<\/p>\n
A Hollywood producer who spent years courting China to support American film studios is now speaking out against Tinseltown\u2019s attempts to work with the communist nation.<\/p>\n
Christopher Fenton, producer of the new film, \u201cBad Counselors,\u201d told CBN News Hollywood is always trying to find new businesses and new sources of capital to help make expensive films and projects possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, on top of it, on the output side of things \u2026 once you actually get it into theaters, are there markets there that we haven\u2019t explored?\u201d he said, detailing the questions executives are often faced with. \u201cAre there potential ways to generate new revenue?\u201d<\/p>\n
Decades ago, he said the U.S. approach to China started to shift, with America opening up more relations with the nation. While America initially had a \u201cfrozen relationship\u201d with China, an idea took root: that the more products and services the U.S. could get into the nation, the \u201cmore we would spread the aspirational quality of democracy inside of a communist country.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to growing the economy in the U.S., Fenton said there was a higher mission and purpose in engaging China and opening up the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we found over time \u2026 is that aspirational quality of democracy inside a communist country plan hasn\u2019t really worked out all that well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Fenton said jobs were generated and GDP growth came, but that it was only a \u201csugar high\u201d that didn\u2019t last. Overall, he said Hollywood\u2019s market share in China has been lost. The initial plans simply didn\u2019t pan out the way he and others wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe initial thought was the more products and services we could get in that country, the better, no matter what it took to get them in,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it was like an ends-justify-the-means plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
While 99% of people seeking to engage China in this way were looking to help the U.S., he said the other \u201c1% was very willing to sell out the soul of America to make a buck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of the mission, there was an unintended consequence of the relationship between China and the U.S. \u2014 and it involved bias and a quest for the communist party to push its ideologies on the masses.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part, we were under this other higher mission,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd part of that for Beijing and the entertainment content space was to placate them and their directives in terms of messaging and narrative, the way they wanted their system of government presented to their own people to essentially make that 1.3 billion people just happy enough that they don\u2019t revolt and have another Tiananmen Square incident like June 4, 1989.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it didn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, they saw it as a propaganda engine in the West, this Hollywood content ecosystem,\u201d Fenton said. \u201cTo essentially take and trumpet their messaging and narratives around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cited the film \u201cLooper,\u201d which he produced, as an example. Fenton said the time-travel film initially depicted a future utopian society in France.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Beijing said, \u2018If you want access to our market, you need to change your time travel story to one where China is the utopian place to live, where the weight of the world is shifting, and if you change the plot to be where everybody wants to be someday is China, we\u2019ll let you have that movie in,’\u201d Fenton said. \u201cSo we actually completely changed the script, completely changed the narrative to be pro-Beijing, pro-China in order to get access to that market.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cIt gave us a top 10 movie that year in the market, and no one else in the world noticed the fact that they were digesting propaganda from what was a pretty good movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fenton said this sort of dynamic might not be as prevalent right now as \u201cthe golden goose of China is sort of cooked right now,\u201d with many people and businesses moving away from the communist country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of propaganda, this kind of messaging, this kind of control over narrative globally is across all industries,\u201d he said. \u201cSo yes, entertainment business is sort of the easiest one to see because we tell stories that prepare that narrative and messaging from Beijing, but it\u2019s happening in all industries in the way they\u2019re throttled on certain things they can say or the things that they really might not want to say or things that they need to trumpet are amplified and they\u2019re pushed to amplify.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n He said these portrayals affect how young Americans view China, with some believing there are incredible buildings, skyscrapers, and happy people everywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cThey see nothing bad about China,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s why we\u2019re starting to see Pew studies show that people actually think more favorably in terms of China than they do the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n This framing is one reason why Fenton is now pushing for films and projects to be made in America. His new film, \u201cBad Counselors,\u201d is an example of a movie that was fully created here in the US.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted all American backdrops,\u201d he said. \u201cWe shot in North Carolina. We did a little in Texas, a little in Tennessee. We used all vendors that were American and we fully employed Americans, your brethren, my brethren. We made sure that we took care of our citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n The premise of \u201cBad Counselors\u201d is comical \u2014 and very American.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo frat bros must become church bros, fast,\u201d the synopsis reads. \u201cAfter one wild night ends in handcuffs and a campus police escort, two best friends are slapped with 120 hours of community service due in two weeks, or they\u2019re expelled. Their genius plan? Pose as counselors at a local Christian youth camp, where every sing-along, campfire devotional, and trust fall counts toward the clock. Just one problem (okay, three): they don\u2019t like kids, they hate camping, and they have barely set foot in a church.\u201d<\/p>\n Find out more\u00a0here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Hollywood producer who spent years courting China to support American film studios is now speaking out against Tinseltown\u2019s attempts to work with the communist nation. Christopher Fenton, producer of the new film, \u201cBad Counselors,\u201d told CBN News Hollywood is always trying to find new businesses and new sources of capital to help make expensive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2814,633,1221,3325],"class_list":["post-31295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-china","tag-doesnt","tag-hollywood","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}