Lonesage, what is Chinaland TV like?
- Thread starter StevenK
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Do you guys get Nick At Night?
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The internets lied to me!
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If you thought the lowest common denominator stuff in your country was bad, you don't know how bad it gets here.
TV shows are a mix of:
-dramas where the main plot is getting married and having babies
-WWII pieces where Chinese gun down Japanese soldiers
-old dynasty dramas that are fucking gay about drama in the imperial palace
-talent shows that are mindnumblingly mild, inoffensive, and boring
And that's basically it. Documentaries largely focus on (as what most conversations here are focused on) food.
I had my sister-in-law (who is a fucking millionaire) ask me a few years ago while watching a dynasty drama, "America only has a few hundred years of history, so what shows can they have?"
On the plus side, it is extremely easy to stay out of the pop culture loop in China. That was actually a very big plus for me. So they have all these shows but no one really talks about them or cares about them.
One of the things missing from ten years ago are vendors selling pirated DVDs. Like 15-in-1 DVD movies. There are a few streaming web sites that operate with impunity. Try this link, see if it shows up: https://www.aimeiju5.com/
TV shows are a mix of:
-dramas where the main plot is getting married and having babies
-WWII pieces where Chinese gun down Japanese soldiers
-old dynasty dramas that are fucking gay about drama in the imperial palace
-talent shows that are mindnumblingly mild, inoffensive, and boring
And that's basically it. Documentaries largely focus on (as what most conversations here are focused on) food.
I had my sister-in-law (who is a fucking millionaire) ask me a few years ago while watching a dynasty drama, "America only has a few hundred years of history, so what shows can they have?"
On the plus side, it is extremely easy to stay out of the pop culture loop in China. That was actually a very big plus for me. So they have all these shows but no one really talks about them or cares about them.
One of the things missing from ten years ago are vendors selling pirated DVDs. Like 15-in-1 DVD movies. There are a few streaming web sites that operate with impunity. Try this link, see if it shows up: https://www.aimeiju5.com/
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Site doesn't load for me.
I am sad Chinese panda.
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What would happen if, because of this show, learned men work to pronounce it permissible to laugh at everything? Can we laugh at Mao? The world would relapse into chaos.
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SML nailed it. You have to think about the entire culture of comedy in a country where freedom of speech is limited. At the same time, I recognize because of Confucian values in Asian societies it's not uncommon that there's no equivalent to a George Carlin even in Japan.
As you can imagine comedy here is extremely bland and mostly about puns, because there are many homophones in the Chinese language.
Now that you mention it, last November there was a big comedy show, kind of like Last Comic Standing where people vote for the funniest person (not that I trust it wasn't rigged). It was so horrible. I don't understand how this shit is popular. I'll look around the room and see if Chinese people are truly entertained and it's mindboggling.
NBA is big here.
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i'm assuming china at least has, like korea and japan, some form of variety show with a heavy emphasis on corny, slapstick humor
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Yeah they have those too. Horrible stuff.
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It's always shocking to see LGBT rights in other countries lag behind the Western world.
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Hey, can you tell her I said, "hi"?
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You guys could end up as actual brothers
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Sigh, I knew it. So cheap to produce.
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The Japanese stand up comedy scene is bizarre by US standards. It's like 1930s vaudville-style 2 man comedy teams like Abbott & Costello or whatever, doing word play and sketch type scenarios sometimes absurd or even surreal like Monty Python or whatever. But with zero social commentary, zero reference to current culture or events, zero taking a swing at politicians or other public figures, nothing. Sometimes funny anyway, but safe, inoffensive. I do often wonder that if they're doing Abbott & Costello now, might they have a Richard Pryor 50 years from now. I wonder if they're just running behind but will eventually get there, or whether the culture prevents it from ever happening.