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Woke Disney has recently refused to cut gay kissing scene from their newest animated movie Lightyear despite bowing to Chinese censors multiple times over the last few years.
On Friday Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board said that it was Disney’s decision to ax the animated movie ‘Lightyear’ from the country’s theaters after refusing to cut scenes that ‘promote’ homosexuality.
But Disney has been slammed for their hypocritical support of gay rights while they fail to condemn China‘s genocide of the Uyghurs and bow to the country’s censorship requests.
Officially, the Communist Party only allows 34 foreign films per theatrical release each year — but a harsh crackdown in 2021 made it harder than ever to secure Chinese release for big US blockbusters.
The Simpsons episode on Tiananmen Square goes missing on Disney Plus
Last November an episode of The Simpsons that featured a joke about Tiananmen Square disappeared from Disney+ in Hong Kong.
First aired in 2005, the 12th episode of season 16 shows the family travelling to China where Marge’s sister Selma tries to adopt a baby, stopping at Tiananmen Square, the site of a deadly 1989 crackdown against democracy protesters.
The cartoon shows a sign there that reads ‘On this site, in 1989, nothing happened’, a nod to China’s campaign to purge memories of the massacre.
An episode of The Simpsons which features a joke about Tiananmen Square is missing from Disney+ in Hong Kong
It then shows Selma standing before a tank, referencing the famous photo from the Tiananmen crackdown of a lone man standing in front of a tank.
The episode also contains pointed comments about Tibet, where Beijing has been accused of religious oppression, and the Cultural Revolution, a devastating period of upheaval in the last decade of Mao Zedong’s rule.
Disney+ started streaming in Hong Kong last November and viewers quickly noticed the absence of the episode on the platform.
Mulan (2020) edits out Uyghur internment camps and thanks CCP officials
The live action remake of Mulan in 2020, reportedly edited out Uyghur internment camps.
‘Disney’s live-action film Mulan (2020) was filmed in Xinjiang, with Uyghur internment camps edited out of the background. Disney actually thanked Xinjiang CCP officials in the credits of the movie,’ Florida Gov DeSantis said in March.
The thank you prompted a boycott of Disney.
Disney’s Mulan, which was released in 2020, was slammed for editing out Uyghur internment camps
Dr. Strange (2016) accused of casting white Tilda Swinton to play Tibetan character to avoid upsetting China
Disney-owned Marvel was accused of whitewashing after it recast a major Tibetan character as white Tilda Swinton for fear of jeopardizing the film’s chances in China.
Marvel screenwriter C Robert Cargill claimed Swinton was hired for the traditionally male and Asian mystical mentor the Ancient One, because the comic book character ‘comes from a region of the world that is in [a] very weird political place’.
He told the Guardian that the character ‘originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s b*llshit and risk the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.’
He claimed that casting a Chinese actor would still have been deeply problematic and unpopular.
China claims that Tibet has been part of it since the Yuan dynasty but Tibet claims independence and views China as an occupying force.
Dr. Strange was accused of whitewashing a major Tibetan character for fear of jeopardizing the film’s chances in China
Marvel Studios, owned by Disney, has not had a film enter Chinese theaters since Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019. That film grossed $200 million in China.
Disney’s 2021 blockbuster Shang-Chi was not released in mainland China despite starring a Chinese superhero because of 2017 tweets from star Simu Liu where he called China a ‘third world’ country, BusinessInsider.com reported.
In May China officially banned the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Though no formal reason was given for the ban, the movie had outraged the Chinese Communist Party by including a brief shot showing a newspaper rack for the Epoch Times, which is highly critical of the party.
Though the newsstand is visible for only a split second in a trailer for the film, Chinese internet users dissected the footage frame-by-frame and vented their fury about the newspaper’s inclusion.
Disney has previously allowed LGBT characters to be removed or changed in its films for more conservative markets.
At least four recent feature films were altered to appease the views of leadership in China, Russia and the Middle East.
Pixar released Onward, an animated feature that tells the tale of two elf brothers who embark on a magical quest to spend time with their late father, in February 2020.
The scene in question reportedly shows the female lead in film voiced by actress Uzo Aduba, kissing her ‘female partner’
In Marvel’s Eternals, a same-sex kiss shared by Phastos and his husband, Ben Stoss, was edited out in the Arab Emirates, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Ethiopia, Palestine, Syria and Turkey. The kiss is pictured above
The film included a secondary character, Officer Spector, a cyclops cop for the city of New Mushroomton, who was in a lesbian relationship.
Officer Spector, voiced by Lena Waithe, mentions her relationship during a parenting discussion with another secondary character: ‘It’s not easy being a new parent – my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, okay?’
The line sparked outrage is several eastern countries, resulting in a ban of its release in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Deadline reported.
Russia, which has a history of censoring gay content, changed the word ‘girlfriend’ to ‘partner’ in the parenting scene. Local advertisements for the film also avoided mentioning Officer’s Spector’s gender.
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