You simply have to see this video. As Jeremiah says:
Another classic attempt to “explain and understand” China from the CIA/NSC archives, this one is like some sort of unholy mash-up of John King Fairbank, Max Weber, Henry Luce, Edward Said, and the KMT propaganda department…but there is some useful archival footage as well as interviews with seminal American “China watchers” such as Theodore White and Pearl Buck.
Watch it for the archival footage, laugh at it for the absurd stereotyping.
1
By Chine
I wouldn’t dismiss this too quickly. What about the propaganda from CCTV that twists the West? Stupid.
June 29, 2010 @ 8:40 am | Comment
2
By Richard
To say that our asinine propaganda is okay because theirs is more assinine seems to me to constitute a very poor argument. It’s the equivalent of the moronic argument that the TSM was okay because once there was a big massacre in America. Two wrongs make a right – that is the fenqing mantra.
June 29, 2010 @ 9:11 am | Comment
3
By Jeremiah
I’m not sure it’s bad because it’s propaganda, it’s bad because the assumptions/paradigms used to explain Chinese history are themselves relics of the past, we’ve moved way beyond “impact of dynamic west on static unchanging China” and a Eurocentric view of history that assumes a single path of development. I could go on, but I’ll save it for class…
June 29, 2010 @ 9:43 am | Comment
4
By Resident Poet
It’s not bad for 1967. Back then, the US still had legal segregation, didn’t it? Wikipedia says the Fair Housing Act was only passed in 1968…
Actually it’s a production of great quality, seeing how it comes from an apartheid country and all that. Much better than I’d expect anyways.
June 29, 2010 @ 11:36 am | Comment
5
By Richard
It is really fun to watch, very well made, and what a cast of characters! It is, however, tres cold war.
June 29, 2010 @ 1:19 pm | Comment
6
By pfelelep
impressive indeed.
and yet, the last minute shows a nuclear explosion.
So far, in 2010, so good… ^^
June 29, 2010 @ 4:45 pm | Comment
7
By CCT
Perhaps I’m alone on this point, but I actually give it a B for overall effect. I’m not exactly a big fan of the cold war rhetoric, or the suggestion that we have to explore why the Chinese people are hate-filled maniacs…
But I thought the narrative of 19th/20th Chinese history, while not completely neutral on academic terms, was not bad. It hit what I’d consider the key points.
June 30, 2010 @ 12:51 am | Comment