According to multiple reports on social media, Return to Dust, a movie that had been generating a lot of buzz in China, was pulled from streaming services in the country yesterday. Mentioning the film on Weibo is not allowed. Will movie fans outside of China be able to see this movie? Maybe if you don't mind a little film piracy.
According to a recent review from Vice, Return to Dust took in over $7 million in China during the summer, making it the highest grossing Chinese film of all time. The movie was removed from streaming services because of its success.
The movie tells the story of Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying, two newlyweds in an arranged marriage who find love and devotion to each other on the fringes of modern society. Youtie and Guiying struggle in their poverty, using a donkey for farm labor, while the film's antagonist is a man who wants to push them out of their home. There is a theory that the gap between rich and poor in the movie is why it was deleted.
The Economist quoted Li as saying that everyone knows there are lots of poor people. The government doesn't want the Chinese to see a lot of it.
We can assure you that Return to Dust does not have a fairytale ending, even though the leader of China said he wanted media to have positive energy. According to the Economist, the censors added a postscript that made sure everything worked out for the main characters.
The trailer for Return to Dust is still available on YouTube, but the video sharing service is also hosting a number of illegal copies of the film. It may be the only way to watch the film for a while, even as the film's distributors begin to issue copyright notices. There was no change to the end of the copy Gizmodo watched.
The ethics of pirating media that can't be seen anywhere else is being debated on social media in the U.S. Ten years ago, the streaming giants were welcomed with open arms because they allowed people to watch large libraries of movies and TV on-demand for a small monthly subscription. The subscription prices have gone up a lot and the offerings are too many to count. Some of the biggest players have deleted streaming-native shows and offered no alternatives to watch them.
It used to be possible to watch a movie or TV show on DVD that wasn't available on Streaming. When a streamer drops a show, the media is gone, but you can find them on pirate websites. People of the 21st century aren't used to the idea that big companies have total control over when to watch shows and movies In the 20th century, it was normal to see something on TV and then never see it again until you could catch it again. In the internet era, that business model is not necessary.
If the Chinese government decides Return to Dust should not be shown in public, is it ethical to watch it for free on the internet? We are not here to teach you how to live your life. It is certain that the pirates will be the only ones with many TV shows and movies from our era.
About half of movies made before 1950 are lost forever due to movies studios failing to give a shit about preservation. We aren't going to hold our breath that preserving access is top of mind, because we've seen huge media companies treat TV shows that came out just a few years ago differently.
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