Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Showrunner: China’s Cultural Revolution’s Similarities to Cancel Culture Are ‘Hard to Ignore’

The new Netflix sci-fi series 3 Body Problem is provoking intense online debate over its opening sequence depicting a struggle session during China’s Cultural Revolution in which a physics professor is violently beaten by Mao’s Red Guard.

Is it a thinly veiled commentary on present-day cancel culture? Now one of the series showrunners has weighed in on the speculation.

David Benioff, whose other credits include HBO’s Game of Thrones, has denied the show is commenting on cancel culture while at the same time admitting that the similarities “are hard to ignore.”

The much-discussed sequence takes place in 1966 and shows a struggle session at Beijing’s Tsinghua University where a physics professor is beaten to a bloody pulp by Red Guards after he refuses to renounce Einstein’s theory of relativity. His wife is also brought out to denounce his “counter-revolutionary” and “imperialistic” ideas.

“This isn’t a commentary on cancel culture,” Benioff told The Hollywood Reporter. “But we do tend to move in cycles in terms of human history, and we’re going through a certain period of the cycle right now. There are many very significant differences between the current time and the Cultural Revolution. But there are also some similarities. It was never something where we were like, ‘We should do this show because we want to make a commentary on that.’ But it is interesting that the parallels are there and are hard to ignore.”

Clips from the opening sequence have gone viral.

3 Body Problem didn’t shoot the sequence in China, where the Cultural Revolution is now considered a taboo subject. Instead, Netflix shot the scene at Shepperton Studios in the U.K.

Netflix isn’t available in China though pirated versions of the show are available for download, with some viewers reportedly complaining that the show depicts China in a negative light.

The series is based on the novel by Chinese author Liu Cixin. In the original book, the Cultural Revolution scenes take place in the middle of the story, with some reports saying the novelist didn’t want to attract attention from Beijing authorities. The novel’s English translation moves the sequence to the beginning of the book.

Cancel culture has often been compared to China’s Cultural Revolution — most notably, the use of young, college-age students as zealous enforcers of radical left-wing ideology. Other similarities include the destruction of historical artifacts and the encouraging of family members to denounce each other in public.

During his time in the White House, then-President Donald Trump called cancel culture the “very definition of totalitarianism.”

“Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this. Many of them know exactly what they are doing,” he said in 2020.

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