Jessica Kingdon, welcome to The Daily Show.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's a complete honor to be here.
Well, let's talk about the film.
It's very seldom that you see China,
and it's very seldom that you see China
not from China's perspective
and not from, like, the West's perspective
but just in China. So let's start with that.
How on earth do you get to make a documentary in China
in all the places that you got to make the documentary?
Because the film itself is not politically...
overtly political
and we're not filming in any, um, "sensitive areas."
-Right. -So we were able to be extremely straightforward
about what we were doing,
and a lot of it was just simply asking these locations.
"Hey, we're an independent American documentary film crew
"coming to make a film about China's economic rise.
"Can we come and film in your factory?
Can we come and film in your manner school?"
Et cetera. Surprisingly,
the thing that people were worried about
is not something I anticipated.
A lot of factory managers, um, were worried
that we were gonna scam them
and try to get money out of them.
-In what way? -Like, to hit them up with a bill
-for appearing in our movie later on. -(laughing)
-(chuckles) Yeah, it was amaz... -Wait, are you being serious?
I'm dead serious.
Another suspicion that happened was in the textile man...
one of the textile manufacturing companies.
He thought that we were there trying...
from a corporation trying to, um, take the technology secrets.
You were trying to steal their tech
-and then go and make your own textile... -Yeah.
-Exactly. -It-it feels like what also makes this film different
is you're not telling us anything.
You're just showing us things.
You know, there's no one who's narrating.
There's nobody who's giving you their opinion.
You see, like, you know, low-income workers,
we see the middling class that's burgeoning,
and then we see, like, wealthy Chinese people.
You even take us into, um, a-a factory
that is making very advanced, um, sex dolls,
and I-I just want to play a clip of that.
♪ ♪
So, two things for me.
One, I didn't know sex dolls had gotten that advanced.
Genuinely.
Like, when I was a kid, I remember sex dolls
were, like, these inflatable things.
But, two, I-I don't know if you did this on purpose,
but that whole scene in its entirety is-is--
has so many paradoxes, in a way.
When you were making the film, weren't you ever tempted
to step in and go, like, "This is what this means"?
Or-or you-- Were you happy for us, the viewer,
to just watch for ourselves and decide?
I don't think I could even say what it means,
to be honest with you.
I mean. I think there are so many meanings that are...
-can be found within that one clip even. -Mm-hmm.
But like you said, something that struck me
about this place was the paradox of it, where on one hand,
-it seems like one of the most exploitative factories. -Right.
There are these, um, replicas of bodies
literally made for exploitation.
But on the other hand, the women are handling the dolls,
and also working together, with a certain type of tenderness
that I found very touching.
And the conversations that they're having with one another,
too, are, um, almost accidentally poetic sometimes.
And so, I found that really beautiful, and, um,
that was a paradox that I was really trying to lean into,
-and look for and draw out. -Mm-hmm.
And it wasn't something that I had to go in
and try to manufacture.
It was just something that was already there.
And I think a lot of this type of filmmaking
is about the patience to sort of sit
-with these sort of moments... -Oh, yes.
...and allow them to-to emerge,
instead of trying to go and, um, you know, prove a certain point.
It's wonderful to just see,
just a world happening, but in a way
where it doesn't feel A-- like you said-- manufactured,
but also, where something is happening.
You know, there's a lot of stories
that happen in how people live.
And it was nice to watch that in a documentary--
just see people living-- but then also,
-there's a story being told by how the people live. -Right.
It's just the art of observing and seeing what comes up.
-So... -Yeah. No, you're a better filmmaker
than I would ever be. I'd always be tempted
to, like, jump in, just be...
I was very tempted a lot of the times.
It took a lot of discipline.
-You didn't see the outtakes, yeah. -Okay, okay, okay, okay.
You know, the China I had known for so many years was just
all industrial and very-- and in this documentary we start to see
a new world that is forming where people are now learning
how to be influencers and the culture is changing.
Would it be safe to say that there's almost, now,
"the Chinese dream" like the American dream,
where people are going, "We want to ascend in how
-we live, earn, create"? -There's a lot of similarities
with the Chinese dream and the American dream.
I mean, the one thing that they both have in common
is this idea, uh, this quest for upward mobility
and this belief in the system
that you will be rewarded materially for your hard work
and, you know, are able to work yourself up
to a middle-class lifestyle, which, of course, we know
is not true for everyone. Um, but within China,
I-I found that it was just interesting to see
how a lot of it mirrors American style capitalism as well.
There's so many different parallels that we wouldn't
necessarily see on the surface, but if you kind of look closer
you see a lot of it's echoed with one another.
One of my favorite moments in the documentary
is where you are in the factory where there are--
where they are making
the Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" hats.
They're, like, they're making the MAGA hats,
but you saw them making the "Keep America Great,"
and you thought-you thought they were messing up.
Like, you thought they had totally messed up the-the...
-the slogan. -That's right. This was, um, during
Trump's re-election campaign.
The manager told us, "Oh, you know,
"all of the, uh, MAGA hats are gone
because they were bought out by the Canadians."
-Not something I would have expected. -(laughs)
But okay, sure, Canada, uh, MAGA hats.
Um, but instead, "Hey, we're actually making, um,
Keep America Great, um, scarves,"
and I thought that that was kind of maybe a mistake
-or a mistranslation or something. -Yeah.
But we shot it anyway and they said,
"No, no, this is his, um, new campaign slogan."
And sure enough, six months later or whatever,
we were seeing it everywhere, so...
There's a saying that businesspeople in Yiwu,
the city where we were shooting, are ahead of the curve,
ahead of the political trends
because they are kind of like the base of manufacturing
-where all of these global issues first come. -Wow.
-Yeah. -I definitely want to go.
I just want to see what my future is.
-Yeah. -What shirts are they making about me?
-Exactly. -What, "Free Trevor Noah"?
I'm-- wait, I'm gonna be in prison?
Um... (laughs)
Jessica, congratulations again on the Oscar nomination,
and, um, thank you for making, really,
one of the most fascinating documentaries out.
Oh, thank you so much.
This has been an absolute honor.
All right, people, Jessica's documentary Ascension
is now streaming on Paramount Plus.
Trust me, you want to watch it.
It's gonna teach you so much.