Absurdity, Allegory and China

Though details are still emerging, it seems that Sweden’s TV4 has lost the contract as sole broadcaster of the Nobel Prize ceremony after it was learned that CCTV (China Central Television) and Shanghai Media Group violated the ‘no censorship’ clause by cutting a speech by the Nobel Foundation chairman, Marcus Storch . Michael Sohlman, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation, said,

“Censorship contradicts our fundamental values. This we cannot accept.”

Sohlman also said the incident was “very, very serious. Especially if you take the contents of the censored speech into account.”

So, it seems that CCTV (you know, the state center of television culture that’s constructing the overgrown complex on the East Third Ring Road, with the headquarters structure that looks like the abstract head of an ancient bronze weapon – the void, running skyward and aslant, as the shaft hole) is doing its best to make more friends by violating contractual agreements. This one should be interesting to watch from a legal standpoint, if, in fact, it gets played out in the press and is not somehow settled in the backrooms. Did CCTV actually sign a contract that they then broke? I would think that TV4 would have grounds to take CCTV to court if that were, in fact, the case. Would that be a Chinese court, a Swedish court, some neutral international corner? I don’t know anything about the law, but this could be downright instructive.

And this on the threshold of CCTV’s exclusive control of the upcoming Olympic broadcasts and the unease by NBC and other international broadcasting companies concerning CCTV’s practice of delaying live broadcasts, which they used when the Olympic torch arrived on Tian’anmen Square last month under fear of disruption.

One of the concerns by both China and the IOC is that the Olympic medal podiums may be used by individual athletes to express their heart-felt feelings on locally unpopular issues, a la Tommy Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City, 1968, despite the IOC’s threat that such displays will result in forfeiture of any medals as well as expulsion from the Games. How this might play out when CCTV is controlling the broadcast is ripe (and, I would imagine, legally anticipated) grounds for post-Olympic judicial wranglings. It will be also interesting to see if the major international broadcasters ‘cave’ to Chinese (and IOC?) pressure for a one-minute delay.

There is dramatic theater on the horizon, and one question is, will it be live on CCTV or blocked on YouTube?

Other questions I can’t help but ask are 1) is there a Beijing Olympic Committee Sacred Podium Protection Unit in training as I write, and 2)what color suits will they wear?

This is where it gets interesting. Stay tuned … if you can.

Above it all!