Usually, they only censor the explicit content. But this is the first time that AI tools were used to directly alter the content of the original film.
By the way, the film has been withdrawn from a wide release in China after receiving too many complaints.
ridiculous chinese censorship
*looks inside* *Private company (the producers of the movie in fact) makes decision to do extremely stupid and unnecessary thing for Chinese localisation*
*Media blames Chinese Government for thing the Chinese Government didn’t ask for*
EDIT: Is this even real? I am suspicious - https://hexbear.net/comment/6521304
EDIT2: Yeah it’s real but the blame still isn’t China itself.
I’m starting to get a little suspicious of Xiaohongshu at this point, they seem to be so determined to prove that China isn’t some utopia that they even go all in on western style anti-China propaganda efforts. If their goal is to get people to actually understand China properly, they’re doing a terrible job with posts titled like this.
How is this anti-China propaganda? This is openly discussed on Chinese social media. The only reason I post is because Hexbear has a large queer community who care about this stuff.
The title is misleading and completely ignores the focus: that this is a ridiculous bit of censorship by a company, not “evil China” censoring things because they are evil. This is “Rainbow-washing” type of propaganda, the same we saw when Israel attacked Iran, or hell, when they attack Palestine, trying to get people with progressive politics to hate them and refuse to even consider critical support for them on the grounds of not passing a purity test. That may not be how you intended it, but that is how it has come across to me, the title you used is virtually identical to western propaganda against China, though they tend to use words like “Insidious” or “Authoritarian” not “Ridiculous”.
that is how it has come across to me
Why would you assume bad-faith posting here on hexbear though, especially from a long-standing user who is quite clearly better-informed on China than 99.999% of the website.
I didn’t call it bad faith, I’m saying it works the same way western anti-China propaganda does.
The title is NOT misleading lol. This is literally being discussed on the social media. Here is a Zhihu thread (think Chinese quora, one of the most popular social media platforms, though very much lib coded) with hundreds of discussion comments.
It appears that it is you who have fallen for Western anti-China propaganda that somehow all Chinese people are mindless drones that support 100% the government does.
No, we discuss and complain about things on social media all the time lol. You just have to be careful with the key phrases you’re using.
What they appear to be saying, which you aren’t addressing in this reply, is that this is the fault of a Chinese company and not the CPC directly, while the headline clearly implies that it’s the fault of the CPC in a more direct sense, like they ordered this.
The censorship itself is a process.
If the semantic argument here is that the censorship bureau doesn’t do all the cutting by itself, then technically the government doesn’t censor anything at all. The government simply tells you what is and not acceptable. The party that submits the product for licensing and approval has to do all the alterations.
As I mentioned, there are only two film companies that are allowed to handle imported films, and have done so for at least two decades importing hundreds of foreign films over the years. So these people know what they’re doing. The ridiculous part here is how they thought it would be a good idea to buy the film distribution rights and use AI tool to alter the contents to get around the issue. People aren’t buying it this time lol.
I’m not saying that the bureau is not censoring something by preventing it from being screened in X form due to content, obviously that is censorship and I’m sure you could produce for me an endless list of things that they are absolutely to blame for censoring in a targeted manner on socially reactionary grounds. I guess I would say that it’s semantically true that the headline is misleading in that it makes it sound like the CPC is responsible in a direct manner for AI being used to make the couple het, but that’s not what I was talking about.
What I mean is that, while a number of the scenes being removed is commonplace, and sometimes there are other revisions like the one people made fun of at the end of Fight Club (which I think was clumsy but not a bad change, especially given that it was more faithful to the book!), something like this is anomalous – which is why it’s such a news story to begin with – and it’s not clear with the given information if it’s because of the bureau blocking the film beyond the expected degree or because some shithead executive got a great idea for using AI to “streamline” their editing process to minimize back-and-forth with the bureau or something.
I’m of course glad that it has received some degree of popular pushback, because this shouldn’t be tolerated in either case.
They have trot politics its lowkey annoying. I was talking to a trot recently who started talking about how china is oppressing the global south by exporting commodities and everything started to click lmao
How do I have trot politics? Trots would hate Mao and Deng. I am fully supportive of Mao and Deng policies as you can freely read through my comment history.
I am seriously curious how, after posting for years on this website, people still misrepresent my politics!
Western leftist who has only seen Trotskism, seeing a second leftist ideology: “Getting a lot of 'Trotskist
’ vibes from this…”I honestly didn’t realize you liked Deng, though I guess it makes sense because you take such pains to divide Reform and Opening Up from the subsequent periods that you mostly talk about, where you (rightly) ridicule the CPC for corrupt and bourgeois-bureaucratic elements. Is there any chance you could link to a place where you talk about why Deng’s policies were good?
You can tell from my comments that I almost never criticized anything from 1976 to 1994, with the exception that Deng screwed up the price reform in 1988 (a legitimate L), which, together with the June 4th (Tiananmen incident) in 1989, forced him into semi-retirement, though his influence remained vast even in retirement. Otherwise I have always acknowledged his contributions as significant.
The watershed moment was the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform, which forced local/municipal governments to seek for alternative (non-tax) sources of income to finance their own operations. This led the Northeast heavy industrial provinces to mass privatize their SOEs, and the ensuing unemployment wave that caused an economic crisis in 1995-6. Two major policy changes happened afterwards: Zhu Rongji ended the welfare housing distribution policy (government giving free housing to employees) in 1998 to unleash land capital to save the economy, and China joining the WTO in 2001 to reverse the unemployment trend.
Thank you for explaining. Do you have a comment where you explain what the motivations were for the Tax Sharing Reform to begin with? Was it a means of instigating mass-privatization indirectly?
Ive met trots that like deng. Im just saying that complaining about china to random people on the internet instead of just doing somethig to fix it if ur chinese is liberal behavior. I dont think ur a bad person but its a tendency of a petty bourgeois class outlook
lol, the only reasons I am posting here are to 1) practice my English and 2) provide some educational value stuff to people who are interested in learning about China. You can choose to ignore my posts if you don’t like to learn about this kind of things, which is completely fair.
Looks like even OP is doing this
This isn’t the first time. There’s been a long running myth in the videogame industry that you’re not allowed to have skeletons in videogames in China. This isn’t true of course, but it hasn’t stopped western companies changing their games for the Chinese region by removing the skeletons and replacing them with something else.
This is caused by some dumbass liberal media producers in australia believing the propaganda that China is anti-lgbt and disallows this and making this adjustment based on that belief. It’s caused by western ignorance and “better be safe than sorry” rather than anything the government actually wants.
This is false. The film in question is a buyout/acquisition film, meaning that the importing distributor pays a lump sum for the licensing rights and the original producer does not participate in the revenue earning from Chinese cinematic release, so the purchaser of film rights has more liberty to alter the content.
The other type of film is called revenue-sharing film - and because the producers retain the film rights, this would require the Chinese censorship to list out their demands for the producers to remove specific parts of the film.
Ok but that’s still a private company.
Depends on your perspective. All import films are exclusively distributed by China Film Group (中影) and Huaxia Film Distribution Co (华影). Both are SOEs (China Film is state-owned, Huaxia is state-owned joint-stock enterprise) but are fairly autonomous. This film, Together, was licensed by China Film Group.’
Again I encourage you to read the link above (with machine translation) to understand the topic in more detail because a lot of what you’re writing is misinformation.
Again I encourage you to read the link above (with machine translation) to understand the topic in more detail
I did. The link is just a bunch of quotes of random things Chinese people are saying on social media (with no actual links to where they said them so I can’t source anything or even trust that they’re real). What exactly are you suggesting I take from a bunch of random people online complaining that the change happened? Why does a bunch of random Chinese social media posts prove what I have said is misinformation?
