Chinese Version Of The Office Coming. Is It A Bad Idea?
Sister site Deadline has revealed that, contrary to previous denials, the BBC is indeed making plans to license a Mandarin-language version of The Office. But am I the only who feels a little uneasy about such a thing?
There are already Chinese versions of plenty of BBC programs including Dancing with the Stars and Top Gear, but The Office is a bit different in that it's not about the glitz and the glamor, but rather all about the average worker who plugs away at their dead-end job. And while that means one thing in the U.K. or the U.S. (or Chile, France, Germany, Israel, and Quebec, where the show has also been licensed), it takes on an entirely different meaning in the People's Republic of China.
To put it bluntly, the average Joe working at the Beijing branch of the Wernham Hogg Paper Co. is subject to the Chinese government's abrogation of their rights to speech, assembly and religion, among others. And for a show set in the workplace, China has a notoriously awful track record for workers' rights, including substandard working conditions, long hours with no overtime, meager wages, and the inability to form unions. There's no shortage of documentation and proof for all of these inequities inflicted by the Chinese government, so Google at your own pace.
This honestly isn't meant to be a political screed. The BBC and Ricky Gervais are obviously free to license their product as they want, just as the average Chinese viewer shouldn't necessarily be deprived of their own version of The Office simply because of the sins of their government. But I can only talk about my own reaction to this news, which is that a comedy about the workplace set in a place where so many workers are denied the everyday rights we take for granted might not be that funny.
· Chinese Version Of 'The Office' Is Underway [Deadline]
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
It'll probably be filled with all sorts of propoganda and subtle messages (Everyone is happy to come to work and obey their boss!), with focus on the relationships between the co-workers. Still, awkward.
yea, 'wildly inappropriate' is the first thing that came to mind considering all the horror stories that've been leaked over the past, oh idunno, 50 years?
Dixon Gaines, I think you are talking up the creek. You are talking from your own perspective, your own value systems, your beliefs, and your prejudices. people in the East grew up over the millenias with different value systems which may or may not be as advanced as the Western value systems. You talk like an arseh*le trying to implement democracy in Iraq Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East.
The value systems there are different and without a higher degree of tolerance and open-mindedness (read high level of education and intellectual development), and self discipline, you get mayhem and murders, and killings.
Either you don't get it, or you get get it but playing your part in the Washington-initiated psych-war against the Chinese and Easterners in general, by adding your piece of another slander, libel and distortion. Or perhaps you are just a plain racialist, period!
Dix,
Liza might have a bit of a point here.
Shows travel and and re-branded/re-made in different countries. The re-configured to work in the new environment.
Whether they work, or not, is an entirely different thing best left to the viewer/demographic.
One word: NBC's "Coupling".
It can't be any worse than the American version. We take the best the world has to offer and reduce it to its lowest common denominator.
Death at a Funeral and the Dinner Game were excellent films turn into unwatchable feces. The American Office and Coupling were even worse. I don't know why we can't make original programing? I guess that might be for the best though the last thing we really need is another cop/doctor/lawyer/house wife show.
Let them do the show. Perhaps once Americans see what working conditions are like in China, then they will stop importing all that Chinese-made junk.
I realize this is off the point, but I just can't take one more "Look what they did to 'Coupling'" example. The American version of "Coupling" was exactly as terrible as the UK version, which was a terrible knockoff of "Friends" -- an American show. "Coupling" was a hit in the UK, apparently because the British were content to watch a terrible knockoff of "Friends" as long as the friends had British accents. Americans, on the other hand, were NOT content to watch a perplexedly re-Americanized version of "Friends," only terrible this time. So, for God's sake, stop already with the "Coupling"!
OMG, someone call the UN!! A Chinese version of the office could lead to the entire country descending into chaos and civil war! Ricky Gervais, you're going to have the blood of millions on your hands...
The writer may be interested to know that an office is a little different than the factory floor. There are plenty of offices in China and they range the full economic spectrum.