under the dome ( film )
celia hatton, “under the dome: the smog film taking china by storm, ” bbc. com, 2 march 2015 ,
china' s government leaders will appear to be very responsive to the concerns raised by under the dome .
the film is still widely available. the editor of the documentary channel at tencent – one of many chinese sites offering under the dome – said the film had been viewed 316 million times by thursday lunchtime .
fan - made trailer for a non - existent movie based on stephen king' s under the dome .
it also helps that
under the dome
includes a call to action on the part of all chinese .
in chester' s mill, maine, a strange occurrence locks the town in under an invisible dome - like surface .
under the dome explains the social and health costs of pollution, and was watched by more than 100 million people online, sparking debates .
under the dome, a documentary investigating pollution and air quality in china, has been pulled from chinese video sites by the country’s government .
the documentary, under the dome, has been available on most online video sites and has not been removed since first being posted on saturday, although some articles praising the film have been deleted by censors .
we were the dome all along. the dome was all inside the mind of a small child holding a snowglobe. they were dead the whole time .
under the dome, a year - long investigation of pollution in china, had garnered more than 100 million views in less than 48 hours .
under the dome is the story of a small town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. the town' s inhabitants must deal with surviving the post - apocalyptic conditions while searching for answers about the dome, where it came from and if and when it will go away .
the newly appointed environmental protection minister, chen jining, had praised under the dome, telling reporters it should
encourage efforts by individuals to improve air quality
.
one piece in business spectator called “under the dome” the “film that is going to change china. ” if public outcry makes it easier for beijing to push through reforms strengthening the mep and curtailing environmental abuses by state - owned enterprises, chai’s film could indeed go down in history as china’s silent spring .
some social media users in china voiced frustration at the removal of the film .
“under the dome”, a film by journalist chai jing that explains air pollution in straightforward terms, spurred a national debate after its release and quickly garnered hundreds of millions of views on streaming video sites. (reuters / aly song )
while “under the dome” called for action, the action the chinese government took wasn’t what chai had in mind. after the initial surge in viewers for the documentary, the government blocked access to the online video .
but most have welcomed her initiative in producing the documentary with her own money. despite the criticism of government policy the video was not blocked. the website of people’s daily, the main communist party newspaper, was one of the first to post under the dome. by sunday evening, however, popular chinese websites had removed prominent headlines and links about under the dome from their front pages .
' under the dome' by chai jing hasn' t been banned, which suggests the government is allowing debate on environmental issues ahead of the country' s annual parliament session in beijing .
but, before the end montage offered most of the main players a relatively quiet dome - free life (for now), they endured an expectedly bloody, illogical end to the dome .
beijing — “under the dome, ” a searing documentary about china ’s catastrophic air pollution, had hundreds of millions of views on chinese websites within days of its release one week ago .
after a week of passionate public discourse over the film, the central propaganda department told websites on friday to remove “under the dome. ” mr. zhan, the journalism and media studies professor, said officials had waited through the week “to see what would happen, in sort of an opportunistic strategy. ”
anti - pollution film offline, ” bbc. com, 7 march 2015 ,
produced and narrated by chai jing, a former investigative reporter for chinese state television, the film
under the dome
is in the style of a ted talk or an activist al gore documentary, looking at the grim state of air pollution in china and what can be done to remedy it .
another weibo user quoted by reuters wrote :
some people have the power to completely smother chai jing' s under the dome on the internet but don' t have the power to smother haze in this country .
as resources dwindle, big jim holds a census in order to forecast how long chester' s mill can continue to exist under the dome, while chaos ensues when a rainstorm turns into acid rain .
as of saturday, the film was no longer available on popular chinese mainland video sites .
founded in 1999, senses of cinema is one of the first online film journals of its kind and has set the standard for professional, high quality film - related content on the internet .
this is a personal grievance between me and the smog ,
chai says in the film .
under the dome, a slick production by a former reporter for the state broadcaster, has gripped a public accustomed to griping about the smog. but perhaps the most striking thing about chai jing’s film has been the sympathetic response that it has elicited from at least some in authority, despite its relative boldness on a potentially controversial subject .
called
under the dome ,
the film released online by former china central television reporter chai jing cites weak enforcement of environmental laws and poor fuel standards among the causes of the smog. it was the most searched topic on search engine baidu early monday, and was played 21 million times on video - sharing site youku. com .
for a show that practically winked at the screen every other scene, under the dome didn’t end in such a ridiculous fashion. all things considered, the last moments of “the enemy within, ” are unpredictably… simple, maybe even a little expected .
since its release online on saturday, under the dome has notched up some 100m views on major chinese video portals such as tencent and youku. it has also prompted 280 million posts on sina weibo, a microblogging site .
