China’s top streaming platforms censored roughly six minutes of content from HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion during its Thursday debut. The excluded content includes pop stars Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, gay fans, a shot of actor Matt LeBlanc in his underwear, and footage from the South Korean boy band BTS, which was previously accused of having “insulted” China.
While Friends is extremely popular in China, all three of the nation’s major streaming platforms — iQiyi, Alibaba’s Youku, and Tencent Video — had entirely cut appearances by Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, BTS, as well as other scenes, according to a report by Variety.
While some shared their dismay on social media, others expressed their support for the censorship, arguing anyone who has spoken ill of China should be banned.
Last October, BTS offended Chinese nationalists by omitting the s0-called sacrifices of Chinese soldiers in the Korean War in an acceptance speech for a prize celebrating the band’s contributions to U.S.-Korea relations, reports Variety.
During the Korean War, thousands of Chinese communist troops launched massive counterattacks against U.S. and Republic of Korea troops, driving the allied forces from North Korea, ending any thoughts the U.S. may have had for a quick or conclusive victory, notes History.com.
Lady Gaga has become persona non grata in China after meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2016. As for Justin Bieber, the pop star first faced backlash in China in 2014 after photographing himself visiting Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni war shrine.
The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture formally banned Bieber from performing in the country in 2017, citing “a series of bad behaviors” both on- and off-stage, reports Variety.
In the uncensored HBO Max version of the Friends reunion, Lady Gaga appears for nearly three minutes to sing a rendition of “Smelly Cat” with actress Lisa Kudrow, who plays Phoebe. The pop star then thanks Kudrow for being “the different one, the one who was really herself” on the show.
The censored Chinese version reportedly allows Kudrow to sing a verse of the song by herself for roughly 45 seconds, before cutting to the next scene — cutting Lady Gaga’s performance out entirely. Later in the special, a scene in which Bieber struts down a catwalk vanishes without a trace.
China also erased LGBTQ references, deleting a testimony of a gay Friends fan, Ricardo, who talked about how the show offered him some sense of belonging, adding, “I was a gay man who wanted to have hair like Jennifer Aniston, so you can imagine how lonely I sometimes felt.”
Youku also deleted another scene in which a woman pulls her girlfriend on camera, stating, “Like every Chandler, I found my Monica.”
And then, in a confusing act of censorship, both iQiyi and Tencent banned a classic scene in which Monica recounts how Chandler and Joey helped her overcome a severe jellyfish sting by peeing on her.
As for Youku, the streaming platform kept the pee references, but deleted banter just after that scene about what the cast was wearing the first time they met.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no stranger to censorship. Last month, China deleted feminists from social media ahead of the release of nation’s latest ten-year census, which was expected to show a sharp decline in birth rates for the fourth consecutive year.
In December, Chinese social media platform WeChat deleted a message posted by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, accusing him of misleading the public with his words.
Examples of Chinese censorship are virtually endless. And the communist regime even gets help with censorship from U.S. companies.
Last year, U.S. based video conferencing app Zoom reportedly added a new feature to its app that would help Beijing target Chinese users. In 2018, a senior research scientist at Google quit the company in protest over the tech giant’s development of a censored search engine for China.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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