thomas4cinema

See an excellent contribution by Imagethief about a Chinese “film official”‘s successful effort to make a fool out of himself. Unfortunately the attitude by the official is one very much representative for many parts of China’s “culture industry”.
It does not happen too often that one reads a lengthy article and shouts “YEAH” at every full stop. I did with this one. Only have to add that the Michael Bay example is a brilliant one, because it shows how super-patriotism frequently coincides with lack of talent by people who get drowned in cash. Bay should become Chinese, he could make exactly the films he likes, and about 5 billion US dollars every year could be spent on less lobotomic output. (In the words of Matt Groning: Bay would realise that his films are mere comedies, but he doesn’t, because he is a turd.)
The one feature of the Chinese government-approved culture industry I find the most telling is the complete lack of self-confidence, which then again must lead to crapping your pants when anybody makes fun of you or critizices you. Those cultures are able to create powerful cultural produce that are able and willing to play with their own strengths and weaknesses at equal measure. I think the culture officials of any country should start watching some movies for a change – and learn to judge what it means that one cultural domain is able to produce the range of “Taxi Driver”, “Apocalypse Now”, “Thank you for Smoking” and, yes, also “Transformers” – and why another is unable to rise beyond “WuJi”.