the above paragraph, in the context of virtually any other political subject (democracy, constitutionalism, human rights) would have gotten the film scrubbed from china’s internet. but “under the dome” is still readily available online, although china digital times reports that chinese censors have ordered media outlets not to “further promote” the documentary and to carefully “regulate” public opinion .
many western news reports compared under the dome to the al gore - narrated climate change documentary an inconvenient truth (davis guggenheim, 2006) 3, with both films drawing on the format of “tedx” talks by notable thinkers and innovators, sponsored by the non - profit organisation the sapling foundation. these talks have achieved widespread popularity through their dissemination online since 2006. 4 another frequent point of comparison with chai’s film was rachel carson’s 1962 book silent spring, a bestseller that drew attention to the toxic effects of unrestrained pesticide use in the post - war period. 5 while the influence of al gore’s tedx - style film in particular is obvious, these international analogies elide under the dome ’s relationship to a range of chinese documentary traditions little known in the west, including a long - standing expository documentary lineage and a more recent history of personalised, activist work. chai jing’s film is notable for its online release, viral impact and the sheer scale of its viewership, but it is not without local precedent. understanding the local context from which under the dome has emerged helps us grasp the long, complex and ongoing interplay between documentary images, state controls and public opinion in china during the post - mao reform era – an interplay in which under the dome is but the latest instalment .
titled “under the dome, ” the film is an impassioned production by chai jing, a well - known journalist who left china central television last year shortly after the birth of her first child. since its release online on saturday, it has racked up some 100 million views on major chinese video portals such as tencent and youku .
renowned investigative journalist chai jing has been widely praised for using her own money - more than 1 million rmb ($ 159, 000: £103, 422) - to fund the film, called under the dome. she first started the documentary when her infant daughter developed a benign tumour in the womb, which ms chai blames on air pollution .
after finding themselves outside the dome, barbie turns to his estranged father for help, and sam reunites with pauline .
a potential exit from the dome is revealed just as the walls begin closing in on those trapped in chester' s mill .
in one particularly harrowing scene in “under the dome, ” a doctor pulls out pieces of lymph node from a female lung cancer patient in her 50s. they are filthy and blackened from breathing the air, though the woman has never been a smoker .
but interest in chai' s film chafed a bit for some longtime players in environmental circles .
under the dome
also debuted just a day after china named a new environment minister, chen jining, who was plucked from his post as president of the prestigious tsinghua university. the move was a rare example of china appointing a minister who didn' t come up through the bureaucracy, and chen reportedly sent chai a text message congratulating her on the film .
above all, under the dome hooks viewers with chai’s account of learning that her unborn baby had a tumour and might not survive surgery to remove it. though the girl is thriving, her story conveys the human cost of pollution as perhaps nothing else could .
viewers commenting on the film on the sina web portal expressed both approval of chai' s efforts and frustration at the government .
on sunday, at the closing press conference of the national people’s congress, a reporter from the huffington post asked chinese premier li keqiang what the government was going to do about some of the accusations in the film. rather than attack the film, he replied :
though most of the facts presented in
under the dome
have been widely presented in foreign and chinese media, chai' s celebrity and her approachable style (she uses a cartoon to illustrate what pm 2. 5 means, for example) resonate .
in the past three weeks, an online documentary about air pollution in china called “under the dome” has done exactly that for the peoples’ republic. made by a well - known china central television newscaster chai jing, the film drew more than 150 million viewers in the first days after chai posted it online. in the film, chai, dressed casually in jeans and a white blouse, paces back and forth on a stage in what is essentially a 143 - minute ted talk – with devastating effect .
the film generated a huge, emotional response online, including angry comments directed at china' s political authorities .
among those interviewed in
under the dome
are xie zhenhua, deputy director of the powerful national development and reform commission; han jun, deputy director of the communist party' s central finance affairs office; and xiong yuehui, director of the science standards office at the ministry of environmental protection .
the support from state media is especially interesting given that the film dips a toe into the dangerous waters of public activism, something china’s government is generally quick to censure. in the film, chai predicts that china’s people will grow tired of a poisoned environment :
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
although river elegy and the story of its reception has been suppressed in china since the military crackdown that ended the tiananmen movement, as a senior journalist at cctv chai jing is likely aware of this history. certainly under the dome resembles river elegy to the extent that it was timed to influence government policy during a period of rising social tensions and uncertainty over future directions within the ruling elite. under the dome was released online just six days before the opening of the annual session of china’s parliament, the national people’s congress (npc), on 5 march 2015. although the npc’s main role is to rubber stamp decisions made in advance by the ccp, its annual meeting places the spotlight on the party - state’s policy directions and provokes a certain degree of discussion amongst the media, academics and the general public. under the dome was clearly intended to be a high profile intervention in these debates, advancing the case for the enforcement of environmental regulations and a more sustainable approach to economic development .
