes from the willing consent of the people.
Power that comes from applying the heels of jackboots is oh so shallow and fragile.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
sucking the Chinese dicks. Please, they are not worth it.
in soviet Russia We remove people from time!
Since it's an old story, it must have time travelled to now.
There is no -1 Disagree.
Their top researchers are too busy trying to figure out why ridiculous foreigners don't seem to comprehend that their language does, in fact, contain an 'L' sound.
Yep, he stole Marty McFlys time machine and conquered China long long ago. (or at least he will SOON?!!)
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Bullshit. Just because someone tweets something doesn't make it news.
Dr woooooo-oo hey! Dr woo.
Dr woooooo-oo hey! Dr woo.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
What would have happened in China if Bill S. Preston Esq. and 'Ted' Theodore Logan never returned Genghis Khan to the past?
Anarchy, that's what.
They crack-down on travel ALL the time.
so we needn't be travelling far. even the much anticipated rebirth of antidisestablishmentarianism won't help the royals & eugenatics now, as we move on now to fatal friday. much less useful than even atharism, these chosen ones genocidal creeps still think they're god. sheesh it's all in the genuine native elders teepeeleaks etchings. the royals remain unrepentant, which is now the title of a feature film featuring their less than human features.
the usual tome;
disarm
leave
now
or did Ground Hog Day and April Fools get combined now and I'm experiencing April 1 again and again.
Since they have essentially removed most reference of Mao Zedong from their history books now they are going after people attempt to change history. Even though I'm Chinese, but the communist Chinese always make me laugh with with their strange and bewildering policies with their people but their enforcement of certain laws against their are not funny.
"The Chinese Science Directorate has concluded that time travel is impossible"
"do not defy causality"
Good for the China! Fictional plots involving time travel are nothing more than mental masturbation.
One of the great things about totalitarians is that the logic of control pushes them to absurdities like this.
You know, other than some rather sordid and scandalous private affairs, Dr. Sun was alright. Now if we're talking about Glorious Chairman Mou or Messianic Generalissimo Chiang, I am all for it.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Chinese Sensors Down on Crack Time Travel.
There, redacted it.
Time magazine...I see what's going on here.
I saw it explained on another website like this, and as I have no access to Chinese television I can't confirm this. Apparently there had been this trend of making programs in which a character would, for one reason or another, travel back in time to Imperial China. There, they would discover that pre-Revolutionary China was...well...pretty nice. This obviously presents a problem for the government since, although they're fairly Western in the business world, their government is still officially "Communist".
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Except for that one guy who killed Hong Xiuquan.
Technoli
The plot thickens...
Ever noticed that we seem to be getting more and more lawyers and fewer and fewer physicists? This is a very cunning plan by the Chinese to fix this. You pass the laws of physics as actual legislative laws and, by the time all those lawyers graduate law school they are actually trained as physicists. By this time next week 3x10^8 m/s won't be just a good idea it really will be the law!
How will they prevent their people from traveling to the future naturally?
They have a time-tested bullet related procedure that's highly effective.
John
Chronowolves?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
books that paint such a brilliant, detailed, and lifelike picture of history, that while you're reading it, you're taken back in time?
The more repressive the government the more sensitive it is to cultural 'insults.' The more inbred the people too.
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
Maybe China is concerned about filmmakers using time travel to sneak non-state-approved ideas about China's history past the censors. It has nothing to do with cultural 'insults.' It has to do with China wanting to control their peoples' perception of their own history. I watched an East German Propaganda movie once about a condemned village in Bavaria being saved by the workers and farmers standing up to the evil gangster Yankees and the puppet-West German government and Catholic Church. The Americans wanted to bulldoze the village to build a nuclear bomber base. But when one thinks about the film at a deeper level, it could be a critique of the East German Government and their relations with the Soviet Union. The film maker knew he couldn't openly criticize his own government, so he set his movie in the west. I wonder how many East Germans saw the movie and thought that exactly the same thing is happening here, but in the West, the people had the freedom to protest and be heard.
>True power comes from the willing consent of the people.
"(True) Power grows out of the barrel of a gun". --Mao Zedong (paraphrase)
Great Scott...! That's heavy.
Party on, dudes!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
No doubt the Chinese government will be employing the Restoration Team to replace John Bennett with a Chinese actor on future versions of the Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD. Come to think of it, they've probably done it already on the grounds that it was the original production team's intention. And turned everyone bright orange with their Gumby restoration techniques.
He didn't chop down the tree, he chewed it down. And he was a Chinese beaver.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Since no one ever bothers to read the source, the original statement actually says TV dramas should not have plots that are pure fantasy, such as time traveling drama; made-up mythologies; or encourage superstitions, such as believing in fate or reincarnations. There's nothing in the statement about censorship or banning.
Chinese TV have always been quite dry for me, since a lot of it are historical drama that talk about revolutionary heroes, but my Chinese friends love them, maybe growing up in China helps.
What's really interesting for me, is the Communists' ever tightening grip over their own people and their growing paranoia. They have massive problems and massive internal contradictions, and rather than doing what the rest of the (non-dysfunctional) world does, and let people air their grievances and have their say, they're bottling up the rage and discontent.
I would liken it to a broken pressure cooker left on a stove. Democracy, and freedom of speech and assembly are like the pressure-release valve. I DON'T want to be anywhere near it when the thing finally explodes. And despite my own personal disgust of the immorality that pervades mainland Chinese society, I really do feel sorry for the average Chinese guy in the street, who has been shit-on by their government for millenia, and will suffer as this mess eventually unravels.
At least now we have a plot for the third Bill & Ted movie....
So, will they have Time Cops?
I8-D
The Pertwee Doctor was proudly spoke Chinese in a couple of episodes.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Exactly. Right now, officially, there was no Tiananmen Square massacre. But what if some TV drama, under the cover of 'alternate history' creates a TV drama that explores what would've happened if there was a Tiananmen Square massacre in '89? The Chinese government has worked so hard covering that up, they don't want some TV drama, under the guise of fiction, coming in and giving people the facts. So they need a law to nip that in the bud quickly.
Nothing to see here folks. This is just what happens when you want to firmly control the 'official' history. Obviously you can't have any kind of non-official history, even if it is fiction.
From the CNN article on this it sounds like they are not only banning time-travel shows but pretty much all sci-fi and fantasy shows, ouch.
Seems like the government there pretty is much stifling anything that promotes imagination or original thinking. Do they want their 99% working class to just be unimaginative working drones?
Is this why the majority of Chinese brand products are just cheap knockoffs of products invented elsewhere, despite their massive industrial manufacturing complex they've developed?
China banned Death Notes a while back, too.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I wonder if this includes storing logs. With logs you can go back in time and figure out when events happened.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Didn't the US and USSR crack down on sci-fi references to nuclear power when they were developing the real thing? O_o
My finance (chinese) read the original report and this is what she has to say about it
Yes, I just read it, it was a short report of current china TV drama. In one
section it mentioned that some ghost TV shows with or without time travel is
absurd and low quality , and warns investor to think carefully before
investing in these tvs. That is all.
True power comes from the willing consent of the people.
The Chinese (seem to) consent with their government. Usually, as long as the economy is doing fine, most people won't care much about what their government does. Besides, their culture is not the same as yours, they do not value freedom as much as the West pretends to.
That removes about 35% of the episodes from all the Star Treks after the Original. And I have to say ... I'm ok with it!