What exactly have I even said that is misinformation anyway? You know SOEs act independently of the state, or at least you should.
Your info isn’t even correct anyway so why are you accusing me of misinformation? You’re claiming that this film was actually released in this state. It was not released. It was due to be released on the 19th of September and they cancelled it on the 18th of September before the national release.
This is version of the film has in actual fact not been released.
I don’t know where the original article you’re linking to is getting its information from. Either it’s some private screening, a leak, or it’s totally and completely bullshit. The quality of the evidence makes me suspicious, some weird low quality photograph of a screen, maybe a theatre, is being compared to the western version with a photograph of it on a literal CRT? Who the fuck is using a CRT to watch a 2025 movie? The more I look at it the more questions I have about it. The fact nobody is citing any real sources in absolutely anything is pissing me off.
I’m getting more and more suspicious about whether this is even real. China Digital Times is based in Berkeley, CA. Who owns this shit?
Edit: From the wiki for this site’s owner:
The website was started by Xiao Qiang of University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in fall 2003. Xiao has asserted that Chinese internet users are using digital tools to create new autonomous forms of political expression and dissent, “changing the rules of the game between state and society”.[4]
According to Freedom House, researchers at China Digital Times have reportedly identified over 800 filtered terms, including “Cultural Revolution” and “propaganda department”.[5] The types of words, phrases and web addresses censored by the government include names of Chinese high-level leadership; protest and dissident movements; politically sensitive events, places and people; and foreign websites and organizations blocked at network level, along with pornography and other content.[6]
This site is owned by a Chinese dissident working in a US university to make anti China shit.EDITEDIT: AND IT’S BEEN FUNDED BY NED LMAOOOOOOOOO
MULTIEDIT: I’m satisfied that the ai edit is real now.
Again, it’s all over the social media, especially on xiaohongshu (social media platform) and zhihu (Chinese quora) that are extremely lib coded. They are the ones who care most about the LGBT stuff.
The page I posted is exactly catered for crowds like this. However, if you don’t like the source, feel free to take it from Sohu which posts articles from users. This is as mainstream as you can get.
Also, the film has been released in selected cinemas in 20 cities. This is how people have already watched it and reported on social media. No offense but you seriously are misrepresenting a lot of stuff here. As I said in the original post, it is being withdrawn from a wide release due to complaints.
This is starting to feel like wrecker shit. Is it just me?
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Video game industry is not the same as distributing imported films.
As I wrote in another comment to you, there are only two film companies that have the exclusive rights to distribute imported films, 中影 and 华影, and these are the two companies that have dealt with the censorship bureau for years. You are making a lot of assumptions about a topic you barely understand.
In short, very few people thought the film would even have a cinema release in the first place due to the explicit content - especially gay marriage and some of the body horror contents. People were in fact surprised to see it getting a wide release.
Video game industry is not the same as distributing imported films.
Yeah which is ironic because the videogames industry is significantly bigger than the movie industry now.
there have been different rules at different times. Magic: The Gathering used to do some variant art for the chinese market but sometime in the mid 2000s Rosewater said they didn’t have to anymore.
I’ve heard other media people say the rule for videogames was you could show bones but not bones sticking out of flesh, so skeletons were ok and zombies were ok but not a zombie with a bunch of bones sticking out.
The best example of this I’m aware of is the Headhunter item in Path of Exile getting a slightly different skin that still has skulls in it in the Chinese version, but they’re less clearly skulls. But the game is still a dark fantasy game so there’s tons of skeletons; it’s always been a bit of a question mark why they even changed the HH skin when there’s skulls everywhere else.
WoW did it with skeletons in their chinese version, both on bones+skulls in the world and on the undead characters. Couple examples:
https://imgur.com/a/undead-1smvr https://imgur.com/a/female-undead-MPsE3
This is obviously super false and disproveable of course. I actually posted a thread about this when the recent Chinese Wukong game came out: https://hexbear.net/comment/5288533
The decision to self-censor is coming entirely from the western private companies who are acting either on their own bad beliefs about China or on very bad advice. It’s not coming from the Chinese government.