while the local documentary context from which under the dome emerged has been outlined above, the film’s precise relationship to the state remains a more open question. in one sense the film sits in a growing tradition of critical chinese documentary work concerned with exploring fault lines in the country’s stressed social fabric. yet the circumstances of its release and apparent endorsement in some official quarters also suggest its imbrication in power plays within the ruling elite. whatever the state’s relationship to this particular work, however, the staggering 300 million clicks the film inspired demonstrates the ongoing importance of documentary in china’s public discursive field, especially in an environment where official media and television remain so tightly controlled. the audience size also speaks of deep societal anxieties the authorities would be ill advised to ignore .
unlike the cctv - produced river elegy, chai jing made her film independently, but she does appear to have enjoyed some very high level assistance, including support from the national broadcaster, where she worked until she became pregnant in 2013. 12 there was backing from another key state - owned media outlet as well – in addition to being posted on major commercial chinese video hosting sites like youku, chai’s film appeared on the website of the communist party’s official newspaper people’s daily, along with an interview with the director. the day after the film’s release, china’s newly appointed minister for environmental protection, chen jining, praised under the dome at his first press conference and compared it to silent spring. 13
then on friday afternoon, the momentum over the video came to an abrupt halt, as major chinese video websites deleted it under orders from the communist party’s central propaganda department .
the film’s extraordinary success owes much to promotion on the website of the official people’s daily and other state - run media. the environment minister has also praised it .
the second season of under the dome, a science - fiction tv series based on a stephen king novel of the same name, consists of thirteen episodes. it premiered on cbs on june 30, 2014 and concluded on september 22, 2014. filming of season 2 again took place in north carolina, usa .
made by renowned investigative journalist chai jing and funded with her own money, the film sharply criticises the chinese state' s lax environmental laws .
alvin lin, the beijing - based china climate and energy policy director of the us - based environmental group the natural resources defense council, said :
they' ve made a big deal about air pollution in the last couple of [ legislative meetings ]. under the dome made it so they really really have to talk about it .
under the dome ,
made by a popular former reporter from china central television, was released online saturday. by monday, it had been viewed more than 150 million times on video portals, dominating social media such as wechat and weibo in the way the blue - black dress phenomenon recently swamped the internet in the u. s .
the fact that the film was not censored and was posted on the website of the people' s daily, the communist party mouthpiece, indicated a substantial degree of official support .
ultimately, “ under the dome ” would have been much better off, in hindsight, if it had built toward and delivered a genuine ending in its first year, following the limited - series format that has been adopted elsewhere. that certainly would have allowed for a more direct adaptation of king’s lengthy novel .
at that point, the government came rushing in, determined to sweep the whole aliens - among - us thing under the, er, rug. that allowed for a one - year flash forward, and the fleeting possibility that the dome’s captives might really move on with their lives, with barbie and julia (rachelle lefevre) finally settling down .
in
under the dome ,
chai admits that for years she was not worried about pollution and never wore a face mask. but she became concerned about china' s dirty skies after discovering during her pregnancy that her unborn child had a benign tumor. she reportedly financed the $ 160, 000 project herself .
just after the chinese new year – and only a few days before china’s “two sessions” meetings of the national people’s congress and chinese people’s political consultative conference – a new documentary has caught fire on china’s internet. the film, titled “under the dome, ” investigates china’s pollution problem, providing visceral evidence of the inescapable problem of smog. the documentary, released on saturday, had over 147 million views on the chinese video site tencent by monday evening. it’s available on youtube, with a rough english translation .
chai has said concerns about her daughter’s health prompted her to quit her job and invest her own time and money to make the film .
“despite the censorship of ‘under the dome, ’ there are still reasons to be hopeful about the future of china’s environment, ” said georgetown’s lewis. “china has become far more confident on the international stage in its environmental diplomacy, and this will hopefully lead to increased confidence in allowing for difficult conversations about the tradeoff between environmental protection and economic growth at home. ”
in terms of the chinese documentary context, there are also important differences in the way films of the 1980s like river elegy and under the dome construct their expositional voices. where the former uses a disembodied address claiming to represent the views of a whole social group desiring to lead china’s future, chai employs a more embodied, individualised form of address to talk to her audience as fellow citizens. it is here the film echoes developments in another important component of china’s contemporary mediascape – the activist strand of filmmaking that has developed over the past decade .
