China is notorious for its strict censorship laws which had resulted in the banning of western social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The newly approved film censorship law may seem to make life harder for the country’s movie producers, but cinema experts know how to go around China’s censorship laws.
BBC cites the case of Chinese director Feng Xiaogang who megged a risqué movie, “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” yet managed to have it exhibited as a mainstream film. The movie tells the story of a peasant Chinese woman who battles the bureaucracy.
Feng Xiaogang did it by fitting Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign in the movie, passed off as a comedy film that did not rely on jokes or witty lines to make the audience laugh. The director instead used absurd situations to tackle the legal challenges the woman grappled with over two decades.
Although Feng Xiaogang used black comedy in “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” the director knew how to present sensitive subjects in ways that got the film’s approval by senior officers at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television who were aware that the movie spoke the truth and had a worthy message for Chinese moviegoers.
If Chinese filmmakers go by the letter of the country’s new censorship law, the list of banned topics is long. It includes gambling, drug abuse, criminal methods, superstition and violence. Those are the don’ts. There are also the dos, namely, local films should serve socialism and the Chinese people.
Those who had gone too far and presented lewd materials, such as the young Chengdu woman who posted a video of foursome sex, felt the sting of government’s harsh censorship law. But those wise enough to go around it by crafting movies of high quality and value show one can outwit government bureaucracy and even win the critic’s praise just like what Feng Xiaogang did.