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Are you sure?
I’ve seen many counterstrike skins with variants of skulls replaced with gas masks and supposedly skins that slipped through and kept skulls on them bumped up in price because Chinese people wanted them.
I am completely sure that there are Chinese games with skulls and skeletons in them. Wukong came out to critical mass acclaim this year with skulls and skeletons and blood everywhere, it was pushed heavily by all media including state media as a darling example of China now producing AAA games titles.
Didn’t the devs for that game say something like they don’t expect or want women to play it, or something like that? Asking because I don’t know, I just heard some shit.
Yeah the dev is a shitter.
Media blames Chinese Government for thing the Chinese Government didn’t ask for
You can make that argument if you want but just realize you’re just saying the free market rules supreme and this is a slippery slope.
Next when Chinese capitalist media shows even more bigotted views you can also excuse it away by just shrugging it off “but why would the government ever control the media in the first place”.
You can’t simultaneously make the argument that the CPC controls capitalists which is the #1 excuse dengists make, and then turn around and say “but yes actualy the bigoted censorship thing is completely laissez faire capitalism the CPC has no control over”.
People can cope however they want but holding simultaneously exclusive views should be a red(no pun intended) flag.
Isn’t this what the reddit nerds call strawmanning? I don’t hold any of those views. I would very much like China to enforce an ultra gay state. All media should be forced to be gay and China should be criticised for not using state power to achieve that. The fact that China has allowed its population to remain culturally backwards and homophobic for so long instead of using the state to push social views forwards is absolutely something it should be criticised for.
I can absolutely hold that view while simultaneously saying “But this isn’t censorship by the government”.
dengists
The argument is, if anything, that companies have been given too much freedom, not that they should be allowed to do this, in contrast with the implied thesis that this specific case of censorship was directly enforced by the CPC.
Can I just say, that emoji on this site for *looks inside* is really funny in context.
Hexbear be peeking
The dope ass bear has a boopable snoot, and sticking his face through a door like that is just asking to have his snoot booped!
Danger boop
Imma boop it anyway.
If bears not for hugs, why bears so friend shaped and made of cute?
They made it a trans love story
lmao
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brings out estradiole vial and injection gun
I can make it lesbian.
Looks like this site was funded in the past by the NED before DOGE got em. Hate to cite Wikipedia but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Digital_Times#Staff_and_operations
They’re libs lol. So are many users of xiaohongshu (the platform) and zhihu (Chinese Quora) that reported stuff like this. They are the ones who care the most about LGBT topics.
NED is literally the CIA
what’s the general outlook on LGBT issues among comrades? not like career party officials, but generally among communists
Indifference. This is why stuff like this mostly only gets posted by the libs (of which I am being accused of quoting from lol). You’d barely see reporting of these issues on mainstream or left-leaning media.
Those silly tankies on hexbear aren’t so pro-china now!Wait for the heel turn, last time this happened it ended with pants being pissed in solidarity.
Were the complaints about the censorship?
Yes, people were like “what’s the point of licensing the film rights and showing it on screen when you’re going to alter the original content?”
A lot of people are also not comfortable with the government using AI to change the content to one that suits them, but I guess that’s the future now.
You are better than this Xiaohongshu. You know this isn’t “the government using ai to change the content” that did this. The change is carried out by the company that made the film. The blame lies with them for being incredibly overzealous with their changes, or with whoever gave them the advice to make these changes.
And why do you think they are overzealous with their changes?
Many Chinese shows have their scripts constantly altered and sometimes even have their entire storylines changed by the censors. It is one legitimate grievance many people have with the censorship.
In fact, it’s so common that people are already used to it. What’s different this time is the blatant use of AI to change the content to pass censorship.
Do you seriously think the censors are stupid and don’t know what’s being done to the film?
And why do you think they are overzealous with their changes?
