Have we met China? As far as pop culture and media are concerned, yes and no. The Olympics offers the perfect venue to change that.What are the things that come to your mind when you think of China? Over 1.3 billion people? The world’s oldest civilization? The world’s tireless factory? Although all these things are true, China is so much more.
Media and pop culture have done a poor job of introducing us to China. Yes, news outlets and tv channels have made a noble effort to introduce us to China. But for most people (Those who don’t watch news, which composes most of us), their latest exposure to Chinese culture was this summer’s box-office hit Kung Fu Panda. Kung Fu Panda is a story about a chubby bear (Voiced by Jack Black) who becomes a great warrior. The movie grossed over $200 million in the US alone.
Yet, like most American movies this summer, Kung Fu Panda does a poor job of introducing us to modern China. Think about it. Most American movies in the past few years have been set in pre-industrial China (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Mulan, etc.) Even the latest movie, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, is set in the 1940’s where an undead 2000-year-old emperor unleashes chaos with his terra-cotta soldiers. For the most part, pop-culture’s knowledge about China is outdated.
Contemporary China is a trickier topic. It’s vibrant and fascinating. For America, it’s a legit economic rival with a range of issues, including human rights and environmental concerns. For corporations, it’s a cheap place to make products. For capitalists, it’s a huge market that has a budding middle-class.
People haven’t quite figured out what China is; an authoritarian state? A panda who loves dumplings? A rival or a friend to America? What we do know is: China matters in a global scale and in the future China will matter more. For the meantime, what floats in our minds is fascination and fear. While young children all over the world collect Master Shifu Happy Meals from McDonald’s, parents worry about their employment opportunities getting stolen by much cheaper, yet equal in quality, Chinese labor.
With full coverage of the Olympics being handled by NBC, our perception of China will, hopefully, be updated. The Chinese government has promised freedom to broadcast the games, yet with certain limitations. For instance, Tiananmen Square, the site of 1989’s student democracy protests, is off limits to live tv – broadcasters can only show this site for 6 hours a day.
NBC promises to show full coverage of the Olympics, along with breaking news from China, whether good or bad. Rightfully so, since NBC has invested over $1 billion dollars for the rights to broadcast the China Olympics. But it’s not just a show.
The Olympics gives journalists a chance to update and correct an otherwise Hollywood-poisoned perception of China. This means that journalists should not only cover the games, but also China’s vitality, repression, economic growth and political stagnation. This will test Western broadcasters; whether they will be promoting openness or accepting censorship.
The bottom line: the global audience wants and needs to know more about this country. This can better their lives in ways that are bad, good and ambiguous. So hopefully, the broadcasters will not tell us to forget about China and look at the cute panda.
Sources: Time
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