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Chris Berry writes:

Just as Hollywood’s daring productions of the 1920 led to protests and eventually self-censorship, the daring “ghost spirit” (shenguai) films of the 1920s led to a ban by the Chinese Nationalist government on such forms of “feudal superstition” – a ban supported by the Communist left. Long dismissed as trash, in recent years scholars have come to understand the fascination in magic, supernatural powers

Interesting.  One of my MA students last year wrote a dissertation on the distribution of Thai horror films in China.  She concluded that the Chinese censors allow these films to be shown because they take the line that religion and superstition are allowed to exist and be practised, just as long as they are seen as things that foreigners do, and not something that happens at home.  Therefore, subjects that are off limits for domestic filmmmakers are OK for imports.  Exactly the same situation existed in Britain in the 1930s over other issues.  Films dealing with organised crime (principally the Warners gangster cycle), industrial disputes and the effects of the Great Depression were fine if they came from Hollywood (a phenomenon that was parodied with remarkable candour in the otherwise unremarkable 1937 musical, Gangway): Johnny Foreigner was allowed to have these problems, but we jolly well weren't, hence attempts to make a film of Love on the Dole were blocked by the BBFC three times before the outbreak of war moved the political goalposts and it was finally permitted in 1941.

If it hasn't been done already, there's surely an interesting PhD project to be done comparing the disparities in film censorship practice internationally between the censorship applied to indigenous films versus imported ones.

Leo

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Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies
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University of Leeds
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Web: Leo on the UoL/ICS Website | on academia.edu | personal website
New Book: Film Restoration (published on 31 October, Palgrave Macmillan)
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