How to make a documentary about China: 10 steps
1. Reject all semblance of nuance.
2. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population.
3. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population control.
4. Find someone young, an only child, perhaps, who is training for the Olympics. Profile them as personified national ambition. Film the parents loving their child.
5. Find someone old, preferably an artisan, and talk about how terrible the cultural revolution was for them.
6. Film in a location in the middle of the mountains, and then film Shanghai, and use a voice-over going "...but not on this side of the country..."
7. Film affluent people, and then pan to another section of the city, "...where Xiao Wang is not as fortunate. He eats vegetables and rice, unable to afford the al fresco dining of his co-citizens..."
8. Film a monk for a bit, and talk about martial arts and tradition. And how he's worried that the next generation doesn't care.
9. Take all this, slather on generous helpings of "lack of context," and serve with the last item on this list:
10. The ridiculous and widely held assumption that people in China and China itself have nothing in common with the rest of the world.
2. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population.
3. Have ominous drum music rumbling in the background when talking about population control.
4. Find someone young, an only child, perhaps, who is training for the Olympics. Profile them as personified national ambition. Film the parents loving their child.
5. Find someone old, preferably an artisan, and talk about how terrible the cultural revolution was for them.
6. Film in a location in the middle of the mountains, and then film Shanghai, and use a voice-over going "...but not on this side of the country..."
7. Film affluent people, and then pan to another section of the city, "...where Xiao Wang is not as fortunate. He eats vegetables and rice, unable to afford the al fresco dining of his co-citizens..."
8. Film a monk for a bit, and talk about martial arts and tradition. And how he's worried that the next generation doesn't care.
9. Take all this, slather on generous helpings of "lack of context," and serve with the last item on this list:
10. The ridiculous and widely held assumption that people in China and China itself have nothing in common with the rest of the world.
posted by iain.e.marlow at 10:45 AM
2 Comments:
April, agree. I turned it off not too far into it.
I did forget to mention both James Spader, and the sections, inevitably, about food: (Picture Spader talking) "They eat things that would...HORRIFY...the average westerner."
James.
8.6: Show enthusiastic pandas eating westerners.
i liked this one.
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