MCLC: Zootopia as US propaganda tool

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MCLC LIST
Zootopia as US propaganda tool
Source: China Real Time, WSJ (4/7/16)
Disney’s Animated Film ‘Zootopia’ is a U.S. Propaganda Tool, Chinese Professor Says
By Lilian Lin
China’s military commentators are increasingly paying attention to what local audiences are watching in cinemas and at home – and, according to one of them, the hit film “Zootopia” is proof that the U.S. is waging an “invisible propaganda” war against Beijing.
The military-backed People’s Liberation Army Daily on Wednesday ran a commentary titled, “How can a sheep be turned into a ‘crazy’ scapegoat?” The author, a professor at a PLA-backed academy in the eastern city of Nanjing, questioned the plot of Disney’s animated animal film “Zootopia” (known as “Crazy Animal City” in Chinese), which features a sheep as the story’s main antagonist.
The animated film revolves around a rabbit police officer working to track down some disappeared predators with the help of a red fox. In the end — spoiler alert — the two discover that the sheep, who worked as assistant mayor of Zootopia, is the mastermind of the case.
That role reversal smelled like conspiracy to the commentary’s author. “In the brutal real world, it is always wolves eating sheep instead of sheep eating wolves,” reads the commentary. “Such a principle, which even children understand, can be so easily turned on its head by Hollywood and even draws in so many viewers.”
The author went on to criticize the film as having succeeded as “invisible propaganda” by “blurring the background and concealing its viewpoint.”
“Hollywood has always been an effective American propaganda tool. … If we are at the mercy of Zootopia and other films, how can our cultural territory not become eroded?” reads the commentary.
The commentary also said that American video games fit into the U.S. government’s strategy by portraying militaries of countries “that America wants to contain in real world” — including Cuba, Russia and China — as either having backward equipment or “making trouble out of nothing.”
As in other markets around the world, Zootopia has received rave reviews in China and performed well at the box office. It has raked in over 1.46 billion yuan ($230 million) in Chinese cinemas in the roughly one month since its debut, becoming the highest-grossing animated film ever in China.
The film’s characters have also generated buzz online in China. Images and short videos of Flash, one of the sloths working in the film’s Department of Mammal Vehicles, have become a favorite among users of China’s social messaging platforms. Nick, the red fox in the film, has dethroned some fresh-faced South Korean actors to win the title of “the boyfriend I want to have” for many Chinese fans.
Online users bashed the commentary for politicizing an animated film in a fashion reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution. “This must be the result of persecution mania and self-abasement,” wrote one user of China’s Weibo microblogging service.
”Why don’t you make more of an effort to think about how to improve our own cultural exports?” wrote another.
Some online users drew a comparison between the Disney film and “Pleasant Goat and the Big Big Wolf,” a renowned Chinese animated TV series and film, in which a pair of wolves somehow always fail in their efforts to eat the goats, despite their best efforts over the TV show’s decade-long run.
“If you call (a sheep eating a wolf) ‘turning something on its head,’ how about a wolf that can never beat the pleasant goat?” wrote one online user.
The Disney film is not the only foreign cultural content that the military newspaper has targeted recently. Another commentary, which was published late last month, suggested that China’s military content creators should learn from “Descendants of the Sun,” a popular South Korean military-themed TV drama. The commentary warned that the popularity of “Descendants” and other foreign shows “encircles” and poses a serious threat to China’s own military-themed films and TV dramas.
The 16-episode drama, which centers on a romantic relationship between a surgeon and a captain in South Korean’s special forces, has been a smash hit in China since it was released on iqiyi.com, a leading domestic video platform. It has been viewed more than 2.1 billion times by Chinese online viewers in less than two months.
The popularity of “Descendants of the Sun” has also drawn attention from China’s Defense Ministry. In a press briefing last week, Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun declined to comment on the show’s popularity when asked how can China learn from its neighbor to make military-themed TV series.
“If I praise this show here, I might be suspected of promoting it, but if I make some critical suggestions, I am concerned that the show’s distributor and web users who love it would give a negative comment towards our briefing,” he said.
–Lilian Lin. Follow her on Twitter @LilianLinYigu.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on April 9, 2016
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