I am working on lifting the ban in China(see below) and I thought I have posted the letter on one of your thread, I don't see it today, so I'll try again. By the way, it's good to know that there's a good site for Brokeback discussion.
Dear Fellow Brokebackers:
I have recently written letters to President Hu and his staff at Chinese embassies in US and Canada urging them to lift the ban off the movie Brokeback Mountain. However, my single voice will not have enough persuasive power, hence I am writing to you to see if you and your friends will also write to those embassies requesting the same.
After hearing so much discussion about Brokeback Mountain late last year, I thought I should show my support to this film for breaking ground in whatever they purportedly were doing. Little did I expect how much I had enjoyed the movie. I was extremely happy that finally someone has made a truly great love story. I watched it again and again, more than 50 times before it was taken out of cinema run. Upon hearing many countries, including China, putting a ban on Brokeback Mountain, I was heartbroken. I felt sorry for their citizens there not having a chance to experience Brokeback Mountain’s pure magic in a theatre and worse still, I would think that the director Ang Lee, being a Chinese, could be inspirational to other Chinese around the world, in China particularly.
Of all the countries with the ban, I decided to target Chinese government because it wants to improve its public relations with the world before the Olympic Games; it doesn’t have religious polarization as in India; pirate DVDs have already been circulating and it is more economically and socially progressive than countries in Middle East. As a general rule, those who work in North American embassies usually have closer relationship with the central government, and even the president himself.
Of course, there are many big issues at hand that Chinese government should attend to or change. But no sovereign government is willing to have its major policies influenced by outsiders. We don’t expect China to change over night. Such expectation is too drastic and unrealistic, even dangerous, just look at Iraq. I am only urging China to undertake a small change in a minor but effective area, something that the Chinese government can easily understand and may even be willing to consider.
In North America, we have the choice to see it in a cinema or not depending on our beliefs, while in China, people are deprived of such a choice. Censorship stifles originality and independence and it suppresses freedom of speech and thought. It should only be applied to films of unsavoury content and of violent nature. Brokeback Mountain has neither.
Because embassy email addresses are always quota full, you have to write directly to embassies (515 St. Patrick St., Ottawa, Ontario K1N 5H3; 2300 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008) or send an email to me, just mark “embassy letter”. Copies of all emails will then be mailed to one or both embassies at the end of October.
Yours truly, Ada Vaughan(casadeada@yahoo.ca)