remember those initial reviews of “under the dome, ” most praising its considerable promise? and what about the gaudy ratings, giving cbs a rare summer hit? that all seems a lot longer than three seasons ago, much less the four weeks that actually transpired within the show’s universe. after running in increasingly preposterous circles (somewhat appropriately, [ … ]
a small new england town is sealed off from the world by an enormous transparent dome that inexplicably appears and forces the area' s inhabitants to deal with the post - apocalyptic situation .
this brief overview of local precedents to under the dome shows that the film, in addition to being inspired by foreign works such as an inconvenient truth and the tedx talks, has emerged from several decades of documentary activity aimed at influencing both state leaders and public opinion inside china. the film’s didactic verbal address, carefully timed release, and support from certain sections of the official media and state bureaucracy echoes river elegy ’s earlier deployment of the documentary form to intervene in public debates. more recently, an activist strain of filmmaking within china’s independent realm has foregrounded a personalised documentary “voice” embodied in the filmmaker’s onscreen presence, to forge emotive representations of public issues frequently excluded from official media. the influence of this contemporary lineage is evident in the way chai constructs the voice of her own film in a personalised manner to achieve its rhetorical effect, and her bypassing of traditional broadcasting and film exhibition by rapidly disseminating her work on the internet to generate online public commentary and debate .
now though, perhaps alarmed by the massive popularity of the film, the government has stepped in to muffle it, with the film removed from video sites like youku and tencent (it is still available on youtube, which is blocked in china). an interview with chai on the website of central news organisation people’s daily has also been removed along with a posting of the film itself, and earlier last week there had been directives to media prohibiting reporting on it .
remember those initial reviews of “ under the dome, ” most praising its considerable promise? and what about the gaudy ratings, giving cbs a rare summer hit? that all seems a lot longer than three seasons ago, much less the four weeks that actually transpired within the show’s universe. after running in increasingly preposterous circles (somewhat appropriately, given the shape of its otherworldly enclosure), the dome came down, along with the curtain, in what turned out to be the series finale. although the last hour didn’t exactly provide closure, it’s hard to argue the end came prematurely .
while laws may be stringent in china, enforcement is another question: to date no manufacturers of such lorries have yet been punished under the law, ms. chai says .
under the dome also highlights the trade - off that china has made between economic growth and protecting the health of its people. when chai asks an official why they cannot close factories that break environmental laws, he replies: “you must be kidding … how many people are employed by virtue of 10 million tons of steel? one hundred thousand people. ”
under the dome opens with a graph charting beijing’s horrific air pollution in january 2013, and chai jing’s voice explaining the chart’s content. we then see her strolling across a stage in front of a screen as the lights come up, intercut with overhead shots of a large studio audience she is addressing. throughout under the dome, chai uses the screen to display various other graphs, charts and quotes to support her verbal claims about china’s shocking levels of pollution, its myriad causes and some possible solutions. the screen also punctuates her talk with what are essentially a series of short films within the feature documentary, explaining particular points through news - style reportage, narrated animations, and interviews with various academics, industrial chiefs and government officials .
the film’s release comes just days before the start of china’s most public annual political event – the meetings of the national legislature and a government advisory body. the environment is expected to figure prominently among the topics discussed .
li yan, the climate and energy campaign manager at greenpeace east asia, said the hundreds of millions of hits generated by the film and the subsequent public discussion were “a huge step forward” .
big jim rallies the town against barbie after framing him for the murders and the shooting of julia. joe and norrie move the mini - dome to ben' s house but it soon begins to act strangely .
still, he said, it was a
great thing
that the film was raising awareness – though he questioned how long the
fever
might last .
moreover the film’s director, journalist chai jing, had input from chen’s ministry, with officials explaining how little leverage they have with public and private industry to enforce anti - pollution laws. prior to the film’s release she sent this interview footage to other government teams, and began a dialogue with them .
the film drew hundreds of millions of viewers after it was posted online last week, and there were government officials amongst its admirers. the environmental protection minister, chen jining, had said in a news conference as the film was launched: “i think this work has an important role in promoting public awareness of environmental health issues, so i’m particularly pleased about this event. ” he compared it to silent spring, the film that kickstarted a backlash against pesticide use in the us .
importantly, china' s censors have done little to stifle the conversation surrounding the film, and in some sense it has received the government' s imprimatur. chen jining, the country' s new environment minister, praised chai and the film on sunday, saying it reflected
growing public concern over environmental protection and threats to human health .
