Disney+ launched in Hong Kong earlier this month, finally giving the city’s residents access to all its various IPs. Well, almost all of them; it turns out one particular episode of The Simpsons has been omitted from the streaming platform due to its references to Tiananmen Square. Season 16, Episode 12 of The Simpsons finds Aunt Selma heading to China to adopt a baby, with Homer posing as her husband. When the family attempts to flee the country with the newborn in hand, they end up in Tiananmen Square, where a sign reads, “Tien An Men Square: On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” Selma is then stopped by the head of the adoption agency as she arrives in a tank, making a visual reference to the famed Tank Man from the 1989 Beijing protests and crackdown. As one might expect,...
‘Tis the season for classic holiday songs, which means ’tis also the season for society to wrestle with outdated and offensive holiday lyrics. Our latest discourse is brought to you by Nick Cave, who is incensed at the BBC’s decision to censor a homophobic slur in The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”. In the latest edition of his Red Hand Files, Cave wrote that the BBC had “tampered with, compromised, tamed, and neutered” a track that he considers “the greatest Christmas song ever written.” “Fairytale of New York” is a duet with Kirsty MacColl that first appeared on The Pogues’ 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. The lyrics are set on Christmas Eve “in the drunk tank,” and features frontman Shane MacGowan trading insults with MacColl. MacGowan’s character calls MacColl’s “...
Schitt’s Creek is currently airing on Comedy Central as part of a new syndication deal inked shortly before the beloved series made history at the 2020 Emmys. However, the TV network isn’t exactly broadcasting all of the episodes as intended — at least not around the world. According to Schitt’s Creek co-creator and star Dan Levy, Comedy Central in India has censored out a kiss between his character David Rose and Ted Mullens (Dustin Milligan). In a tweet on Tuesday, Levy called out the TV network and attached video proof of the doctored footage. The clip, meant to be a promo, focuses on the spin-the-bottle scene of the Season 5 episode “Housewarming”. While kisses between two women and between a man and a woman are shown, the one between two men — David and Ted — is edited out completely....
South Park has a new home. As of today, June 24th, all 23 seasons of Comedy Central’s beloved animated series are streaming on HBO Max. Well, with the exception of five episodes. The five episodes in question — “Super Best Friends” from season five, “Cartoon Wars Part I and Part II” from season ten, and “200” and “201” from season fourteen — either feature or reference a character based on the Prophet Muhammad. HBO Max agreed to exclude the episodes from its platform when it first acquired the series from Verizon, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The same five episodes were previously pulled from television syndication and South Park‘s previous streaming home at Hulu. The decision to remove the five episodes is due to “safety concerns,” as South Park creators Trey Parker and ...
As a wave of media companies are pulling content that could be deemed offensively racist, the BBC-owned UKTV has removed a classic episode of the sitcom Fawlty Towers for its use of racial slurs. The show’s star and writer John Cleese has spoken out against the removal, saying executives trying “to hang onto their jobs” are “too stupid to see that” the episode was mocking the derogatory language, not supporting it. In the episode, entitled “The Germans”, Cleese’s Basil Fawlty has a conversation with Ballard Berkeley’s Major Gowen. The Major recalls a time he took a woman to a cricket game played by an Indian team, during which he uses racial epithets when referring to Indians (“w*gs”) and West Indians (“n*ggers”). While the episode is remembered fondly for its repetition of the phrase “don...