[LINK] "“The Big Bang Theory” and Our Future with China"

[rfmcdonald]

Evan Osmos' blog post at The New Yorker arguing that popular culture can bind China and the US together makes me think hopeful thoughts. (Hope can be good if founded in something, right?)

On April 26th, the Beijing government abruptly banned the country’s most popular American television show, “The Big Bang Theory.” Earlier that month, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, had launched the latest in a string of campaigns to clean up the Web, to rid it of porn, rumors, and other “harmful information.” It is part of a broader effort to push back the tide of foreign pop culture that has eroded the state propaganda agencies’ control over what people in China watch. Online video revenue grew more than forty-one per cent from 2012 to 2013; the number of visitors using phones and other mobile devices to view that video grew by seventy-three per cent, to a hundred and seventy million.

“The Big Bang Theory” was a prime beneficiary. After seven seasons, the subtitled Chinese version of the show had achieved iconic status—all without the remotest involvement of the government’s vast media apparatus. By the time the show was banned, Chinese episodes had been watched online no fewer than 1.4 billion times. When the actors, such as Johnny Galecki, visit China, they are mobbed by fans. In Beijing, any tall, slim, dark-haired American male is likely to have been told once or twice that he looks a bit like Sheldon, the most Spock-like character on the show.

Young Chinese, who have grown up in an age of prosperity and stability, are typically the most passionate defenders of the Chinese political and economic way. When the government, for instance, breaks up demonstrations in the name of defending China’s stability, or blocks Web sites to protect China’s honor in the long-running divide with Japan, it is often the self-described “angry youth” who rise in defense of the flag. But in this case, the ban hit a nerve. In the city of Wuhan, in central China, student members of the Center for Protection for the Rights of Disadvantaged Citizens of Wuhan University issued the rough Chinese equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding to know why they had been deprived of their favorite show.

In response, the state agency that oversees the broadcasting and censorship of media explained, vaguely, that “The Big Bang Theory” and three other banned shows (“The Good Wife,” “NCIS,” and “The Practice”) were either out of copyright or had been found to violate Clause 16 of the rules around online broadcasting, a clause that prohibits pornography, violence, and “content that violates China’s constitution, endangers the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, provokes troubles in society, promotes illegal religion and triggers ethnic hatred.” That explanation was met with guffaws. On Chinese social media, people joked that they should rename their own country West North Korea, and censors soon blocked that phrase.