Cultural Autonomy in Film

China, according to this report, is clearly acting wisely to keep its population from being exposed to constant lies and decadent Western cultural toxicity, the cultural diet consumed by Americans and much of the "West", with dreadful results. But this is the same reason China judiciously erected a censorship wall to keep US disinformation OUT of China. Thus, while the US-led establishment imposes ever stronger doses of conformity and censorship in all media, including the Internet, China seems to be doing the same, but there's a huge difference: In the US the censorship bans the truth for the sake of its puny but all powerful criminal capitalist oligarchy, it privileges lies to bolster a sick and criminal system. In China, they do the opposite: they keep the sickening LIES from circulating freely. As this report suggests, Russia —mainly for historico-cultural reasons —may be doing something similar to China, which is certainly good for Russia.  

ANATOLY KARLIN • JULY 24, 2021

Something like Leviathan (2014), a depressive/cynical-for-the-sake-of-it movie with Russophobic undertones, ⁽¹⁾wouldn’t have been made (or at least screened) in China and that’s probably a good thing for the Chinese.

That said, another curious finding from the author James McMahon, although it is not in the paper, is that Russia – along with India and China – has the least intersection with American cultural consumption. That is, they have the lowest correlations between films that do well in the US box office and in their own.

This seems to be largely a map of cultural closeness to the US:
Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and South Africa are all in the top 5 closest countries to the US. 

I suspect that the distance between the US and Russia might even start to further increase with the increasingly heavy-handed promotion of “Woke” themes in American cinema. [Not to mention constant and ever increasing russophobia].

Footnotes by the Editor
⁽¹⁾ Leviathan proved a hit in the West. It's possible, in fact quite likely, that this movie was made by members of that usual "alienated from Russia, enamored with the West" tier of Russian society, even, perhaps, quietly supported by some Western outfit.  As Karlin reminds us, 

As a movie that hit all the correct tropes about the “bleakness” and “misery” of life “outside Moscow” in “Putin’s Russia” it was not hard to see why it was such a hit with the Cannes crowd. <> Indeed the “professional” critics, if not quite as much with normies gave it high marks: (Metacritic: 92% vs. 73%; Rotten Tomatoes: 98% vs. 80%). 

So, yes, somewhat curiously, this is a movie made by Russians criticising Putin's Russia, which is fine and fair, except that it does so from a deeply nihilistic bourgeois decadent standpoint. Karlin adds: 

But it is also easy to understand why there was a mini-scandal about the fact that 35% of the movie was funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture. Pretty bizarre that Russian taxpayers were funding people who were portraying the great mass of them as stupid, impulsive alcoholics hoodwinked by priests serving mafia politicians for the snickering pleasure of the sort of people who delight in “arthouse” flicks. There is now happily much less Russian state support for “artists” who hate and despise their own people – and don’t have even the minimal talent to hide or disguise it.