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China Censors "The Big Bang Theory" and Other Streaming Shows
dryriver (1010635) writes in with news that the Chinese government has had enough of the antics of doctor Sheldon Lee Cooper. "Chinese authorities have ordered video streaming websites in the country to stop showing four popular American TV shows, including The Big Bang Theory and The Good Wife, senior staff from two sites said Sunday. The move suggests government attention is intensifying on the online streaming industry, which is freer than state television and China's cinemas to show foreign productions and other content and has stretched the boundaries of what can be seen in the country. A spokeswoman for a leading online video site, Youku, said it had received notification on Saturday not to show sitcom The Big Bang Theory, political and legal drama The Good Wife, crime drama NCIS and legal drama The Practice."
All terrible shows that the world could do without.
China. Not Russia. Yes, I am a fucking moron.
:)
But I ninja'd all the haters who will now repeat this correction, at least.
The road to first post is plagued with face plants.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Or CBS blocking me from watching it in Canada, eh?
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You seem to assume that all Chinese censorship is purely politically motivated. The Big Bang Theory probably just fails basic quality control standards.
China is much more concerned about "cultural contamination", not just political contamination. While the Chinese are Communists, they are not the hyper-political communists of the Soviet Union where culture such as religion and traditions were a plague to be eradicated, they are Communists with an eye towards preserving their very ancient culture.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture reports a 3-point increase in the average urban IQ.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Excellent movie, but it was missing almost all references to the banking system and TARP funds. For example, the entire scene at the end, where Derek Jeter hands them documents regarding banking fraud (their "next case"), was cut. The info graphics credits sequence omitted everything but the Ponzi scheme part (but it wasn't just cut off after that; the credits continued with the part after the info graphics). You can view the sequence on Youtube, but that's not complete either: It's missing the AIG and TARP bits.
So China bans Big Bang Theory. What is being hidden from you?
tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media.
China isn't the only country whose govts are pissed with pure uncensored internet freedom. Even my Brazil "democracy" has tried to police twitter, facebook, google plus to censure critics of politicians specially right before elections. Remember Turkey has banned twitter and facebook.
Realize that without serious state controlled media, China will fracture into dozens of states. It's internal language, cultural and social disparities rival only the former USSR.
China invented the technique of legalism back in (259 BC – 210 BC) when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country, in the past having even censured attempts to use history against current rulers.
American companies stream movies to China. ... I would like to have an uproar that we are forced to pirate movies because they get published here (in Europe) months if not years after they were made ... ...
But they don't do the same thing to Europe (Game of Thrones as an example).
How is that even billed? And now we have an uproar that China is censoring it.
Wow
I'm fed up with movies/books being available in Europe months or years after they where made, for what ever reason
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Three CBS and one ABC. Production companies don't align either.
The shows themselves may not be objectionable, keep in mind. It may be payback or threat for other things, movies or something. In Iron Man 3, it's probable The Mandarin was converted from an evil actual Chinese guy to a lame cover story so as to not offend lest that and future movies be banned...or taxed extra hard.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hopefully we can get China to censor Big Bang Theory here in the U.S. too.
Maybe in the past, but the more we centralize everything, the more censorship-tolerant (and surveillance-tolerant) the internet becomes.
It needs to move to p2p, strongly encrypted communication. If it doesn't, it will die under the force of organizations that don't want freedom of communication.
I suspect it's more like a form of protectionism. They can't slap some serious tariffs due to WTO or whatever. So in order to protect fledgling local production they do a form of bang-bang control: now you can watch that and now you can't.
"... when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country ..."
Someone should have suggested to the emperor that he could actually name the whole country after himself. I imagine he would have been very pleased. Of course, he would have had to come up with a name that wasn't based on Indo-European languages. Maybe a cursory look at Wikipedia on the etymology of China is in order.
One is that they do a pretty good job portraying various kinds of geeks. Since it is a comedy it makes light of unflattering and silly characteristics that those geeks have. Well, many people can't laugh at themselves. Real life Sheldon Coopers can't laugh at themselves any more than the character can, and thus the character would be something they don't like.
Another is jealousy. The characters on the show have generally had a good deal of success in love, despite being geeky, with very pretty women. This is something that many of the real life geeks on Slashdot do not share. Hence, there is jealousy of the characters.
Finally there is the hipster-ish anti-pop culture thing. That somehow, if something is popular, it can't be good. For many geek, part of the identity is being an outcast, being different, and liking different things. So liking something mainstream won't do at all for them, not because they don't actually like it but because it would conflict with their self identity.
Personally, I think it is hilarious. Not quite as good as the IT Crowd, but I enjoy it and it makes me laugh regularly. Being that it is a comedy, that is all I can ask :).
It's maybe becoming more like the TV show "Friends" with everybody in a relationship
That kind of tends to be the pattern in real life as well.
We have a medium that makes it possible to bring the best in the world to our doorstep
Yeah, it's called the Internet.
I've no idea what sort of creds the writers have
Considering Mayim Bialik is an actual neuroscientist and several of the consultants for the show are physicists, the creds of the writers are very well established.
Don't forget Danica McKellar who showed up for an episode, with her degree in mathematics (sum cum laude). Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene and Neil Degrasse Tyson have also appeared with Hawking lending his electronic voice to a handful of episodes as well.
The fact of the matter is the show is written to both poke fun at the foibles of the nerd/geek crowd as well as provide a light-hearted commentary of some of the people, similar to yourself no doubt, and how they perceive things. Yes, much of it is formulaic but the zingers are worth ignoring the obvious plot holes (the most common of which is how Penny can survive on a waitress salary).
It's a show. Stop being a nerd and trying to dissect everything as if it's supposed to have some grand, overarching meaning to anything.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower