Thirty-one years ago, I smuggled cash and computers behind the Iron Curtain in a clandestine effort to assist democratic activists fighting the Soviet Empire from the inside. I was in Moscow on the day the Berlin Wall fell. It was the job of a lifetime.
One of the lessons I learned from that experience is on my mind today as I watch U.S. policymakers deal with the threats posed by China. I fear that one recent proposal by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, his so-called SCRIPT Act, could set us back significantly.
Cruz’s bill (the “Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, and Protecting Talkies Act”) seeks to address the fact that some American movie-makers have been altering their films to address the concerns of Chinese government censors, in order to get their films shown in China.
Cruz’s chosen method of preventing that is to deny the use of U.S. government assets or assistance to any film studio that allows its films to be altered by Chinese censors, or that preemptively alters its movies “in anticipation of” a request by a Chinese censor.
The U.S. government has been helping Hollywood for a long time. Between 1911 and 2017, the Department of Defense assisted in making more than 800 feature films. So Cruz’s threat to block such assistance is not to be taken lightly.
Cruz’s indignation derives from a handful of anecdotes about suspected Chinese influence on American films. For example, as Paramount Pictures last summer released the first trailer for its long-anticipated sequel to its 1986 classic, Top Gun, an eagle-eyed viewer noted that the patches on the back of the lead character’s flight jacket were not the same as the patches on the flight jacket from the original movie. Gone were the flags of Taiwan and Japan, two nations disfavored by China. These were replaced by other symbols.
If Cruz’s proposed legislation had been in effect last year, the U.S. government, in this case, the Department of Defense, presumably would not have been allowed to participate in the film production. That means no fighter jets, no aircraft carriers, no Top Gun movie in China or in the United States.
Surely, this is not Cruz’s goal. He would prefer for the patches simply not to have been changed. But his bill is aimed at the wrong target. If he wants to prevent Chinese censorship, he ought to be focused on Chinese censors, not American filmmakers. His bill aims at American companies and their ability to make creative and business decisions on their own.
For example, who is to say whether the patches on the back of Maverick’s jacket were altered to accommodate Chinese censors? Maybe they were changed because the original patches were meant as a tribute to the character’s father’s own history in the Vietnam War, and the now-34-years-older character simply changed the patches to reflect his own combat experiences. Who gets to make that determination?
Is the Department of Commerce now supposed to create a new office full of bureaucrats whose job it is to interrogate Hollywood filmmakers to ascertain the thinking behind their creative decisions? This sounds remarkably like the government censorship Cruz aimed to prevent.
Moreover, Cruz’s bill would deny all U.S. government cooperation to any studio that allows anything to be altered for Chinese censors. This is overkill. Paramount is releasing 13 movies in 2020. Should the other 12 be denied U.S. government assistance on the hunch that Top Gun was altered for improper reasons?
To the extent that it is effective, Cruz’s bill would result in reducing the number of American movies shown in the Chinese market. That’s bad for two reasons. First, China imposes a 34-film annual quota on imported revenue-share movies. That means that at best, only about 5% of American films stand a chance at Chinese distribution each year. If you want to boost U.S. exports to China, it makes little sense to hinder a valued American product with such a bill.
But second, and far more importantly, reducing the number of American movies shown in China reduces America’s ability to show Chinese audiences what life is actually like in America. The background scenes we take for granted in movies, of characters driving their own late-model automobiles, shopping for groceries in produce-laden stores, eating out at a restaurant with family or friends, can be enormously effective at transmitting information about life in the U.S. These leave a deep, subconscious impression on foreign audiences of American values. Such scenes can do much more to undermine communist propaganda about life in the U.S. than any official cultural exchange program ever could.
“The Soviet Union lost the Cold War to the United States of America,” noted a retired KGB officer in 1991, “because our Soviet ideologists failed a competition with the Western and, especially, American popular culture, and especially, with the movies, television, and music from the capitalist West.”
I can personally vouch for that. I remember how, in 1987, in the wilds of southeastern Angola, a young soldier of the UNITA resistance forces beamed as he proudly showed off his prized possession — a New York Yankees baseball cap he had won in a bet with a visiting American journalist. And on my November 1989 visit to Moscow, I witnessed first-hand the demand for icons of Western culture. I successfully traded a pair of Brooks Brothers khakis for a Red Army overcoat and fur hat. My Russian counterparts recognized the value of the Brooks Brothers label and paid a premium for it.
The exposure of Chinese audiences to American movies can help us win our competition with the Chinese communists. We should not begin the contest by tying our hands and eliminating one of our most effective tools for changing minds.
Bill Pascoe, a political consultant, has been working to defend and extend individual liberty for 40 years.
