Even its American producers may be surprised that the TV series “House of Cards” could have been this popular in Chinese Internet users. For months, it has secured a prominent spot in ratings at various portal websites in China.
Why are the Chinese so addicted to “House of Cards”? Not only the producers themselves, even seasoned Chinese media professionals find it perplexing. On one hand, national conditions, national psychologies, cultural backgrounds, ways of life and ways of conduct are way too different in China and the United States. On the other hand, few Chinese are proficient in English. Those who can easily understand the dialogue in the TV series only constitute a very small fraction of the Chinese populace. It may sound incredible to Americans that millions of Chinese have been following it with the help of the on-screen Chinese subtitles, which may be more troubling than enjoyable. Yet that has hardly dampened the Chinese audience’s enthusiasm for it. How come?
The phenomenon is nothing unusual, as long as we can get rid of the cultural and political prejudices that keep us from seeing the simple truth. Curiosity about the unfamiliar is universal human nature. We are easily attracted by things unseen or unheard of before. Workings of the inner circles of national politics are more attractive. Workings of the inner circles of national politics in a foreign country are more mysterious, and are thus even more appealing. To the Chinese, “House of Cards” is like an “royal court” series set in a contemporary, foreign context, which can only be more tantalizing.
The ancient Chinese royal courts had always been unfathomable and capricious arenas of power jockeying. Though isolated from the rest of the national populace, they have always been focuses of public curiosity. Curiosity brews a voyeuristic desire. Stories, novels and plays pursuing, excavating, and fabricating stories about royal courts of different dynasties constitute a lasting thread in Chinese literary creation; while stories about emperors and queens and concubines, ministers and advisers, conspiracies and sex have always been popular topics in the Chinese public. More than 3,000 TV series have been produced on ancient royal courts in the past decade. People are hardly tired of them. However, thanks to various constraints, political infighting in the present-day officialdom has seldom found representation in Chinese film and TV productions. “House of Cards”, which vividly portrays the political struggles in the inner circles of a major world power, timely and fittingly satisfied the Chinese public’s desire for information about contradictions and power jockeying in the officialdom, filling in a conspicuous blank in current Chinese film and TV production.
“House of Cards” appeals to the Chinese audience also because it features, from start to finish, critical realism, a precious tradition of American film and TV art. The tradition incorporates critical concerns about the country’s own history as well as the dark side of current reality. Both “12 Years A Slave”, which won three Academy Awards this year, and “The Butler” feature honest narrative of the rough and circuitous path of the fight against racial discrimination from the end of the American Civil War to Barack Obama’s assumption of US presidency. “House of Cards” targets its spear of criticism at two levels: One is the merciless political infighting at the top level of national politics; the other is the greed and defects in the depth of human souls. The ups and downs, despicableness and effrontery of the Frank-Claire couple are tightly entangled with their struggles for power; the madness and helplessness, fame and death of the female reporter Zoe are the inescapable outcome of her own weakness. Enormous similar people and cases exist in contemporary social life in China. Yet works of present-day Chinese film and TV seldom touch such topics. “House of Cards”’s incisiveness and merciless, while letting its Chinese viewers enjoy the ecstacy of criticism with ease and verve, will also have them reflect on and associate with the reality they are living in.
Recently, Chinese TV series, especially those derided as “domestic farces”, which focus on family disputes, have drawn increasing blames. The popularity of “House of Cards” may also be a warning to Chinese film and TV artists that crudely made film and TV productions permeated with materialism can absolutely not satisfy the spiritual thirst of the present-day Chinese.
Qin Xiaoying is a Research Scholar with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.
