Posted on 02/14/2010 12:11:12 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Chinese Video Takes Aim at Online Censorship
By LORETTA CHAO , JULIET YE And AARON BACK
BEIJING—The latest battle over Internet freedom in China is playing out in an online movie that pits an armored blue beast and his band of antiauthoritarian rogues against a sinister force called Harmony that seeks to clean up the Web.
The video, called "War of Internet Addiction," is a send-up of government censorship starring videogame characters that has become one of the hottest things on the Chinese Internet, epitomizing the unruly spirit that thrives on the Web despite an intensifying crackdown on free expression in China.
The 64-minute video consists entirely of footage shot in the virtual universe of "World of Warcraft," a wildly popular online game from Activision Blizzard Inc. in which millions of players around the world do battle via magical avatars.
The movie's plot centers on gamers' frustration with an actual bureaucratic battle over regulation of the Chinese edition of the game, but its subtext is a broad, biting allegory of the fight against government Internet controls, peppered with allusions to a list of real-world conflicts in China over the past year. The Chinese version of World of Warcraft is licensed by Netease.com Inc. and is operated independently from overseas versions of the game.
In the video's climactic scene, Kan Ni Mei, the blue, armored, ox-like hero, faces off with a villain sent by Harmony who threatens to destroy the gamers with the "power of Green Dam"—a reference to the Web-filtering software that the government last year tried to compel personal-computer makers to install on all PCs sold in China. Kan Ni Mei addresses his cohorts: "Please raise your hands up. I need your strength," he says. "When they blocked YouTube, you didn't act. When they blocked Twitter, you didn't act."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
P!
I wonder if popular Chinese anti-pornography and anti-western-romantic sentiments might be part of the public discussion in China. If the culture there has not changed during the past twenty years, then one must not refer to a Chinese woman as being “sexy.” If so, then we’re missing some information about the issue.
Some of you might remember the warning issued by the PLA before the Beijing Women’s Conference of the 1990s (included Hillary Clinton and her friends). The PLA warned Chinese people that the western feminists would be running naked through the streets.
What do you think, TLR? ...all about the politics of government or maybe somewhat also about family values?
Ping!
Thank you very much for the update, TLR. My little bit of knowledge was old, from living with students in dormitories for international students and older students in an American university during the late 1980s.
What seems to be the problem here?
Just a related story about the Green Dam software we were discussing yesterday.
yeah, i mean it damn.
or i should say dam or damn, not know yet.
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