through these examples, we can see that under the dome contains clear traces of the young, activist strain of documentary making that has developed in china on the heels of hu jie’s pioneering work. chai jing’s film draws on some of the methods used in these activist documentaries to construct a personalised, embodied form of address from a chinese citizen (the filmmaker) to a wider public of fellow citizens (the audience). she marries this personalised voice with an overtly expository approach in the shape of a fast - paced, engaging lecture, also placing the film within china’s longstanding tradition of using didactic, expository documentary films to impart ideas to a broad audience, sometimes with a view to influencing top leaders and their policy formulations .
in “under the dome, ” heavy truck makers don’t install pollution control devices and use phony compliance stickers instead. self - regulating oil refiners produce diesel with high sulfur content. steel manufacturers lack pollution controls while many coal - fired power plants turn off scrubbers that reduce soot and acid rain because the scrubbers use a little bit of power that could otherwise be sold .
yet for all this apparent official endorsement, a week after its release under the dome was methodically removed from all sites hosted inside china, and discussion about the film in the chinese media ceased. long - time china watcher isabel hinton argues that these events indicate a carefully calibrated governmental plan to generate “public support for policies that are already developed. ” 14 while this is possible, it seems unlikely the state would use a film with the potential to provoke fundamental questions about china’s whole mode of development to garner support for moves that would almost certainly be popular anyway – public concerns about the state of the environment have been steadily growing for years, often despite state - imposed restrictions on media reportage. it is more likely that official support and subsequent censorship reflects factional conflicts and power plays within the party - state, as was the case with river elegy ’s production, release and subsequent banning back in the late 1980s. under the dome’s timing, content and public praising by the new environment minister certainly appeared calculated to strengthen the position of china’s chronically disempowered environmental protection agencies, against entrenched and powerful environmental abusers like the massive state - owned oil firm sinopec .
ding yan, director of the vehicle pollution department at the ministry of environmental protection, says in the film that he is
embarrassed
about his work because his agency is so toothless .
“if the film had been this way, it would have been long, heavy and depressing, ” mr. yuan said. ms. chai cut that material .
when a new threat from the dome intensifies, the residents of chester' s mill find themselves at risk of being crushed to death. meanwhile, melanie' s health continues to deteriorate as the fate of the egg remains unknown .
the film also provides a detailed look at how powerless china’s environmental bureau really is. in one telling scene, mep officials are flatly told they have the duty to investigate for broken regulations but not the power to do so. it’s no wonder minister chen was elated by the film; in effect, it provides an impassioned argument for giving his ministry more power .
few documentary makers anywhere the world would dare dream of attracting 300 million viewers – especially for an exclusive online release. fewer still would imagine reaching an audience of that size within a week. yet according to some news reports, that was the scale of chai jing’s audience for under the dome (qiongding zhixia, 2015), a self - funded documentary on china’s chronic air pollution released across multiple websites in the people’s republic on 28 february this year. 1 these figures are based on the number of “clicks” the video received online, which is of course not necessarily the same thing as the number of discrete viewers. we also do not know how many people watched all 104 minutes of the film. the click rates certainly suggest, however, that tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of chinese people watched at least part of under the dome in a very short period, before it was systematically removed from websites inside china’s great firewall around 7 march (the english - subtitled version is still available on youtube, which is blocked in china). 2
the film shows ms. chai showing a sonogram of her unborn baby daughter, who was diagnosed with a benign tumor at birth and had to be swiftly operated upon .
there are so many startling aspects to “under the dome”: the fact that someone, especially a media - savvy former state television personality, would think of doing it; the use of the internet to spread information very quickly; the way in which middle class chinese, once obsessed purely with economic gains, are outraged about the quality of life; the way some well - intentioned government reforms open a pandora’s box of previous neglect; and the suggestion that people are angry enough to step forward .
] two weeks ago, an invisible dome crashed down on chester' s mill, cutting us off from the rest of the world. why the dome is here or what mysteries lie ahead, we still don' t know. every day it tests our limits, bringing out the best and the worst in us. some say we' ll be stuck here forever, but we will never stop fighting to find a way out .
as barbie' s fate lies in big jim' s hands, the dome presents a new threat when it becomes magnetized. meanwhile, julia seeks out the help of a stranger to save the life of a mysterious girl .
in its reliance on the spoken word and use of images to support and substantiate the narration’s claims, under the dome draws on some aspects of what bill nichols calls the “expository mode” of documentary, an approach that “gives priority to the spoken word to convey the film’s perspective from a single, unifying source” in order to “facilitate comprehension. ” 6 although the expository style is typically associated with disembodied “voice - of - god” style narrations, rather than chai’s more personalised approach, in constructing her film as an illustrated lecture chai is drawing on a very long history of didactic verbal address in chinese documentary. during the maoist era of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, for example, the expository mode was employed to the exclusion of almost any other, to convey “authoritarian government declarations, deceptions and formulations” via hectoring, monological voiceovers carefully aligned with the position of the chinese communist party (ccp). 7
some have compared her film to rachel carson’s book “silent spring, ” the 1962 book on pesticides that led to a ban on ddt and—along with the santa barbara oil spill off california and ohio’s cuyahoga river catching fire in 1969—helped spur the creation of the environmental protection agency. others compare chai’s work to al gore’s film “inconvenient truth, ” his wake - up call about climate change .