Because the west is absolutely swamped with media claiming all kinds of completely false things about China, the people believe them, and then they act on them if they’re in a position of decision making power.
Do you seriously think the censors are stupid and don’t know what’s being done to the film?
The censors don’t give a shit what the producers are doing to the film. Their job is to judge the film they’re given, not to send it back and say “actually you’ve gone too far with your changes here and here and here”.
Maybe you have a case that they should be given the power to send it back and say “no don’t change this”. But that’s not what their job is currently.
yeah this is a very blatant example of corpos being sinophobic & sloppy
The user you’re responding makes a lot of assumptions and doesn’t understand how import films are distributed in China. There is a distinct difference between buyout/acquisition films and revenue-sharing films. The film in question belongs to the former.
I’ve heard it described before (maybe it was by you actually, if so then just ignore me) that there’s this general sort of dynamic where the companies learn to pre-emptively censor the media before the censors even get to it, because they’ve learned that it’s best to do this to avoid the hassle. The problem is that they tend to be overly conservative and censor more than necessary. Do you think that’s accurate?
Correct - it depends on how much time you want to spend wasting going back and forth with the censors.
From what’s written on the social media, the fact is that nobody even expected the film to have a release in China anyway, because of the explicit gay couple content as well as the body horror contents. So it was in fact a surprise that it got a wide release in the first place. Then people found out that certain parts of the film were completely altered lol.
Here’s hoping for a course correction and a gay Chinese century. I know I would love to see Chinese films that explore those topics.
Maybe back in the 2010s… a lot have changed since Covid to be honest with you.
There are plenty of LGBT web indie films though. As I mentioned to another user here, I really like 去年烟火 from last year, it’s a short film about a lesbian couple in a small provincial town.
And why do you think they are overzealous with their changes?
While this is a perfectly reasonable thing to point out, claiming it was the government doing it is just a literal flat-out lie.
It’s the same two companies that deal with government censorship with hundreds of imported films over the years. This isn’t someone who has no experience dealing with the censorship lol, they are literally the exclusive groups who were given the rights to distribute imported films. Do you seriously think that they don’t know what can or cannot be shown?
The ridiculous part is that they thought it would be good to use AI tool to directly alter the content on screen, rather than just not purchase the distribution rights at all.
See? That’s a really good criticism. So why the lie?
You still don’t get it… sigh… These companies have to work with the censorship to get it to a release-appropriate state.
If it is buyout/acquisition film (this film in question), then the distributor will have to make the alterations.
If it is revenue-sharing film, then the film producers will have to make the alterations.
What’s so hard to understand?
I know from previous discussions about this that the LGBTQ media censorship in China is sadly a real thing. Here’s the 2017 guidelines I looked at before: https://web.archive.org/web/20170630135640/http://www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630.shtml
Auto-translated portion in question:
(6) Rendering obscene pornography and vulgar low-level interest:
- Specifically show the plots of prostitution, whoring, prostitution,removed, masturbation, etc.;
- Show and display abnormal sexual relations and sexual behavior, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexual violence;
- Show and promote unhealthy views and states of marriage and love, such as extramarital love, one-night stand, sexual freedom, wife swap, etc.;
On this topic it’s often very difficult to determine what’s real and what isn’t, given that you have western media or CIA cutouts distorting the narrative for their own purposes. I try to look into the published regulations directly, but for these 2017 guidelines it doesn’t seem to explicitly discuss gay marriage. Were there new guidelines published, or is this some kind of a new push? Or is this just a company that misinterpreted the guidelines and did the AI stuff out of misinformation or paranoia?
This Zhihu thread has the top comment listing out selected examples of what’s being censored in recent times to get a good idea of what kind of contents are being censored.
Or is this just a company that misinterpreted the guidelines and did the AI stuff out of misinformation or paranoia?
People didn’t even think the film would have a cinema release in China because of what you said, gay couple and body horror content. So when it was approved for a wide release, people were in fact quite surprised.
