China: Amateur short film satirizes internet censorship · Global Voices
Robert Woo

Famous amateur film-maker, Hu Ge, has recently made a new satirical piece on the Internet censorship in China. The 7-minute piece, ‘Animal World: the Home-living Animal’ is styled as an animal-planet type of documentary and has attracted hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of a few days. The piece presents to the audience the so-called ‘home-living animals’, who are in fact China’s tens of millions of netizens.
宅居动物的外形酷似人类，长着人类那样大大的眼睛和耳朵。他那奇特的生活方式至今还让人们叹为观止。表面上他们各自为阵、互不往来，但实际上他们通过一种叫网络的东西，互相联系。
对于其他动物而言，幽深的网络往往难以捉摸。这里充满的各种危险。在地球上，没有比神秘的互联网更可怕，更不利于生物生存的地方了。但是，对于宅居动物来说，这里，却是天堂。
The film portrays various common patterns of using the Internet. For instance, we see a ‘female home-living animal’ who runs a private textile business simply by utilizing her computer all day; a male flirts with his potential lover by showing off his muscle in front of the computer camera while elsewhere a naked male surfs the Internet while tucked up inside his blanket.
In the film, the ‘human beings’ are portrayed as paternalistic figures who lovingly protect the home-living species by weeding out unhealthy material on the Internet.
曾有一度，网络上的色情，和不良信息，使他们的身心受到了伤害，但现在，他们受到了来自人类的无微不至的关怀和保护。
One form of this ‘care and protection’ is shown when a male home-living animal is on the verge of tears, when his enjoyment of an unexpectedly violent scene taken from the film Hero has been interrupted by a full-screen warning message
Han Han, the tremendously popular blogger who is famous for his witty criticism of authority, is cast in the film as a male home-living animal afflicted with ‘Compulsive Thinking Disorder’.
思考强迫症,是一种普遍存在于宅居动物中的疾病。这只雄性每天都要花大量的时间去思考各种各样的问题。这种病，不但具有极大的危害性，而且，还具有一定的传染性。因此，人类采取了一切可能的措施，来保护这些可爱的小动物。
In the film, we see that Han finishes writing a blog, but it is forever stuck in the ‘under review’ phase until his computer finally crashes. What happens to another home-living male is far worse. After he finishes an article, a team of plainclothes police break into his room and carry him away.
The Home-living Animal has a resemblance to another amateur film, The War of Internet Addiction, which touches on the recent ban on the World of Warcraft game. But for many people, it is seen as a powerful criticism of control in general and has attracted at least millions of views. Up to now, both of these films have curiously survived the Internet censorship.