after the video’s release, other officials, including some at state - owned enterprises that often bridle at stricter environmental regulations, came out strongly against the film. the battle lines reflected those in the broader conflict over the environment in china .
when barbie is apprehended by a group of mysterious men, he is relentlessly interrogated about his connection to the dome. meanwhile, big jim makes a deal that could seal the fate of the residents of chester' s mill forever .
in 2011, another activist work appeared in china that provided a smaller - scale, but very direct precedent for under the dome ’s release and impact – wang jiuliang’s beijing besieged by waste (laji weicheng). wang is a photographer by trade, and was prompted to make his film after witnessing the appalling state of local rubbish dumps photographed for another project. although large sections of his confronting documentary on beijing’s waste management practices are observational in style, wang also conveys information through a voiceover narration, anchored by his own presence in many shots before the mountains of rubbish accumulating on beijing’s outskirts .
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it is still common to see people exercising outdoors on heavily polluted days without protection, as the film shows. chai says she too was blase about pollution before her daughter’s birth .
early this week, propaganda officials issued a directive telling chinese news organizations not to report on the film and ordered video websites not to play it on their home pages, though those sites could keep it online. editors at global times, a populist newspaper under the management of people’s daily, had to kill articles and opinion pieces that separately criticized and supported ms. chai’s documentary, newspaper employees said .
but in a poll conducted by phoenix tv after the film' s release, 33. 5% of the 27, 240 respondents said they have no faith in the government and do not expect the smog to be cleaned in the near future .
“the fact the people’s daily [ website ] released information on the film was really significant; that could only have had the highest approval, ” suggested brady, though she also noted that sometimes state - run news outlets took risks .
cbs deserves some credit for having kept the lights on in the summer with its serialized dramas, although “extant” (another steven spielberg - anointed sci - fi project) and “zoo” haven’t exactly adorned themselves in creative honor either. whether that means simply tinkering with the formula or a more dramatic overhaul, one thing seems as clear as the dome itself: it was time to officially turn out the lights on this dimming “dome, ” which really was a bad egg .
“under the dome” was produced by chai jing, formerly a journalist at the state - run china central television (cctv). chai explains how she came to take a personal interest in the pollution issue after the birth of her daughter. before then, she had never paid much attention to the smog; afterward, she was frightened as to what the pervasive exposure to pollution would mean for her child’s health. the resulting documentary has been compared to silent spring, the book by environmental activist rachel carson often credited with jump - starting the u. s. environmental movement .
li predicted that the film' s
unusual
popularity would help empower the environment ministry .
the timing of this is really unique, coming ahead of the' two meetings' and with a new environment minister coming on the job ,
she added .
when barbie enlists his father ’s help to reach out to julia, he realizes that don may know more about the dome than he is letting on. meanwhile, big jim appoints himself sheriff of chester' s mill .
throughout under the dome, chai is casually dressed and talks to her audience in a chatty, relaxed manner, interspersing her serious talk with moments of humour. she requires no introduction, since she is one of china’s best known and most trusted investigative journalists, and was a constant presence on local television screens until her pregnancy in 2013. she builds on this pre - existing relationship with her audience by immediately placing herself on a par with her viewers vis - à - vis knowledge of china’s pollution problem. as the film opens with a graph showing that beijing experienced 25 days of severe smog in january 2013, we hear chai comment :
julia takes over as leader of chester' s mill after the town becomes divided in the wake of big jim and rebecca' s plans for population control. meanwhile, joe and norrie help melanie search for more clues about her identity at the dome wall .
the film takes aim at the lax practices and individual poor habits that lead to smog blanketing china' s cities. after being uploaded on the weekend, it has generated hundreds of millions of views and social media posts by chinese netizens .
in the film, chai flies over l. a. in a helicopter and points out that the city has managed to decrease pollution even while adding cars to the roads. she hangs out with inspectors doing spot checks of pollution emitted by big rigs, and films a trucker who is being fined $ 1, 000 because his vehicle was caught spewing smoke. (the l. a. segment begins about 1 hour and 17 minutes into the film. )
dan edwards is a fellow at the research unit in public cultures at melbourne university. his debut monograph, independent chinese documentary: alternative visions, alternative publics, was published by edinburgh university press in 2015. he lived and worked in china as a magazine journalist from 2007–11, and before that worked at the australian film commission. he was awarded a phd in film and television from monash university in 2014 .
