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China’s petty film authorities have done it again. Timesonline today reports that Lust, Caution star Tang Wei has been blacklisted (unofficially, of course) because Ang Lee’s film is considered to “glorify unpatriotic behaviour.”

This action has been taken despite – or possibly because of - the films popularity in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Ang Lee is widely celebrated in China for the many international honours bestowed on his films and their actors: ‘This is our boy’, they cry, ’And we Chinese can show you western types a thing or two about film-making.’

Beijing clearly don’t mind Ang Lee collecting a few gongs and statues on their behalf, but have no inclination to allow the Chinese public to judge his award-winning films on their artistic merit. Instead, they censor, ban, and blacklist their home-grown talent in the great tradition of petulant state interference. 

Thanks to the internet and widespread piracy, banning a film has little or no effect on who gets to see it in China these days. They’ve tried many times before, as in the recent cases of Lost in Beijing  and Brokeback Mountain. Keep up the good work, boys.

The targeting of actors strikes me as being especially nonsensical and childish. I confidently predict more success for Tang Wei, at which point I hope she gives a defiant finger to the clowns who are compromising artistic expression by telling people what they should be watching.  

I’ve come across the name Lei Feng before. Was it a name uttered in admiration by past students? Or is he a famous character recalled from one of many dips into the enthralling, and often calamitous, cyber-pool of modern Chinese history?  Either way, the lamented and celebrated Lei Feng has re-entered my conscious thought following today’s post by Jeremiah at the Granite Studio :

On this date in 1963, Mao Zedong launched the ”Learn from Lei Feng” campaign. The most important thing I’ve learned from Lei Feng is to look out for falling telephone poles, but maybe I’m not the target audience. Anyway, in case you missed it, Lei Feng was a young soldier in the PLA whose selfless devotion to his brother troops, to the people, and especially to Mao Zedong and his country made him a role model for young Chinese.

I thoroughly recommend the rest of this article and a visit to Jeremiah’s site, which is testament to the fact that you don’t have to be Chinese to be an authority on Chinese history. In addition, I suspect that readers will get a more balanced view of events and personalities than those presented in the Chinese classroom.

It’s a sobering thought to realise that the propaganda posters (like the one above) are as old as I am. You can see more by following the link to the original article, or by going here.

Frankly, I think I’ve stood the test of time better than the posters, although I have to accept that they’ll still be around long after I’ve shuffled off my mortal coil. Unless, that is, Hu Jintao decides to launch a “Learn from Stu” campaign. Suggested poster designs welcome.

I’m going to ask some students this afternoon for their thoughts on this important anniversary. Will they remember?   

I’ve just been reading the musings of imminent fatherhood over at imagethief. The blog’s owner, Will, is an exceptionally gifted and humourous writer. In his post he reflects on the issue of how our perception of time changes with age, arguing that 40 weeks of gestation is insufficient for a decent preparation:

The funny thing is that thirty-nine weeks ago it seemed like plenty. Nine months of pregnancy felt like a school-year did back when I was in second grade: about ten minutes longer than eternity. But one of the curious but well-known side effects of getting older is that time compresses. When I was ten the idea of deferring anything for a year was essentially like postponing it forever, or longer. A year hence was simply too remote and exotic a concept to contemplate…

When you’re forty, and you’re planning investments with a twenty year time horizon and buying insurance products calibrated in decades, a year is a rounding error…

Great stuff. Read the rest here.

It’s very true. New Year seems like yesterday to me, and the beginning of the first semester the week before that. But here we are about to enter the third month of 2008. If it wasn’t a leap year we’d already be there. Frightening!

Even more alarming is the prospect of this perception accelerating with each passing year. I’m reminded of the character Roy Batty’s words to his creator in Blade Runner:

I want more life, fucker.

It’s possible that half of my lifespan is still ahead of me, which seems like a fair deal. That the second half of our lives is perceived as a temporal fraction of the first half is just a cruel joke. And what happens when we try to fill those days with productive output? You’ve got it – they go even faster!  I’m definitely with Roy Batty on this one.