[Foreign Affairs - Aug 2020] Fear of Authoritarian Regimes Is Pushing the Film Industry to Self-Censor
Twitter comment on same today:
Hollywood’s self-censorship is no passing fad, writes Kal Raustiala. U.S. film studios hesitate to criticize authoritarian regimes for fear of losing market access or drawing cyberattacks—and American soft power suffers as a result |
What sets the United States apart from the rest of the world is and has always been its soft power. The Soviets may have equaled the Americans in nuclear capability, but they could never rival the appeal of the “American way of life.” And even as China tries to spread its culture across the globe, its rise tends to inspire more trepidation than admiration.
Many ingredients combine to give U.S. soft power its strength and reach, but entertainment and culture have always been central to the mix. Film and television have shaped how the world sees the United States—and how it perceives the country’s adversaries. Yet that unique advantage seems to be slipping away. When it comes to some of the great questions of global power politics today, Hollywood has become remarkably timid. On some issues, it has gone silent altogether.
The most glaring example is the growing wariness of U.S. studios to do anything that might imperil their standing with the Chinese government. China’s box office is as large as the American one, so Hollywood sanitizes or censors what China doesn't like...
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