介绍:
Xiaohua: The TV drama Saga of Wu Zetian was previously pulled off air after female characters appeared on screen showing cleavage. Now it returns to the screen, though this time all the scenes with obvious cleavage were reedited, leaving only the actresses’ heads. 近日，由范冰冰主演的热播电视剧《武媚娘传奇》在被叫停4天之后复播，剧中的“武媚娘”等女性的胸部镜头全部被剪，网友戏称电视剧变成了《武大头传奇》。First of all, do you think is this the reason that the show got pulled off and then got on? Is it because of the cleavage thing?
Zhou Heyang: Well, I can only speculate here, but I would come to the conclusion that this is probably at least a partial reason if not the main reason why this show disappeared on screen for only four days rather abruptly. And I think it’s, well when you look at the new version, the only real change is that there are major close-ups in like every scene and you don’t see the actors…
John: Below the chin.
Zhou Heyang: Below the neck and above the eyebrows. It’s very difficult to see the beautiful hair ornaments and anything above that, so it just focuses on the face and nothing else.
John: Well, I think for me it’s interesting, because I never heard this story. Obviously, I don’t really pay attention to TV and movies, Chinese or otherwise. So for me it’s interesting, because I got the chance actually to watch the first episode last night. And first of all, my initial impression was it was a horrible TV show and I would not recommend it to anyone. It just seems like yetanother silly soap opera, melodramatic piece of tripe. So I think that you know, first of all, there is that, but at the same time, you know, we should necessarily expect anything more at this point. But for someone who had no experience of the TV show before it was pulled and reedited, I couldn’t really tell that much of a difference. It just seems like some of the shots yes they were a little odd, there were some like cuts where there might have been panning shots things like that. The framing was off sometimes, but in general I didn’t feel like there were much taken away, but that could be partly because it was just bad to begin with.
Zhou Heyang: But I don’t think it’s that bad to begin with. Maybe there is a debate whether the story is told in a favorable way or not or whether it’s interesting or not. But when you look at the production, they invested a lot of money.
John: Yeah, a lot of money.
Zhou Heyang: And you’ve got major stars, such as Fan Bingbing.
John: I know. I do want to say that I think in general the production value is much higher. They obviously invested a lot more money into the technology, so in terms of the recording itself but also the post production. There has been a lot of working on post-production outside the whole cleavage issue I think. I was disappointed, however, to see the voices were still dubbed. With that high production value they shouldn’t be all that dubbed, but in general the acting was OK, but the story doesn’t make any sense.
Zhou Heyang: Well, there are a lot of reasons why…Well, there are some official reasons given out whether this is the reason why this reediting happened, so there was the, you know, technical reasons and also there was the quota argument that because the TV station was already airing too many period pieces. But I think those reasons when you weigh that against, you know, all those cleavage scenes which might seem a little bit strange to Chinese people, because I think in our culture, even today for female to show cleavage in public, it’s still considered a bit uncouth or maybe just going too far, whereas in like western cultures, I think showing cleavage isn’t really that a big deal. You see that in office environment, so people wearing suits, you know very official office wear, and it’s not really that a big of a deal. I think there is a quite difference there.
John: Yeah, cleavage is a bit more normal. I will give you that, but it is strange. I mean, you know, whether or not it’s about cleavage all. Yes, I mean it seems pretty obvious after the edits, but at the same time, you know, this type of cleavage has been on TV shows on Chinese television before, it’s been in famous movies and it hasn’t been that much of issue. I think the fact was on Hunan Satellite Television was telling. They were always the ones that pushing the limits a little bit and pushing the envelope in terms of what is allowed in a sense. So you know I’m not surprised to see this is them getting in trouble in a sense for whatever it might has been.
Xiaohua: Yeah, maybe purely because there are too many episodes with it, and somebody couldn’t stand too many episodes of cleavage on TV.
Zhou Heyang: And also it’s like the really popular show right now and with Fan Bingbing’s star power, I think it has drawn actually more people to watch it now, because all of the fuss about the reediting.
John: Yeah, that’s actually a very good point. I don’t’ think I have heard it, had it not been cut and then re-aired.
Xiaohua: Also do you think there is automatically a way to solve this problem which seems to always bother authorities, that is appropriateness?
Zhou Heyang: Well, there is always the argument that we should protect the minors, but if we have a rating system in movies and TV series, I think it would solve the problem.
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