As I have explained to other users here, there are literally only two companies that deal with imported films in China, and the same two groups of people who have had to deal with the censorship bureau over the years for hundreds of foreign films. The idea that these companies don’t know exactly what has to be removed in order to pass the censorship just doesn’t pass the smell test.
The ridiculous part is that they thought it would be a good idea to use AI tool to alter the original content on screen to get around this issue and then show it on cinema. Read the Zhihu thread, usually it’s just cutting a few scenes here and there. This is something new, and ridiculous lol.
Apologies, because I can’t translate the page right now, but does that thread have any links to actual sources? As in, I’m curious to see the actual regulations that apply to this film. No offense, but it’s a little difficult to tell what’s real and what’s rumor from forum posts alone.
I used machine translation for you. Haven’t watched all of the shows mentioned, but a cursory glance seems accurate.
spoiler
The good news is that not a single terrifying scene from “Together” was cut, but AI face swapping is a uniquely Chinese horror that Western audiences can’t fully grasp.
Let’s examine other examples. During its mainland China release, Bohemian Rhapsody had all scenes hinting at Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s homosexuality edited out or muted.
In Game of Thrones Season 5, a scene depicting a male prostitute being stabbed to death for homosexuality was removed. Season 8 saw Yara’s one-second kiss with Daenerys in Dorne deleted.
In The Two Cities 2, all lesbian subplots involving the female lead (a policewoman) were removed.
After the comic adaptation of Little Green and Little Blue became an animated series, all same-sex content was removed. (Thanks to @Wu Ming for the comment supplement)
In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, all emotional lines between Dumbledore and Grindelwald—such as “I fell in love with you”—were deleted, retaining only vague expressions like “We are brothers.”
After Friends launched on streaming platforms in 2022, all dialogue implying Carol’s lesbianism was edited out.
In The Shape of Water, content depicting Giles facing workplace discrimination due to his sexuality was cut.
In Four-Wheel Brothers, Hijikata Rei—a boy who paints his nails and wears lipstick—was altered to a girl in mainland China.
In Alien: Covenant, a kiss between two male androids was cut.
In Soul, the romantic tension between the boss and scientist was altered to “brotherly love” (thanks to @博哥逍遥游 for the comment).
Call Me by Your Name was scheduled for the 2018 Beijing Film Festival but was pulled due to “technical reasons.”
Cloud Atlas was cut by 37 minutes, including same-sex kissing scenes.
Carol (limited release) had all same-sex intimate scenes removed.
In Love, Simon (Shanghai Film Festival screening), the protagonist’s coming-out conversation with his mother and the bar scene were both cut.
TV series like “Queer as Folk,” independently uploaded by netizens to platforms like Bilibili and Youku, were entirely removed despite never being officially released in mainland China.
After “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won an Oscar, all mainland plot summaries replaced references to the protagonist’s gay daughter with “daughter with Westernized lifestyle.”
During the 2019 Oscars rebroadcast, Chinese platforms replaced the subtitle “a gay man” in Malek’s acceptance speech with “special group.”
The Eurovision Song Contest had its broadcast rights revoked by the EBU from Mango TV (2018) for censoring “rainbow flags/same-sex content.”
Previously, it was just censorship and muting. Now, AI face swapping has emerged—it must be said, technology has advanced.
Thanks for this!!
The post right above the one replied to has a link to the minutes of a meeting on the regulations.
You mean what I posted?
Yeah! Wait, what?
yet every anime they produce is BL. cant explain that.
For those who are wondering about the caption, it says:
The power of technology, it’s so scary #Together. But the movie is quite decent, it’s more atmospheric to watch horror films in cinema
Big China L, ya hate to see it.
I am way too inebriated for this struggle session so I’m just going to leave at at this:
I’m going to keep financially investing in China and laughing my way to the bank as the West collapses over the next 50 years
A leftist forum that doesn’t have people with strong convictions bitterly arguing over the most trivial perceived differences? Either a non-existent place or a fed corner.
