Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Leaked emails show organizers of the prestigious Hugo Awards vetted writers’ work and comments with regard to China, where last year’s awards were held.

Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.

    • GhostFence@lemmy.world
      28·
      9 months ago

      Oh man, how long before China has enough global power to censor what we watch in American cinema/TV? Or are we already at that point??? 😱

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
        1·
        9 months ago

        We kind of are? Although, it is mostly at the same level the US has been. Mainstream movies aren’t going to have things that will anger significant markets. Similarly, a decent number of the long living live service games have “china” versions that do stuff like get rid of skeletons and so forth.

        It is obviously speculation, but a LOT of what went wrong with Rise of Skywalker has strong hints of being about the Chinese market.

        • Even the people who hated TLJ with every fiber of their being kind of noticed that Rose Tico almost completely disappeared. And… part of that is speculated to be because Kelly Marie Tran was getting a lot of traction due to the constant bigotry and hatred thrown at her for being asian in a “white” franchise. Except… she is ethnically Vietnamese.
        • The force ghosts don’t have their blue tint which is speculated to be about making it less obvious they are spirits/ghosts
        • TLJ literally ended with “Our elders fucked up and the world is possibly a worse place than it was before The War. But now we are rallying behind a former slave, a scoundrel, and some homeless chick all while force powers are being spread among the proletariat”. ROS IMMEDIATELY retconned all that to “The slave is a goober who belongs with his own people and that homeless chick has a direct connection to the ruling class. Also, the real heroes are our ancestors”.

        Which… again, kind of mirrors how the US and its holy concepts are treated. Take a look at mainstream action movies from basically the 70s to the 10s. The enemy might be a rogue general or CIA operative but you’ll have a heroic US soldier/marine around to counter that out and show that the vast majority of the military are good people (and we still see the impact of that with people trying to reconcile the US military waiting to see how Jan 6 would shake out…). Same with how Democracy is good and amazing and only ever fails because of outright fraud rather than gerrymandering and stupidity/bigotry.

        Just… the main difference is that you can still watch a movie about a squad of US Marines raping and murdering their way through a warzone in the US. Whereas that gets outright banned in China and can lead to a visit to the reeducation camps if the creator lives in China.

        • GhostFence@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          I’m not entirely clear on where you’re drawing the line here but American cinema has a rich history of promoting mistrust in the U.S. Government. Eagle Eye, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, Dr. Strangelove, and the Watchmen, all were mainstream movies produced in that 70s to 10s time period. Some or all of those depict institutionalized corruption on a level you’d probably not ever see coming from China.

          • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
            1·
            9 months ago
            • Three Days of the Condor: Rogue CIA op “exposed” by a loyal CIA agent
            • All the President’s Men: About the law and the good parts of the government uniting to stop a criminal president
            • Dr Strangelove: Rogue general with the POTUS et al trying to prevent world war 3
            • The Watchmen: You mean Alan Moore’s wank rag? I don’t think anything about that story is coherent enough to really over-analyze. But the HBO sequel series very much focused on the idea of The Good Cops/Supes
            • Eagle Eye: Did ANYONE watch this? So I’ll talk about Enemy of the State instead since that is an awesome movie. And it very much is about a rogue senator (?) and the NSA overreaching and is stopped by the good government agents and Big Willy Style

            I don’t think it is even a conscious effort most of the time. But it very much pervades US media. And a lot of it even boils down to the actual military propaganda like NCIS or Bradley Cooper’s The A-Team. It is the idea that we are Americans and we are exceptional and we truly value individualism and everyone should praise the NCOs who are going to fight the good fight and make sure they never do anything bad no matter what the evil officers tell them… so make sure to shoot that kid your Sergeant is telling you to because that fucker totally has it coming.

            Mostly I am just trying to point out that we are already adjusting “global” media to placate major demogrpahics. The main difference, like I said, being that pissing off the US Government means republicans won’t watch your movie. Pissing off the CCP means you need to be careful any time you are flying in the Eastern hemisphere.