[alienbeast]

Here's another perspective:

My wife is Chinese, and my son is half-Chinese, born in the USA. I want my son to grow up feeling American, not like an outsider. I don't want movies depicting China invading the USA, teaching his young and impressionable classmates that "Asian = evil invader". I don't want guys that look like him getting gunned down on TV by guys that look like Chris Hemsworth. As you said, the stories we tell shape our national psyche.

I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.

[pddpro]

At the very end of this sentiment is the fact that all movies depicting invasion should only be made if it's Alien invasion. In that way, no one's sentiment would be hurt and no one would be portrayed evil. At some point you have to ask yourself, do you want to remember history, it's atrocities, invasions, war-crimes etc and learn from it or do you want to forget all of that and be happy always?

[SavantIdiot]

There's huge a difference between a WW2 documentary accurately depicting the axis and allies, and the US films of the 1980's that were all anti middle-eastern / north african propaganda of wars that never happened.

I believe the comment you are replying to is addressing the latter.

"Any kid can conquer Libya just give him a fighter plane." - Dead Kennedys, "Rambozo the Clown"

[godelski]

Fwiw The Battle at Lake Changjin is historical. Red Dawn isn't. Despite that I think both points do stand and there is some balance needed.

[asfarley]

I have a feeling that the Dead Kennedys would not be in favor of editing artwork to avoid offending anyone.

[SavantIdiot]

There's a difference between being racist and speaking truth to power.

Jello Biafra was powerfully anti-racism, which is what this thread is about. He punched up.

[pddpro]

I think that the point I'm trying to make is a bit different. If you do make a movie that's not a documentary and follows the traditional recipe of good vs evil, then there must be some evil that has to be portrayed. You make movies about "Mafia", then it might be the Italians, you make movies about "Cartels", might be Mexicans, make movies about "Jihadists", Afghans and so on.

At some point, a realization and acceptance that yeah, something along the lines of what's being shown happened but it's probably a bit spiced up cause it's a movie is needed. Either that or my original point i.e. make movies about Aliens exclusively. (Until their existence is proven anyways).

[alienbeast]

I agree many movies are offensive to one group or another, but maybe that means we should be more careful of offending people instead of less. Other common bad-guy groups like Muslims and Russians probably don't like being used as villains in movies; their voices just go unheard because they don't have the economic clout that the Chinese do.

And every group of "bad guys" is a little different. The enemy governments of Nazis, Japanese, Soviets, and British Imperialists are gone, those conflicts are over, and those countries are now American allies; the mafia and cartel movies tend to glorify those lifestyles; the European bad guys never faced as much racism in the USA as the Asian ones; etc.

I don't want to be the fun police... But the USA (unlike most countries) advertised itself as a multiracial immigrant country in the past 50 years, and a lot of multiracial immigrants signed on, so I guess we should be tasteful when making movies about shooting their relatives.

[godelski]

In that case I would argue that one shouldn't use North Koreans either. Though I honestly do feel this way. Sci-fi and fantasy give you this escape mechanism where you can talk about these issues without making it about race (well at least race in humans). We know Ender's Game and Starship Troopers are Cold War era books about Russians without them saying Russians or depicting them. There's a requisite maturity needed to read between the lines that hopefully one is able to distinguish between countries and races, despite correlations, by that point.

[edm0nd]

Your son or his children might actually have to decide what side to be on eventually. IMO the US will go to war with China outside of economic and cyber warfare we have going on already.

[nonethewiser]

He already picked a side. He very specifically said he wants his son to feel like an American. Not blaming him, just clarifying.

[joemazerino]

American action heroes are as American as apple pie. Why shelter your son when he can embrace it and become stronger?

[jorblumesea]

> I agree the jingoistic CCP-controlled Chinese media does not depict Americans or whites with respect and tact. That's a problem. But it doesn't make it OK for the American media to do the same.

The problem is that it's a zero sum game and who wins is just as important as moral correctness. If China is able to turn the narrative against the US and enable authoritarian regimes and censor US companies and tech, what does it matter if we're the "good guys"? If we lose a war of culture, will our children see ourselves as doing the "right thing"? History books are are written by the winners, after all.

Contemporary Chinese ideas would see your point of view as weak, just to put that in perspective.

International relations is a dirty world and the power struggle is real.

[solarhoma]

Agreed. You cannot win a war by never offending anyone. At some point you have to pick a side and fight for victory.

[helloworld11]

What you say is understandable, for your son and family, but under no circumstances should it be used as a justification of or argument in favor of self-censorship of free expression against an honestly repulsive state power in media and elsewhere. Movies have been made for decades with all kinds of nations and their agents being portrayed as the "bad guys", and without hysterias about violent demonization of regular people in real life from these countries coming true. Why should China be an exception?

[__blockcipher__]

(1) Hopefully part of raising your son to feel American involves instilling a sense of "Americanness" that is orthogonal to one's racial identity. And conversely, hopefully he could distinguish between "Chinese people in general" and "soldiers of the chinese communist party". Not that I'm defending cheesy, overly simplistic good-guys-vs-bad-guys type media, but I hope the objection is about something more than just skin deep for you.

(2) There is certainly a middle ground between avoiding cliche bad-guy-china-vs-good-guy-america and, say, Intel removing any references to Xinjiang from its shareholder report. Or all of Hollywood carrying water for the CCP, perhaps most humorously (in a depressing way) illustrated in how they will edit movies to display the south china sea / other disputed territories in precisely the way China wants

[ChemSpider]

The same companies have no problem making 100s of Nazi movies or Japan Pearl Harbor movies. Yet they are afraid to touch any Chinese topic. That is the problem.