Capitalism will replace you with AI if they think it will make more sales, absolutely, that is also still an issue in China ofc. Very sad to see, would like to see such actions be followed by a swift response of the people’s representatives. Also could you please specify who censored the movie in the title? When you just say a country that means the government mandates this I would assume.
Hey, so I was out all yesterday and completely missed this thread and ensuing light struggle session but I’ll give some additional context as I know it:
The writer & director had no fucking idea lmao, he was completely blindsided by the changes and only found out when journalists in China (as to who they work for, no idea soz) started asking him questions about editing the cut and sent him basically the same screenshot (i think from a different platform, caption was different but it’s the exact same comparison screenshot of the film). He first found out on the 15th. There are some other funny edits, such as additional steam vfx blurring Dave Franco’s bare ass in the shower scene and some others he hasn’t dropped in the group chat.
Seems like the producers & Neon people were claiming to have had no idea either, as they all apparently went straight to the lawyers after a day or so and were basically asking Michael to make the decision on whether to completely pull from China or not as they had ‘clear breaches’ of contracts and literal ‘admissions’ that the film had been altered without consent. At this point he’s not making any additional money on where it’s being distributed, so allowing him the decision to completely pull it and lose someone millions seems like an admission that someone fucked up/gambled wrong.
Without having read the thread for any investigation on the intricacies of film distribution in China, I can only go off a conversation we had last week when we were halfway to getting decently drunk and watching Salo at a cinema on Wednesday night. It seems like he’s been told by various legal people/producers that this happens a bit - The distributors buy it and just make changes without authorisation to seemingly pre-empt the ratings/censor’s office and hope that the hollywood crackers either never find out or care. As to whether it is a case of pre-alteration before submission to the gov, changes made by the gov / requested alterations, or even a sneaky recut provided to the chinese distributor without the director’s knowledge, I can’t say for sure. There seemed to be some suggestions that Michael’s legal could demand that some alterations be reversed and have the distributor resubmit the film, which lends a bit of credence to the idea that distributors just fucking do this but go too far, self-censoring beyond necessity before even seeking gov approval or a film rating/classification.
Either way, the whole thing was a bit overshadowed by his second film being greenlit, but he was legitimately pissed at the alterations and now having to make a choice where he could be perceived as throwing LGBTQIA+ people under the bus for money (when he makes no additional money whatsoever from the film being distributed anywhere) or being seen as sinophobic and getting no traction in China ever again if he pulls it or blames anyone in China for the issue.
unrelated, but apparently the film was doing quite well in russia.
Thanks for the update. This explains a lot and tracks with what I have read from the Chinese internet.
Unfortunately there are some that tried to blame it on the producers, but your explanation pretty much clarified and tracked with what I have said in this thread.
Anyway, the film has been withdrawn from a wide theatrical release due to receiving too much complaints, so I guess they won’t have to deal with it anymore.
It’s weird that some of the most successful media coming out of China is extremely gay coded, like Ne Zha 2 earlier this year, but they’re still trying to censor gay stuff.
A lot of Chinese media are gay coded but you cannot be explicit.
There are a lot of cool web series with LGBT content though. As long as you’re not going for cinematic/television release you don’t have to go through censorship.
I really like the Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua which is very gay coded, but I hear the original webnovel source material has the leads get full on gay married.
The web series I was talking about are more like indie films (usually short films).
I really like 去年烟火 from last year. It’s a short film about a lesbian couple in a small provincial town.
That was very cute thank you
gotta love web novels
I do love webnovels, my phone browser is completely full of webnovels at all times
hell yeag
As somewhat of a BL gourmand, I was under the impression that they must’ve been relaxing the censorship around LGBT content lately, but I guess maybe they get around it by not releasing their shows on Chinese platforms? Either way, some of the most popular BLs this year have been Chinese, including the world’s first live-action Omegaverse BL (and yes, the boys do get pregnant!).
