China’s State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has banned “time-travel” in television and movies, citing that notion involves distorting and disrespecting the country’s history.
The guidelines condemn story lines that involve "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking." With the absence of these elements, SARFT hopes to extract fantasy from reality and control how Chinese citizens view their country.
Though we are familiar with time-travel in a science-fiction sense through movies such as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Terminator, and Back to the Future, time-travel in Chinese film and television is more often used as a mechanism for fantastical nostalgia, a way of reimagining reality and current affairs. For example, Myth (Shen Hua) is a popular television drama based on time-travel that tells “the story of a modern man going back to ancient China where, after some adjustment, he finds love and happiness.”
The bottom line is that Chinese officials are not scared of the power of science-fiction; rather, they’re worried that the citizenry is unhappy with the status quo and time-travel in film and TV provides a false hope. Last time I checked, the purpose of fiction was to provide escape and enjoyment...
I am lucky that I am from Hong Kong, Which is not directly under China government's control. To be honest, it is ridiculous to block people from "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking" related movies, because half of the movies nowadays are related to these topics. That means people can't enjoy great movies like Avatar in China. I seriously think this is an exploitation of human right.
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