September 1, 2021
As the United States and China duke it out for dominance in multiple domains, one interesting area has emerged as a source of real contention: the movies. With China now a key source of revenue for the U.S. film industry, Hollywood studios are scrambling to make movies that will draw in Chinese citizens while satisfying the strict Chinese Communist Party censors. Meanwhile, China has built its own formidable film industry. Get your tickets for this important story; Schwartzel has reported on the film industry for the Wall Street Journal since 2013.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 15, 2021
The history of China's relationship with Hollywood is a drama in acts, suggests Wall Street Journal reporter Schwartzel. It began when China opened theaters to U.S. films in the 1990s, and Hollywood studios began to realize the money-making possibilities of the massive Chinese marketplace. In the decades that followed, the studios increased their engagement with China, financing theater construction and becoming increasingly reliant on Chinese investment for big-budget films. But filmmakers clashed with government censors on sensitive issues, including Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square, and even on thematic concerns, such as stories in which an underdog challenges authority. Eventually, studios learned to avoid such collisions by self-censoring and incorporating overtly Chinese elements in their scripts. The poignant third act, playing out today, is a robust Chinese film industry that is no longer dependent on Hollywood and is more effective than ever before in projecting Chinese soft power around the world. Schwartzel's narrative emphasizes the trajectories of specific films and is leavened by interviews with directors and studio executives as well as a sophisticated understanding of internal Chinese political dynamics.
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November 8, 2021
Wall Street Journal reporter Schwartzel makes an eye-opening debut with this accomplished account of how soft power—namely, entertainment—helped China become one of the most influential players on the global stage. In 1994, the country started allowing Hollywood movies in theaters, and soon after imported films began screening there, Schwartzel writes, the country rapidly became “a market too big to ignore and too lucrative to anger.” But the country’s government disapproved of politically inclined films such as Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun. Studios that ran afoul of the regime (including Disney) were denied access to the Chinese market, and the government engaged in box office “blackmail” in order to make North Korea the villain (instead of China) in MGM’s update of Red Dawn and to incorporate Chinese actors in Transformers. Schwartzel covers a lot of ground, explaining how, for instance, China’s tactics for “using... movies to change minds” were learned from old Hollywood. While later chapters on China’s influence on African infrastructure projects feel like filler, it’s overall nonetheless an illuminating look at what China learned from Hollywood, and why Hollywood needs China to survive. It’s a fascinating take on the crossroads of film and global politics.
Starred review from March 11, 2022
With this riveting study of the relationship between U.S. and Chinese movie studios, author and Wall Street Journal film industry reporter Schwartzel has produced a blockbuster of his own. Schwartzel parses the complex ways in which movies have often defined accepted cultural values and how that effort has been subsumed in the attempt to boost international sales. This process was all too common in the 1930s as Germany prepared for war (for instance, All Quiet on the Western Front was censored because of its unflattering portrayal of Germany) but has never been more prevalent (and egregious) than in the self-censorship of American films today as U.S. firms seek to insinuate themselves in the lucrative Chinese market. Schwartzel skillfully addresses the issues of "one country censoring another country's art" and his work should be required reading--before we find ourselves popcorn-deep in frightening sequels. VERDICT In an industry famous for self-congratulation Schwartzel takes viewers behind the silver screen to reveal a reality where revenues trump values and artistic choices take a back seat to political pressures. A must-read for anyone influenced by media in general and film in particular. And that means all of us.--Bill Baars
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from December 1, 2021
How China muscled its way into Hollywood moviemaking from the mid-1990s on to begin directing what America watches. "By 2020, China would be the number one box-office market world, home to grosses that routinely neared $1 billion--a market that became too big to ignore and too lucrative to anger," writes Wall Street Journal film reporter Schwartzel. While largely closed to American moviemaking before 1994, China recognized, as indeed Hollywood had learned after World War II, that making movies not only could be America's No. 1 export, but could also influence the public--and exercise political sway. The growth was slow but incremental, as the author demonstrates, from the creaky opening up to American culture after the death of Mao Zedong and China's embrace of capitalism in the 1990s to its full-blown censorship efforts under President Xi Jinping "as an essential arm to a recast Middle Kingdom." Schwartzel's examples are both fascinating and disturbing--e.g., the ability of China's behind-the-scenes influence to remove the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise's iconic bomber jacket in the remake of Top Gun: Maverick in 2019; squelch the marketing of movies about the Dalai Lama and Buddhism, such as Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun; and vilify and ban publicly pro-Tibetan actor advocates like Richard Gere and China critics like Brad Pitt, as well as Nomadland director Chlo� Zhao. The author adds that China finagled a deal at the time of the Beijing Olympics to build a Disney theme park in China, while Hollywood, eager to please, filmed an appalling remake of Red Dawn to please China ("anticipatory censorship"), with North Korea as the villains. As Schwartzel demonstrates, China has the money to demand an entertainment business that will support its new political rise, and Hollywood, aware of the vast Chinese market, is not saying no. Avid viewers will be surprised by this expos� of the seedy partnership between Hollywood and the Chinese government.
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