Web series usually don’t go through censorship, otherwise the poor staff in the department would be completely overwhelmed lol. It’s mostly release on movie theaters and public television channels that require the proper license and censorship approval.
how would one go about getting uncensored versions of cinema-release films? do they have to go through western platforms and torrents or does china have its own more-or-less widely-used websites?
Through pirating lol. It’s extremely easy to access pirated films complete with fan-made subtitles on the internet. People go to cinema to enjoy the atmosphere in the theater.
The world’s first live action Omegaverse BL was Star Trek The Original Series Season 2, Episode 1 “Amok Time.” Unfortunately neither boy got pregnant in that one.
Unrelated to the thread but shoutout @Mindfury@hexbear.net who was housemates with the director of this film loll
Maybe if they’re still in touch we can get the full story on this!
Yeah they should clarify. People are saying that the producers did this, but from my understanding, this is a buyout/acquisition film which means the importer with regional distribution rights has the liberty to do its own censorship, while the film producers have nothing to do with it once the rights are sold. Unlike the revenue-sharing films where the rights were mostly retained by the producers and they have to work with the censorship.
posted a reply and a top level post. probably doesn’t clarify too much because it’s second hand recounting, but the filmmaker had no idea lol
Ayo! So I was out all yesterday and completely missed this thread and ensuing light struggle session but I’ll give some additional context as I know it:
The writer & director had no fucking idea lmao, he was completely blindsided by the changes and only found out when journalists in China (as to who they work for, no idea soz) started asking him questions about editing the cut and sent him basically the same screenshot (i think from a different platform, caption was different but it’s the exact same comparison screenshot of the film). He first found out on the 15th. There are some other funny edits, such as additional steam vfx blurring Dave Franco’s bare ass in the shower scene and some others he hasn’t dropped in the group chat.
Seems like the producers & Neon people were claiming to have had no idea either, as they all apparently went straight to the lawyers after a day or so and were basically asking Michael to make the decision on whether to completely pull from China or not as they had ‘clear breaches’ of contracts and literal ‘admissions’ that the film had been altered without consent. At this point he’s not making any additional money on where it’s being distributed, so allowing him the decision to completely pull it and lose someone millions seems like an admission that someone fucked up/gambled wrong.
Without having read the thread for any investigation on the intricacies of film distribution in China, I can only go off a conversation we had last week when we were halfway to getting decently drunk and watching Salo at a cinema on Wednesday night. It seems like he’s been told by various legal people/producers that this happens a bit - The distributors buy it and just make changes without authorisation to seemingly pre-empt the ratings/censor’s office and hope that the hollywood crackers either never find out or care. As to whether it is a case of pre-alteration before submission to the gov, changes made by the gov / requested alterations, or even a sneaky recut provided to the chinese distributor without the director’s knowledge, I can’t say for sure. There seemed to be some suggestions that Michael’s legal could demand that some alterations be reversed and have the distributor resubmit the film, which lends a bit of credence to the idea that distributors just fucking do this but go too far, self-censoring beyond necessity before even seeking gov approval or a film rating/classification.
Either way, the whole thing was a bit overshadowed by his second film being greenlit, but he was legitimately pissed at the alterations and now having to make a choice where he could be perceived as throwing LGBTQIA+ people under the bus for money (when he makes no additional money whatsoever from the film being distributed anywhere) or being seen as sinophobic and getting no traction in China ever again if he pulls it or blames anyone in China for the issue.
unrelated, but apparently the film was doing quite well in russia.
I really appreciate the extra context. Congrats on your mate’s second film getting the greenlight!
Also if I was in your mate’s position I wouldn’t pull the film from China, I would just say “If Chinese audiences want a trans couple, they can keep it” and leave it there.
Yeah, my honest immediate reaction was ‘do not pull it’ and I don’t think he did, but not 100% sure of the outcome. Maybe they demanded some reversals and resubmission.
He’s not even an australian citizen lol, you don’t want to be starting diplomatic events
