LOS ANGELES—The U.S. film industry has cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to gain access to the world’s second-largest economy, while enabling the CCP to shape the perception of the despotic regime through movies, industry insiders say.
It’s an intentional strategy to win the battle of public perception through arts and entertainment, a tactic that dates back to the regime’s first leader, Mao Zedong.
The Lure of Profit
The crux of the problem, according to film executive Chris Fenton, is that the lure of profit from China’s rapidly growing entertainment market made filmmakers, including himself, susceptible to subtle—then overt—pressure from the CCP to alter some elements of feature films.That began with seemingly benign changes, such as removing clotheslines from an urban scene set in China to avoid suggesting that Chinese people couldn’t afford clothes dryers. Over time, the nature and scope of the changes escalated to the point that the depiction of life under communism was elevated and even preferable to life in the United States.
Mr. Fenton, whose credits include blockbuster films such as “Iron Man 3,” describes, among other incidents, how the final scene of the 2012 film “Looper,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt, was changed to China from France, depicting an idyllic future life under communist rule.
Other films have been altered to depict enemies of the CCP as terrorists, according to filmmaker and activist Jason Jones.
In the 2020 live-action version of Disney’s “Mulan,” the sets were located within sight of concentration camps housing Uyghur people, a persecuted minority in northwestern China, according to Mr. Jones.
“So Disney is making a movie that literally turns the Uyghur into creepy villains,” he told The Epoch Times.
“It was the most Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Jones said.
Effect on Culture
The implications of this messaging have already affected U.S. culture, according to Hollywood couple Kevin and Sam Sorbo, who starred in the “Hercules” franchise and have gone on to produce family-oriented entertainment, including the movies “Soul Surfer” and “God’s Not Dead.”“If you can divorce people from their past, you can control their future,” Mrs. Sorbo said, referring to the increasing absence of historical accuracy in entertainment productions.
“This has been going on long before it hit Hollywood; it hit our schools.
“Hollywood has been softened.”
The documentary’s makers repeatedly pointed out that the CCP views the arts and entertainment as weapons of war.
“Communist China actually uses the arts as a weapon, whereas in America, we think of it as a place for creative freedom. This is how they can destroy our country without military means.”
Counterintelligence expert Casey Fleming calls the effort “unrestricted warfare,” which includes the CCP’s efforts to export fentanyl into the United States. Narrative is another of those methods, he said.
“It’s cognitive warfare, which includes information warfare,” Mr. Fleming said. “That’s what we’re talking about.”
Reversing the Tide
Mr. Fenton, who once aggressively sought CCP involvement in film productions as a way to secure higher profits, became increasingly aware of the damage that could be wrought on U.S. culture. He now works with film executives and some in Congress to address the problem.The answer, he believes, is to have candid conversations and push back on attempts at undue influence in the industry.
“We’re gonna protect the rights of our filmmakers,” Mr. Fenton said. “We’re the bastion of creative expression. We need to protect that; otherwise, we wind up working for the state, with the state telling us what we can and can’t produce.”
He pointed to the growing movement to either ban Chinese-owned TikTok in the United States or force its parent company, ByteDance, to give up its interest in the popular social media app, which experts say is being used as a platform for information warfare.
Consumer choices will also play a part in changing the cultural landscape of the United States, experts say.
“We need people to support these smaller movies with great messages,” Mr. Sorbo said.
Mr. Fleming went further, telling consumers to break economically with China.
“Stop buying items from China. Make sure your mutual funds are not invested in China,” he said. “Because China is completely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The ultimate solution, according to film critic Christian Toto, is for Hollywood to “fall in love with America again” and return to making films that celebrate the best of U.S. life and culture.
“The Chinese model is very aggressive in propaganda. I don’t want to see that stateside,” he said. “But we should celebrate the freedoms we have here on screen. Our films can tell the world who we are as a people.”
