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By GERRY MULLANY
Published: April 11, 2013

HONG KONG — The American film “Django Unchained” was abruptly pulled from theaters in China on Thursday, its opening day, a surprising move that came after some scenes were reported to have been edited to conform to the wishes of Chinese censors.

No reason was given for the decision to suspend the film’s opening. Workers at Beijing theaters said the film had been pulled because of unspecified technical problems with the movie.

The film was to have made its debut Thursday after weeks of heavy promotion in China. News reports have said that some of the film’s graphic violence was edited to make it acceptable to state censors, including altering the color of fake blood in violent scenes and limiting how far the blood splattered.

Such revisions are becoming increasingly common before American films are shown in China, with American filmmakers adhering to the demands of Chinese censors as they seek to tap into the country’s lucrative market of filmgoers. China is the second-largest movie market in the world, behind the United States.

“Django Unchained” won two Oscars in February, including one for best original screenplay, which went to the film’s director, Quentin Tarantino. The movie focuses on a slave named Django and a bounty hunter who pursue a particularly brutal slave owner.

Before the film’s planned opening, the Chinese media quoted a Sony Pictures official who described the changes made to appease censors and suggested that Mr. Tarantino had played a role in the changes.

"What we call bloodshed and violence is just a means of serving the purpose of the film, and these slight adjustments will not affect the basic quality of the film — such as tuning the blood to a darker color, or lowering the height of the splatter of blood,” Zhang Miao, director of Sony Pictures’ Chinese branch, told Southern Metropolis Daily. “Quentin knew how to adjust that, and it’s necessary that he is the one to do it. You can give him suggestions, but it must be him.”

Mr. Tarantino, whose films are known for their no-holds-barred depictions of gory violence, has not commented on reports that he toned the film down for Chinese censors.

Chinese media was rife with speculation by entertainment industry insiders that the movie was pulled because state censors had somehow missed a brief scene with nudity. That explanation seemed unlikely, however, given the careful vetting the film is said to have undergone before it was approved for release.

“This film, like all Chinese films, has gone through a censorship process and has been edited for a Chinese audience,” said Wei Xidi, a prominent film critic. “Because it has gone through this process, it doesn’t make sense that it would be halted all of a sudden on the night of its premiere.”

“Django Unchained” is the first of Mr. Tarantino’s famously violent movies to be cleared for distribution in Chinese theaters, though parts of his “Kill Bill” movies were filmed in Beijing. Its sudden disappearance from theaters across the country prompted consternation even among some of the Chinese government’s staunchest defenders.

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Global Times, a state-run newspaper known for its nationalistic posture, cast the abrupt suspension of the film as a “strange decision” made by government agencies full of nervous bureaucrats. “The harm that this action itself brings to politics far exceeds the harm that would have been caused by not censoring the ‘offensive scene,'” he wrote on his microblog.

At one Beijing movie theater, an employee said “Django Unchained” was shown after midnight Thursday to about 32 people. Another worker said that the movie was ordered taken down later for technical reasons, adding, “There’s probably something in the film that’s not up to standard.”

Queried on Thursday morning, Mr. Elzer did not say why the film had been removed. A spokeswoman for the Weinstein Company — whose co-founders, the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, are executive producers of “Django Unchained” — referred questions to Sony, which is distributing the movie outside the United States.

The openings of Chinese films are sometimes abruptly postponed because of last-minute wrangling between filmmakers and censors, and a film’s run in the theaters can sometimes be cut short if the authorities are worried about audience reaction. But it is extremely unusual for a high-profile foreign movie to be pulled on opening day after screenings have begun.

“This is such a big deal,” said Jiang Guangchao, an executive with Beijing’s New Film Association, one of China’s most important film distribution and theater chain firms, explaining why he could not comment or refer questions to colleagues.

But Gao Jun, the former president of the firm, which had been scheduled to show “Django Unchained” in its theaters, played down the suspension. “This is a very minor incident,” he said. “It’s just that Hollywood films aren’t that popular in China right now. People prefer to watch Chinese made films — they’re more familiar.”

