Opinion: What calls to boycott ‘The Woman King’ are really saying
In the latest article to go viral, I discuss the recent film “The Woman King” which depicts a scene where a prominent woman, dressed in an elaborate and lavish headdress, has descended from the heavens to “rule the planet” through her divinely sanctioned sexual prowess. While the story is entirely fabricated from beginning to end, the film has gone largely unnoticed as both critics and viewers have overlooked the obvious problem in its script: It isn’t even close to being a real movie! Instead, it’s a thinly veiled political attack on China and the Communist Party, in an attempt to portray itself as an edgy and entertaining movie with “social commentary.”
The article is based on a video that was uploaded on YouTube by the film’s director, Lu Han. Lu Han, who I consider to be one of China’s best filmmakers, has openly stated that he wanted to use the story to promote “humanistic ideology” with “positive film criticism” (e.g., “a story where you can say that ‘women rule the world,'” as he explains in the video). Not only does his story seem like a film with a great deal of positive film criticism within it, he even uses it to criticize the government and Communist Party, which makes it a perfect example of why film criticism should never be used as a political weapon. For example, the following quote was taken from his YouTube video:
The film goes on to say that Lu Han has said that he wants to “promote a film about ‘humanistic ideology’ with ‘positive film criticism’ and ‘positive films that encourage people to be optimistic,’ as long as the film ‘can also be a catalyst for change.'”
So the film is attacking the government, the Communist Party and Lu Han himself, but at the same time using the story of the movie as a tool to attack the Communist Party. Lu claims that his “heroic” “woman king” is really a man who has fallen into disfavor with the Party for his “feminine qualities,” and his plot is to “unseat” her to “save the world.” As you can