deeply emotive, the film draws on a number of materials, from footage of her time as a reporter to official interviews to cartoon depictions of various pollutants, each wielding tiny axes directed at the human nose and throat .
that comparison has also been made by no less a personage than china’s environmental minister, chen jining. chen said he was “particularly pleased” about the documentary and the way it was “promoting public awareness of environmental health issues. ” indeed, the wide - spread promotion of the documentary by chinese state media signals that the government sees value in the film. the website of people’s daily reposted the film and also published an interview with chai jing. china daily published its own feature on chai and her “crusade against pollution. ”
the film has done this not so much by breaking news so much as bringing it all together. chai combines personal heart - tugging narrative, investigative reporting and explanatory skills to dissect the reasons for the dire air pollution that plagues chinese cities .
as conditions in chester' s mill worsen, big jim and rebecca consider resorting to population control, which drives a wedge between barbie and julia. meanwhile, clues to melanie' s past and her connection to the dome are revealed .
the catalyst for the buying frenzy was a 104 - minute long documentary going into details of the history, causes and impact of china’s smog. an independent production by well - known reporter chai jing, “beneath the dome” was released online over the weekend, and by monday morning had more than 100 million cumulative views .
the film includes interviews with officials from the ministry of environmental protection talking about their inability to regulate those companies. last sunday, the new environment minister, chen jining, compared the video to rachel carson’s “silent spring” in an inaugural news conference with chinese reporters in beijing .
those in china who wanted to view the film on friday afternoon had to search for it in obscure corners of the chinese internet or go to sites like youtube, which is blocked here but is accessible with work - around software .
although documentary making outside official channels began in china at the very end of the 1980s, chinese academic ying qian traces the birth of a specifically activist strain of work to hu jie’s 2004 film searching for lin zhao’s soul. 25 this rough hewn video, made using very basic domestic handy - cams and computer - based editing software, attempts to trace the story of a young writer executed for her opposition to mao’s regime in 1968, through interviews with the aging men and women who knew her. i have analysed the content of this ground - breaking film in detail elsewhere, 26 but here i wish to highlight the innovative way in which the director hu jie positions himself as the “voice” of the film, in a manner that bears some resemblance to chai jing’s approach a decade later .
at the end of the film, chai encourages the public to report polluters to a government hotline. between 8 p. m. saturday and 6 p. m. sunday, the beijing hotline saw the number of calls increase 240% over normal and the city' s environmental protection bureau had to add more operators to the hotline, the beijing youth daily reported .
what could have been an intriguing story has been ruined by a terrible script and even more terrible acting, not to mention a ridiculously over - the - top attempt at political correctness. chester' s mill, a beautiful town in the middle of nowhere with cute little houses and perfectly manicured lawns, is probably also the most diverse place in the entire world. this sparsely populated village that fits neatly under an invisible dome has caucasians, african americans, asians, latinos, native americans, and mixed race lesbian couples! the only group that seems to be missing is single sri lankan gay men. everyone seems to co - exist just fine, even though it' s not clear if anyone in the town actually has a job, except for beth broderick, the local diner waitress who pours coffee all day, natalie martinez, the most incompetent cop ever to make it onto the force, and the dreadful rachelle lefevre as the local hard - as - nails journalist who spends most of her time skulking around through open fields and taking pictures of air. no wonder she lost her big city newspaper job and ended up under this plexiglass shield. once that darned dome comes down, chester' s mill becomes a modern day peyton place and everyone' s deep, dark secrets begin to surface. the problem here, though, is that none of the characters is compelling or sympathetic. we just wanna find out what' s up with that dome, but instead, we' re forced to watch these poorly conceptualized folks interact with each other with eye - rolling dialogue like ,
so they say you' re passin' through town. what are you runnin' from ?
every now and then, someone mentions they' re worried the dome may collapse onto chester' s mill. frankly, my fingers are crossed that' s exactly what will happen. no town this boring should be allowed to stay on the map. dome = 1 chester' s mill = 0
though she refrains from making a direct causal link between smog and the tumor in the film, she says ,
when you carry a life inside you, what she breathes, eats and drinks are your responsibility, and you feel fear .
