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.

  • 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.