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> By my count, the country has produced two cultural works over the last four decades since reform and opening that have proved attractive to the rest of the wo
by justicezyx 5y ago
> By my count, the country has produced two cultural works over the last four decades since reform and opening that have proved attractive to the rest of the world: the Three-Body Problem and TikTok.
I think a lot of people simply cannot wrap their head when they view from the Western angle. As a result, they sometime just fixate on some main-stream idea without realizing that those views are from limited exposure to the ground.
It's true that China has not produced much other attractions than 3body and tiktok, even 3body is heavily influened by US SF writing, and tiktok is originally produced in US by musically. The point is that these productions are easier to be accepted by the Western socieity, because they themselves are linagage from the western tradition, with a more tainted cultural identity than the indigenous stuff.
In reality, China have produced enourmouse amount of culturally diverse and innovative work for the domestic audiance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWdkAyt9Q2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWdkAyt9Q2A I'll give you one example of a recent production of a Cantonese opera mixed with modern filming tech of the classic Bai She Zhuan. And Pop star signing Song Dynasty Chi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t9VT9Dwiqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t9VT9Dwiqg.
Of course, these color productions are very distant from the Western cultural heritage, and people from the West simply cannot appreciate their wonderfullness and depth.
- jai_ 5y agoThe author's overall point is that China does not seen to export many cultural works with global appeal (and not just restricted to western tastes). In comparison you could look to Japan with it's global cultural export of manga, anime, and video games and also South Korea with it's global cultural exports of movies and drama. These exports aren't strictly limited in taste to western audiences but have a global appeal while still retaining elements of it's place of origin. It's unclear to me though if it is deliberate in this way for there not to be many cultural exports like this and if having a strong domestic scene is enough, however purely from a number game I would have expected more (which the author goes onto address later in the essay in the section "Strangling the cultural sector")
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cromwellian 5y agoThe point is, it's all either WW2 films, period dramas, or rom-keys. Why? Because these are safe subjects that steer clear of the government censors. Why are there no films telling realistic everyday Chinese stories in modern China, like the person got who out of college and can't find a job, or the elderly person with no children who is having a hard time? There are 8 million of these kinds of stories. But no, it's mostly Hanfu and Wire-fu dramas, or slicing and dicing Japanese soldiers, or basically office rom-com drama. It does seem like there's something going on that is limiting the creativity and range of artistic expression in terms of subject matter.