This talk explores the intricate dance between state power and global cultural production, reconceptualizing censorship as an ongoing, social process. Drawing on ethnographic research within a global film studio and interviews with rarely accessed industry insiders in Beijing and Los Angeles, it shows how China’s rigid censorship system reshapes Hollywood’s creative process. First, it reveals how China’s state censors use multistage gatekeeping and intermediated censorship to exert global influence. It then shows how informality transforms these organizational procedures into a relational process that is hard to trace. In this, studio executives and filmmakers engage in complicit creativity, seeking creative negotiations through working with, rather than against, the state. By exposing the hidden, informal interactions between censors and creators, this talk uncovers a co-constructed “culture of censorship” that deepens our understanding of the inner workings of state intervention in the new global cultural economy. The talk is based on a 2024 article published in the American Sociological Review.
