Hide this lesbian love that I can't see.
Chinese censorship has cracked down on the TV series
Friends
, unleashing the ire of fans of the American series.
An ire in turn purged from social networks.
The long-awaited return of the cult 1990s series to Chinese streaming sites on Friday was disrupted when fans noticed that all reference to the homosexuality of Carol, the former partner of Ross, played by David, had disappeared. Schwimmer.
On the Weibo social network, the equivalent of Twitter in China, the hashtag "Friends censored" has been viewed tens of millions of times.
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In the viewfinder, the changes made to the second episode of the first season, as broadcast by the Bilibili, Tencent, iQiyi and Youku platforms.
“
I discovered that all the dialogues mentioning the homosexuality of Carol, the ex-wife of Ross, had been cut.
The cuts are obvious”
, writes a user whose message has attracted more than 177,000 “Likes”.
The communist power has increased in recent years its censorship of "sensitive" themes such as sexuality, violence or politics, particularly in imported works.
An attitude that does not fail to arouse the irony of some Internet users.
“Why talk about homosexuality?
There is no such thing here, where eternal perfection reigns.
Everybody is happy under this government
,” quipped another Weibo user.
These criticisms were in turn deleted from the social network and the subversive hashtag was replaced on Sunday with another:
“Why is Friends so popular”.
Same fate for Bohemian Rhapsody and Fight Club
The series, which aired from 1994 to 2004 in the United States, is very well known in China, where millions of people have watched it on DVD.
Many young Chinese say they learned English with the help of
Friends
, which had already been streamed by Sohu between 2012 and 2013, without being censored.
It was unclear whether the changes to
Friends
episodes were enforced by the authorities.
In 2019, several scenes from
Bohemian Rhapsody
referring to the sexuality of Freddie Mercury, the singer of the group Queen, were also erased from the version broadcast in China.
More recently, David Fincher's cult film
Fight Club
aroused the amazement of moviegoers, for a truncated ending at the antipodes of the original work.
After an outcry, the film's ending was finally retconned.
Some producers sometimes take it upon themselves to cut scenes from films or series in the hope of obtaining authorization for the Chinese market.
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