A Bad Joke (Oct. 8 Class)

The story, “A Bad Joke” in Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom is a classic example of censorship and the lack of freedom of speech that plagues China. In the story, a man makes a joke that is at first innocent with no namedropping, but through the grapevine it gets twisted into using the name of the Chairman, which ends up getting him into trouble. Because this was a negative joke toward a political figure, it is seen as a huge no in Chinese society, because the Chairman should be respected, not mocked. I found this interesting, because I knew that China did not have the same freedom of speech that we do here in America, but I didn’t really consider that something so seemingly innocent could be such a bad thing. Here in America, we obviously have freedom of speech, and I see instances almost daily of people mocking political figures, celebrities, or other people that are supposed to be looked up to. For example, just about anything President Trump posts on Twitter ends up being made fun of in some way or another, but nobody is out there getting arrested for it. The other day, Trump tweeted out a meme of the band Nickelback with the caption “LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH” (the image itself has since been removed due to copyright violations and the fact that the band complained). Within hours, many people were editing out the photo and replacing it with other photos, whether they were dumb, random, funny, or whatever else, to create a fake tweet that looks like Trump posted some weird picture with the same caption as above. Since this is America, nobody is getting in trouble for this, and everyone finds it quite humorous. This is the same type of situation as what happened in Ha Jin’s story, but due to cultural and political differences, the consequences differ greatly.