all this is not to suggest that river elegy and under the dome are not very different in important respects – indeed, divergences in the arguments they present and the manner by which the films were distributed point towards some of the profound changes that have taken place in china since the late 1980s. where river elegy forcefully put a case for continued opening up and market reform of the economy to break the hold of old - time communists wedded to central planning and tight social controls, chai’s film presents a more complex argument. she believes further market reform is necessary in certain areas to break the monopoly state - owned corporations have over parts of the economy. but she also argues for restraint on the part of individuals and businesses alike, and greater regulation to protect china’s seriously degraded environment after two decades of explosive economic growth. unlike the 1980s, many would argue that contemporary china’s key problem is not too little, but too much, industrial development .
although critical official publications and programs have endured sustained governmental pressure and lost much of their investigative edge since the 2000s, the rise of the internet since the turn of this century has played a crucial role in the ongoing dissemination of views, stories and cultural objects not sanctioned by the authorities. 18 for example, the circulation of vast amounts of chinese and foreign filmic content both online and via pirate - dvds from the early 2000s led independent documentarian ou ning to write of “an unprecedented image democracy” in contemporary china. 19), urltoken ] although the online space, like the more critical official chinese media, has been increasingly circumscribed by state - sponsored voices and outright censorship in recent years, the internet not only permitted chai jing to disseminate under the dome to a massive audience without relying on older forms of broadcast media, but also provided a space for public discussion of the issues raised by the film outside officially sanctioned channels. 20 in addition, the internet provided the kind of instant international exposure for both the documentary and the subsequent public debate that would have been impossible in the pre - internet era.
under the dome ( chinese : 穹顶之下 ; pinyin : qióngdǐng zhī xià ) is a 2015 self-financed , chinese documentary film by chai jing , a former china central television journalist , concerning air pollution in china . it was viewed over 150 million times on tencent within three days of its release , and had been viewed a further 150 million times ( total 300 million views ) by the time it was taken offline four days later . chai jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumour in the womb , which had to be removed very soon after her birth . chai blames air pollution for the tumour . the film , which combines footage of a lecture with interviews and factory visits , has been compared with al gore 's an inconvenient truth in both its style and likely impact . the film openly criticises state-owned energy companies , steel producers and coal factories , as well as showing the inability of the ministry of environmental protection to act against the big polluters . despite demonstrating the failure of china 's regulations on pollution , the chinese government at first did not censor the film . instead , the people 's daily reposted the film alongside an interview with chai , while chen jining , the recently appointed minister for environmental protection , praised the film , comparing its significance with silent spring , the 1962 book by us environmentalist rachel carson . however , within a week , the communist party ’s publicity department confidentially ordered the film to be removed . an employee of china business news was suspended for leaking the order . 
under the dome (chinese: 穹顶之下; pinyin: qióngdǐng zhī xià) is a 2015 self-financed, chinese documentary film by chai jing, a former china central television journalist, concerning air pollution in china. it was viewed over 150 million times on tencent within three days of its release, and had been viewed a further 150 million times (total 300 million views) by the time it was taken offline four days later. chai jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumour in the womb, which had to be removed very soon after her birth. chai blames air pollution for the tumour. the film, which combines footage of a lecture with interviews and factory visits, has been compared with al gore's an inconvenient truth in both its style and likely impact. the film openly criticises state-owned energy companies, steel producers and coal factories, as well as showing the inability of the ministry of environmental protection to act against the big polluters. despite demonstrating the failure of china's regulations on pollution, the chinese government at first did not censor the film. instead, the people's daily reposted the film alongside an interview with chai, while chen jining, the recently appointed minister for environmental protection, praised the film, comparing its significance with silent spring, the 1962 book by us environmentalist rachel carson. however, within a week, the communist party ’s publicity department confidentially ordered the film to be removed. an employee of china business news was suspended for leaking the order.
under the dome (chinese: 穹顶之下; pinyin: qióngdǐng zhī xià) is a 2015 self-financed, chinese documentary film by chai jing, a former china central television journalist, concerning air pollution in china. it was viewed over 150 million times on tencent within three days of its release, and had been viewed a further 150 million times (total 300 million views) by the time it was taken offline four days later. chai jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumour in the womb, which had to be removed very soon after her birth. chai blames air pollution for the tumour. the film, which combines footage of a lecture with interviews and factory visits, has been compared with al gore's an inconvenient truth in both its style and likely impact. the film openly criticises state-owned energy companies, steel producers and coal factories, as well as showing the inability of the ministry of environmental protection to act against the big polluters. despite demonstrating the failure of china's regulations on pollution, the chinese government at first did not censor the film. instead, the people's daily reposted the film alongside an interview with chai, while chen jining, the recently appointed minister for environmental protection, praised the film, comparing its significance with silent spring, the 1962 book by us environmentalist rachel carson. however, within a week, the communist party ’s publicity department confidentially ordered the film to be removed. an employee of china business news was suspended for leaking the order.