This is Episode 12 of Season 16, the one where the Simpson family travels to China to adopt a child. During a detour through Mao’s mausoleum, Homer, the father, bends tenderly over the balmy body of the Grand Helmsman as on a cradle: “Oh … watch him sleep … like a little angel who allegedly killed 50 million people!“All followed by a few” gouzi gouzi “.
We are in the tone of the series: burlesque, insolent. In another scene, Tiananmen Square, a prominent sign reads: “Here in 1989 nothing happened“, reference of the authors to the way in which Beijing tries to erase from the collective memory the massacre of the pro-democracy demonstrations. It is moreover with a threatening tank that a woman rushes on the Simpsons to prevent them from leaving again with the child.
In short, all of this the Hong Kong people cannot see. Disney + arrived in the territory two weeks ago without this episode, which is however nothing new since it was broadcast for the first time in 2005 in the United States, and was then repeated on all televisions of the world.
At this point, it is not known whether it was Disney + that demonstrated self-censorship by removing it from its catalog on its own or whether it was the authorities who asked it to do so. The US entertainment giant is not commenting, nor is the Hong Kong government.
But Disney has never hidden its appetite for the huge market that represents China, where so far no American streaming giant has yet launched and the entertainment company has been criticized several times for its concessions. in power. Like Hollywood in general: references to Tibet removed, Chinese villain characters turned into North Korean bullies, ban on addressing the massacre of Tiananmen or the fate of the Uighurs. In 2016, in Doctor Strange, a blockbuster of the Marvel franchise, a Tibetan character has even been attributed Celtic origins so as not to offend the Chinese government. This time, you might as well give up on the (restricted) public in Hong Kong if in return it can open the doors to the Chinese market.
Disney would have deleted the episode where the family visits Beijing and Tiananmen Square from the series The Simpsons broadcast on “Disney +” in Hong Kong. The episode, with this image, is already banned in China. https://t.co/jxCLQ83S0X 阿森 一族 集 數 重現 天安門 坦克 人 一幕 -disney- 香港 無 上架 pic.twitter.com/sPIiwRHCpJ
– Yann Rousseau (@yannsan) November 27, 2021
However, this story says a lot about the takeover of the territory by the Chinese authorities. Hong Kong, with its status apart, has long enjoyed important artistic and political freedoms from the mainland. But after the gigantic protests in 2019, Beijing tightened the screws, ensuring the loyalty of the administration and elected officials. A draconian national security law passed in June sentenced dissidents to heavy prison terms.
This year, the government also expanded its film censorship powers, allowing it to block the distribution of films, domestic or foreign, that it considers undermining national security.
Last week, the leader of the territory, Carrie Lam, the armed wing of the Chinese regime, pledged to “fill gaps“in terms of the Internet in Hong Kong. Some fear that it will replicate the” great electronic wall “which in China is already blocking most of the major international social networks.
For the moment The Simpsons remains an exception: other satirical content about Chinese power is still available on other streaming platforms in Hong Kong. For the moment.