When a family story becomes a geopolitical narrative

Editor's note: Charles Zhou, a special commentator for CGTN, is a film critic. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

There are films that succeed because they are spectacular. There are others that succeed because they are timely. Then there are those rare films whose emotional force lies in their quietness. Dear You belongs unmistakably to the third category.

Produced on a modest budget with no marquee stars, the film tells an intimate story about migration, remembrance and filial devotion. Its emotional center is neither political conflict nor historical triumph but an act of extraordinary human constancy. Inspired by real experiences within overseas Chinese communities, the film follows lives shaped by separation, memory and the enduring obligations that bind families across oceans and generations.

Director Lan Hongchun said that over 90% of the movie's plot is based on real events. That claim is more than promotional rhetoric. It provides an important clue to understanding the film's moral architecture.

The story was inspired by countless overseas Chinese who, because of war, migration, poverty, or changing political circumstances, were unable to return home. Yet distance did not sever responsibility. Through letters, remittances and acts of quiet sacrifice, they continued to care for parents, siblings and relatives whom they might never see again.

The emotional core of the narrative is embodied in Xie Nanzhi. Even after Zheng Musheng's death, she continues to write letters and send financial support to the family for nearly two decades. Her actions are neither heroic in the conventional cinematic sense nor politically symbolic within the story itself. They represent something older and more enduring: gratitude transformed into moral responsibility. In Confucian ethics, remembrance is not simply an emotion; it is a duty. Dear You gives cinematic expression to that ethical tradition.

This reading is not merely an interpretation imposed by critics. It is confirmed by the director's own account of the film and by its official narrative materials. The film presents diaspora not as an instrument of political mobilization but as a community held together by memory, kinship and reciprocity. Its centripetal force is not ideology but gratitude.

Perhaps this explains why audiences throughout Asia have responded so powerfully. Reports from overseas screenings reveal remarkably similar reactions. Many viewers described the film as helping them understand the sacrifices made by parents and grandparents who left China decades earlier. Others spoke of recognizing their own family histories for the first time.

In Singapore and Malaysia, audience members arrived with elderly parents, while younger viewers brought children, turning screenings into intergenerational conversations about migration and belonging. The film became less an object of entertainment than an occasion for remembering.

Yet this deeply human story acquired an unexpected second life once it entered international political discourse.

Rather than asking why audiences identified so strongly with the film's portrayal of migration and remembrance, some media commentary quickly reframed the discussion around questions of geopolitics. The film itself became secondary. What mattered instead was what the film supposedly represented.

That shift – from cultural text to political evidence – is the real subject of this essay.

For communication scholars, the distinction is crucial. Every cultural work can be understood at several different levels. First comes the work itself: its narrative, characters and artistic intentions. Second comes audience reception: How different communities interpret and respond to the story. Only then comes institutional interpretation: the meanings later attached to the work by governments, media organizations and political actors. Confusing these levels leads to analytical errors.

It is one thing to observe that a government embraces a successful cultural work as an example of national soft power; it is another to conclude that such an embrace defines the work's original meaning.

That distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain in an era when geopolitics permeates cultural criticism. A family drama is no longer allowed to remain simply a family drama. A story of migration becomes evidence of influence. An expression of gratitude becomes a strategic message. The artwork itself gradually disappears behind the political narratives constructed around it.

The late American sociologist Todd Gitlin anticipated precisely this phenomenon. In The Whole World Is Watching, his landmark study of the American New Left, Gitlin argued that mass media do not merely report reality; they organize it through interpretive frames. These frames shape what audiences notice, which questions appear relevant and which conclusions seem self-evident before viewers have encountered the evidence for themselves. Media framing, in other words, is not primarily about censorship. It is about establishing the conceptual boundaries within which public understanding takes place.

Gitlin's insight remains remarkably relevant today. The international conversation surrounding Dear You illustrates how quickly an artistic work can be relocated from the realm of culture to the realm of strategic competition. Once that frame is established, viewers are subtly encouraged to ask not "What is this film saying?" but "What political purpose does this film serve?" The first question belongs to criticism. The second belongs to geopolitics. They are not identical, and conflating them impoverishes both art and public discourse.

Gitlin's insight into media framing also points to a deeper philosophical question: What happens when a society loses the ability to encounter unfamiliar ideas before placing them into predetermined categories?

The late University of Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom explored a related concern in his influential 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom's central argument was not simply about education; it was about the intellectual habits that sustain a democratic society. He warned that when people abandon the pursuit of truth and approach every idea primarily through inherited ideological assumptions, intellectual openness can paradoxically become a form of intellectual closure.

Bloom was writing about American higher education and the decline of engagement with the great works of philosophy and literature. Yet his broader insight has relevance beyond the university classroom. A truly open society requires more than the ability to tolerate different opinions; it requires the willingness to encounter a work, a culture, or an idea on its own terms before judging it through familiar political frameworks.

This is precisely the challenge presented by Dear You.

The film can certainly be discussed within the context of China's cultural diplomacy and soft power. Like every successful cultural product, from Hollywood films to Korean dramas to Japanese animation, it inevitably becomes part of broader conversations about national image and global influence. Such discussions are legitimate.

But when a political interpretation becomes the only acceptable interpretation, something essential is lost. The film's artistic meaning, the director's stated intentions, and the audience's lived emotional responses risk being overshadowed by a framework imposed from outside.

In this sense, the debate surrounding Dear You reveals a broader dilemma in contemporary cultural criticism. Are we still capable of encountering another society's stories with curiosity before suspicion? Can a film about family sacrifice and diaspora memory be appreciated first as a human story before it becomes evidence in a geopolitical argument?

Bloom's warning is ultimately a warning against intellectual reductionism: the tendency to replace complexity with certainty and human experience with ideological categories. A culture that believes it already knows what a work of art means before engaging with the work itself may become less open precisely at the moment it believes it is defending openness.

The task of criticism is therefore not to eliminate political interpretation. Culture and politics are inevitably connected. The task is to preserve the distinction between interpretation and reduction – to allow a work of art to reveal its own complexity before assigning it a predetermined meaning.

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