As American moviemakers try to conform to the demands of Chinese censors, they have increasingly been willing to bend over backward in their efforts, even allowing government officials onto movie sets to watch the filming, as was the case with Disney and Marvel’s “Iron Man 3.”

China does not have a movie ratings system like those in the United States or Europe that would give viewers a chance to judge in advance whether a film is too violent for children or teenagers. It relies instead on the brute force of censorship: movies and television shows either have scenes excised or are banned entirely.

The absence of a ratings system “means the movies on screen need to be suitable for kids — that issue has been debated for years,” said Henry Siling Li, a media specialist at the China Executive Leadership Academy of Pudong, an elite school in the Shanghai area for training rising stars in the Chinese Communist Party.

“We have to remove nudity and violence from movies” as long as there is the possibility that children will be in a cinema when a movie is shown, he said.

Mr. Li added that he did not know what the difficulty might have been with “Django Unchained,” but expressed surprise that it had been pulled at the last moment because it had been the subject of a saturation advertising campaign that usually would not be conducted if a movie’s future were in doubt.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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Every movie needs to be Mary Poppins.

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There was an April fool story in one of the British papers a few years back, reporting that Tarantino had been hired to write and direct a remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which was to be 'updated, and relevant to a modern audience'. In Tarantino's remake, Snow White was to be a lesbian played by Uma Thurman, and the dwarves (including Ice T and Ving Rhames) a posse of gangsta rappers who, in the film's most controversial scene, were to amputate the wicked witch's nose with a hacksaw.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 04-12-2013, 11:52 AM:
 
I would totally be there for opening day.
 

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Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 04-12-2013, 02:28 PM:
 
A few thoughts..

First why is Hong Kong reporting about this and was it pulled there also? Does Mainland China control censoring in Hong Kong? I thought they were basically 2 different countries. When I was living in southern China I had to go to Hong Kong every 30 days to get my passport stamped. It was only about a fifteen minute cab ride, but about 2 hours going through customs.

Second, did they pull "The Man With 2 Iron Fists"? A film Tarantino was associated with and just as gory as the "Kill Bill" films and shot in China using Chinese film crews and actors.

Third, I guarantee Django is already available there uncensored on DVD.

And lastly, I think they are afraid of black men. During an install I did there, one of the screen guys was about 20 years old, bald, diamond earings and just a muscular black guy. When we would walk down the street, cars would actually stop and stare at us.

Damn Commies, maybe this whole news story is censored?

By the way, the girls who hung out at my apartment would watch movies and have the subtitles on and listen to Chinese and read English subtitles, then watch the movie later in English with Chinese subtitles. They said they were doing it to learn how to speak English better. (Me fuck you long time only goes so far on $100)

.02 worth, Rick
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 04-12-2013, 02:44 PM:
 
Hong Kong has been under British rule since 1841 and a separate part of China until July 1, 1997 when Great Britain turned over control of the colony back to the People Republic of China. It has been part of mainland China ever since.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-12-2013, 03:41 PM:
 
Hong Kong has been part of the PRC since 1997, but (if I understand and remember the situation correctly) has basically retained the system of government it had as a British colony (i.e. Chris Patten was replaced by a Chinese governor) - chapter and verse on Wikipedia. Discussing the how and why would mean getting political, but returning to topic, I'm guessing that the Django Unchained story being reported out of Hong Kong is because their news media is not subject to the same censorship as the newspapers and TV stations based in Beijing.

Still a mystery as to why the Chinese initially decided to pass it and then had second thoughts, though.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 04-12-2013, 04:49 PM:
 

quote: Richard Hamilton

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And lastly, I think they are afraid of black men. During an install I did there, one of the screen guys was about 20 years old, bald, diamond earings and just a muscular black guy. When we would walk down the street, cars would actually stop and stare at us.

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quote: Claude S. Ayakawa

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It has been part of mainland China ever since.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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I wish violence in movies would just go away altogether. Every movie needs to be Mary Poppins. We can not be trusted to separate fact from fiction. We need more censors here. Censorship is good. We really need to return to Victorian times. More censorship, please. Oh how I wish there was someone to protect me from the bad things.

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quote: Robert E. Allen

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Ah, Joe, there were no movies back in the Victorian era.

