Avid viewers will be surprised by this exposé of the seedy partnership between Hollywood and the Chinese government.
How China muscled its way into Hollywood moviemaking from the mid-1990s on to begin directing what America watches.
“By 2020, China would be the number one box-office market world, home to grosses that routinely neared $1 billion—a market that became too big to ignore and too lucrative to anger,” writes Wall Street Journal film reporter Schwartzel. While largely closed to American moviemaking before 1994, China recognized, as indeed Hollywood had learned after World War II, that making movies not only could be America’s No. 1 export, but could also influence the public—and exercise political sway. The growth was slow but incremental, as the author demonstrates, from the creaky opening up to American culture after the death of Mao Zedong and China’s embrace of capitalism in the 1990s to its full-blown censorship efforts under President Xi Jinping “as an essential arm to a recast Middle Kingdom.” Schwartzel’s examples are both fascinating and disturbing—e.g., the ability of China’s behind-the-scenes influence to remove the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s iconic bomber jacket in the remake of Top Gun: Maverick in 2019; squelch the marketing of movies about the Dalai Lama and Buddhism, such as Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun; and vilify and ban publicly pro-Tibetan actor advocates like Richard Gere and China critics like Brad Pitt, as well as Nomadland director Chloé Zhao. The author adds that China finagled a deal at the time of the Beijing Olympics to build a Disney theme park in China, while Hollywood, eager to please, filmed an appalling remake of Red Dawn to please China (“anticipatory censorship”), with North Korea as the villains. As Schwartzel demonstrates, China has the money to demand an entertainment business that will support its new political rise, and Hollywood, aware of the vast Chinese market, is not saying no.
Avid viewers will be surprised by this exposé of the seedy partnership between Hollywood and the Chinese government.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984878-99-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
