Viagens no tempo e a censura

Antes de a H.G. Wells — que em conjunto com Julio Verne é considerado um dos pais da ficção cientifica — e da sua obra “The Time Machine, Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau, em 1887, escreveu “El anacronópete” e foi ele o primeiro a escrever sobre viagens no tempo, como escreve Jerónimo Andreu no El País.

Mais de um século depois, o governo chinês decidiu proibir as viagens no tempo, um género cada vez mais apreciado na televisão chinesa:

Now there’s an interesting trend in China’s film and television industry: more and more time-travel themed dramas are made and aired. In these time-travel based TV plays, usually the protagonist is from the modern time and for some reasons and via some means, travels through time and all the way back to the ancient China where he/she will constantly experience the “culture shock” but gradually get used to it and eventually develop a romance in that era. […]

[…] Nothing is off limits in this television genre. While some find it hilarious, others think the exaggeration and even ridiculous elements added into the story is a real source of annoyance and is a disrespectful for history.

The authority’s decision was made on the Television Director Committee Meeting on April 1st. – but obviously it’s not a prank to fans of the drama genre. The authority has a good reason to go against the genre. “The time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.” […]

Richard Brody, na The New Yorker, explica o que incomoda os censores chineses:

[…] What the Chinese time-travel plots, as described above, have in common is the notion of escape: leaving contemporary, Communist-dominated China for the China of another era, one where, despite mores that are, in some ways, odd and outdated, love and happiness can be found. Time travel serves here as a dream of freedom from present-day strictures—or simply as a cry for freedom, from precisely this kind of idiotic and despotic regulation. As I suggested, today and earlier this week, regarding “Meek’s Cutoff,” the narrow representation of material history serves a programmatic view of political art. The free play of imagination—the liberation of the inner life—is itself a higher stage of politics. […]