A highly anticipated drama about Covid-19 has been the subject of a ferocious denunciation for downplaying the role of in the fight against the epidemic in China.
“Heroes in Harm’s Way” premiered on China’s flagship television channel CCTV-1 on September 17. It aired in prime time and promised to be the first “real life” television drama about frontline personnel in central China’s Wuhan city on opening day. coronavirus epidemic.
The name of the exhibition meant that it would highlight women’s main contributions to the fight against the epidemic in China. Women are the priority of the front in China.
However, the show’s pilot, released with a lot of fanfare and publicity, broadcast on China’s IMDB online page, Douban. Film critics noted that it had an embarrassing score of 2. 4 out of 10 and that it had gained many critical comments. basically in their portrayation of women, before they were suddenly suspended at the site.
The exhibition’s call is said to have been selected because, as the China Daily noted in April, female medical personnel are hailed as “Heroes in the Path of Damage. “
However, in Chinese, the screen call translates more literally as “Beauty that opposes the current one”. This was probably going to be quite controversial, given that the expression suggests that women in frontline medical positions have taken little instead of non-unusual paths.
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Viewers were angry that many female characters play an embarrassing or enslaved role compared to their male counterparts.
The national newspaper Global Times notes that in the drama, “one of the most debatable scenes” shows a divorced driving force that his peers discourage from registering to bring materials to the front line, while their circle of relatives waits to spend chinese New Year. with her.
Social media users in the popular microblog Sina Weibo felt that it was a derogatory description of women and gave the impression that women were reluctant participants “dragging their feet, [who] had to ask for their husband’s consent if they wanted to move to the front line”, that the main participants.
Users asked if the same would have been inscribed in the plot if the character had been a man.
The South China Morning Post noted that there were frustrations with the portrait of nurses “most interested in gossiping about male doctors. “
But the newspaper interviews a nurse who says, on the contrary, that “every woman who runs in her hospital has joined the fight opposing the disease” no doubt, because about 5% of the nurses she paints there were men.
Despite the drama’s promise to highlight the role of women, most female characters are shown in minor roles for men, and largely play a complacent and submissive role.
The truth is that in China’s epidemic, women not only played a decisive role in Major Wuhan Hospitals, such as former Party Secretary Cai Li, who oversaw operations at Wuhan Central Hospital, where the virus was first known, but accounted for a significant majority of staff. .
In April, when China saw the back of its epidemic nationwide, China Daily reported that statistics showed that “about 50% of doctors fighting on the line [are] women. “
People’s Daily reported in May that about 70% of frontline doctors were nurses, and the China Daily says about 90% of them were women.
It also points to express statistics for Wuhan, where there have been more than 46,000 cases of Covid-19. About two-thirds of those who were part of the city’s frontline medical staff were women.
The Global Times also notes that it played a key role in the structure of Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals that were built within days in Wuhan before this year.
However, in the show, the structure is exclusively men.
The Chinese government has done much in recent months to highlight the role of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Division general Chen Wei, a high-level virologist, has been named “heroes of the people” for his paintings on the virus, and there have been countless sequences that appear and praise doctors for his front-line paintings.
However, the drama suddenly raised questions about the Chinese narrative of the year about its female participants and whether women are more unfairly marginalized.
It should be noted that chenGén. De Division was the only woman of 4 to receive President Xi Jinping’s national compliance.
The Wuhan Federation of Trade Unions also states that of the thirteen other people who won praise from “national-style painters” for their paintings in the conflicting city Covid-19, only 4 were women.
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Much of China’s media policy has been selective in highlighting women in concerned roles, who have had to sacrifice their role as wives and mothers.
On International Women’s Day in March, Xinhua focused on how doctors “fight on the front line” while “their husbands take on duty at home. “
Some Weibo users have quoted Mao Zedong’s quote: “Women have half the sky,” and there are thousands of comments criticizing the belief that the series has a “inferior” role in the game.
There are users who ask if the actors on the show or the director were to blame. But others have the most convincing concept that “washes” the history of The Covid-19 in China with the drama in stellar hours.
It’s easy to understand why many Weibo users feel that way; this is the first time China has been criticized for telling or reshaping its Covid-19 story.
And the drama prompted calls from Weibo users to recognize some of the women who made a difference.
Some users call Dr. Ai Fen, who, along with his colleague Li Wenliang, was considered a “whistleblower” for attracting his colleagues’ attention to the seriousness of The Covid-19.
Both won a warning from Wuhan. Ai Fen won no praise, it may have only helped raise awareness of the virility of the virus more quickly.
Internet users also called for greater popularity from Fang Fang for his role in making Wuhan’s voice heard around the world.
Fang Fang began documenting his reports on life in Wuhan in January and temporarily praised his writings about what is happening in the city.
However, as her popularity grew and gained recognition abroad, the state media called her a traitor.
Instead, other books gained a broad media policy that told the story of coronavirus through the eyes of the state, with the general purpose of diminishing the mark it left behind and attracting public attention. others towards the strength of communist party rule.
A Weibo user said the omission of Dr. Li Wenliang and Dr. Ai Fen in the drama meant it wasn’t worth seeing because the government “doesn’t have the courage to face a complete picture of the story. “
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