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quote: Robert E. Allen

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In recent years the industry has developed a taste in many movie-goers for the blood and guts special effects ...

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The films linked above shocked and outraged just as many people for their blood-and-guts content around the turn of the twentieth century as Tarantino's stuff does now. The 1933 King Kong had the close-ups of Kong biting and stamping on natives in the village rampage scene cut in many states and countries because the level of violence was deemed to be too shocking.

And there were lots of WWII movies (both made during the war itself and looking back on it from the '50s and '60s) that got their filmmakers into big trouble at the time, but which are now considered 'safe' black-and-white classics, shown on daytime TV and sold for $4.99 in Target. Off the top of my head, examples include Went the Day Well in Britain, a 'what to do if the Germans invade' propaganda film that included scenes of women picking up guns and shooting Nazis: councils in several cities banned it on account of this. In the United States, Crossfire dealt with some social problems that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the war, so graphically that it got its director blacklisted. Both movies are now widely regarded as classics and shown to 18 year-old students without a second thought.

What I'm trying to say is that there's not much point in comparing a Tarantino film to a Hollywood studio classic from the '30s, because both the filmmaker and the audience were doing different things in a different context.

I wonder if, as a pensioner in the 2040s, I'll be condemning the modern crap shown in theatres nowadays and wishing that the industry could still be making 'decent' films like Pulp Fiction?
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 04-13-2013, 02:06 PM:
 
I think the racial angle has a lot to do with it. In my admittedly limited experience, I have noticed that many Chinese people, especially in high ranking positions avoid saying exactly what they mean. If American politicians can speak a lot without saying much, Chinese politicians raise it to an art form.

Violence certainly has a lot to do with it, I think, but a Black man killing white people in particularly nasty ways is the main reason. However, it would be a snowy day in August before you got anybody over there to admit it.

My main question is about why the movie was passed at first then censored after opening. I bet there is some weird politics going on behind the scenes but everybody is dancing around the issues.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-13-2013, 09:56 PM:
 

quote: Robert E. Allen

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Those of us who object to that type of product are still free in this country to express our opinions

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One of last year’s most graphically violent American thrillers, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, has been approved by China’s famously strict censors to debut next month in Chinese cities.

China allows only 34 foreign films into the country every year, screening them for violence, sex, and sensitive political content. Because the country doesn’t use a film rating system, films are supposed to be “suitable for all ages,” and censors have been known to get hung up on all kinds of weird things. Karate Kid‘s debut in China was delayed because censors took issue with the presence of a Chinese villain; they also didn’t like that the stumbling main character in Kung Fu Panda is China’s national symbol. Recently, state censors cut 38 minutes, mostly of love scenes, from Cloud Atlas as well as a few scenes and dialogue from Skyfall.

Tarantino’s story of a slave’s revenge on his white master includes a healthy dose of bloody violence, nudity, and bad language—more problematic, it would seem, than a panda performing kung fu. This would be the first time a Tarantino film has debuted in Chinese movie theaters. The movie’s backers Sony Pictures Entertainment and The Weinstein Co. haven’t responded to our request for comment, but what gives?

For one, American films, especially action films, dominate the Chinese box office. Django Unchained has so far made $241 million overseas and $161 at home. Even if some of the sex and violence is removed, the film is likely to be very popular in China, which is the world’s second largest film market by box office revenues ($2.7 billion in 2012), after the US.

But perhaps another reason is that the film depicts one of America’s darker periods, when slavery was legal, which Chinese officials like to use to push back against criticism from the United States. In 2010, Beijing called the US a hypocrite for criticizing China’s human rights record.

Moreover, in classrooms and in state propaganda, America’s seizure of land from Native Americans and the US Civil War are well covered as a way to justify to Chinese citizens that every country fights for its territorial integrity. In other words, China is no different for insisting that Tibet, Xinjiang, and eventually Taiwan, be part of the mainland at all costs.

At a time when the Chinese public is angry over inequality, government corruption, and pollution, Tarantino’s film may be a graphic reminder that even the world’s most developed countries have had some serious problems of their own.

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Tarantino’s story of a slave’s revenge on his white master

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