Hong Kong: Disney+ Removes a Simpsons Episode Over Tiananmen Square Reference

Hong Kong: Disney+ Removes a Simpsons Episode Over Tiananmen Square Reference

We must never ever upset Communist China. Never. Disney is fantastic at abiding by the rule.

Disney+ users in Hong Kong cannot watch season 16’s twelfth episode. The company removed the episode because the family visited China, including Tiananmen Square.

In the episode, Tiananmen Square has a monument repeating China’s talking point about the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

It also has a line of tanks with one of Marge’s sisters in front of them, referring to the infamous tank man.

Disney+ appears to censor episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong referencing Tiananmen Massacre https://t.co/YCIahhhswB pic.twitter.com/kDP6EdPwGp

— Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (@hkfp) November 29, 2021

How do I irony? Disney is *litrally* doing what The Simpsons mocked China for doing about Tiananmen Square.

It also shows just how much influence China has on Hong Kong. The city has passed many bills limiting free speech, especially when it comes to insulting China. Oh, wait. I mean, “banning films deemed contrary to China’s national security interests.”

Do the laws apply to streaming services? It’s all too vague, with some people thinking the legislature will eventually pass laws targeting streaming services while the city said it already has laws for those companies:

The content rules governing streaming services in Hong Kong remain somewhat unclear, although analysts believe it’s only a matter of time before they are hit with the same restrictions that are undercutting the city’s once vibrant film sector and international journalist community. When asked in August whether the new film law would apply to online platforms, a spokesperson for the city’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau told the Hong Kong Free Press that “other” laws apply to the internet: “[TV] broadcast and the Internet are subject to other applicable law and regulations. Whether an act constitutes a crime or otherwise would depend on its specific circumstances and evidence, and cannot be taken in isolation or generalized,” they spokesperson said.

In other words, Disney did this on its own. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Netflix still airs pieces that would never air in China:

Netflix nonetheless continues to host several pieces of content that would surely be banned from theatrical exhibition according to the new laws. Still streaming on Netflix in Hong Kong is Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, director Joe Piscatella’s documentary about the Hong Kong student activist who became the face of the mass pro-democracy movement that brought the city to a standstill in 2014.

As I said, Disney loves playing by China’s rule. In 2007, it cut scenes of Chow Yun-Fat as a bald scarred pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End “for vilifying and defacing the Chinese.”

China blocked Disney from releasing Christopher Robin in 2018 because activists made Dictator President Xi Jinping look like Winnie the Pooh in memes.

Oh, let’s not forget the whole Mulan debacle. Disney filmed Mulan in Xinjiang, where China enslaves Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in concentration camps. Then the company gave a “Special Thanks” note to government departments linked to those concentration camps:

Calls to boycott the live-action remake strengthened when audience members realised that Disney offered “Special Thanks” in the closing credits to government departments linked with Uighur detention camps. The Publicity Department of CPC Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Committee and the Turpan Municipal Bureau of Public Security are both acknowledged at the end of the film. The former department is used to create state propaganda in the region, while the latter is accused of human rights violations for its involvement in the internment camps.

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