China Censors the TV Series Friends

China continues its strict control and censorship over all types of media, including TV series and movies. Recently, David Fincher’s cult movie Fight Club was censored in China due to its main message, ‘rebellion against the current system’, and the ending of the movie was completely changed and made more ‘pro-system’. After the backlash, the movie was re-released with its original ending.

Moreover, this is not the only example of recent censorship in China. Previously, the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody, a 2019 movie about the legendary music group Queen, with gay kissing scenes and the word ‘gay’, which took more than two minutes in total, was also removed from the movie and the movie was broadcast in a censored form in China. On top of these, another production that got its share from China’s strict censorship policy was the world-famous sitcom series Friends.

Homophobic and sexist censorship from China to Friends

Friends, which was previously published uncensored on China’s Sohu and iQiyi broadcast platforms, last year It came to the fore again in China with the release of the special episode Friends: The Reunion, in which the cast came together after more than 15 years. However, on February 11, the audience of the series, which started to be broadcast again on platforms such as Bilibili, Tencent Video, Youku, Sohu and iQiyi, noticed that some scenes of the series were censored.

Viewers see scenes with homosexuality where the protagonists of the show, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler (Matthew Perry) kiss and another protagonist Ross (David Schwimmer) reveals that his ex-wife Carol (Anite Barone) is a lesbian. He was shocked to see that he was removed from the show. In addition, the scenes in which Carol took part in the second episode were also deleted from the episode.

Moreover, the only scenes that were censored in the series were not scenes related to homosexuality. The phrase “women have multiple orgasms” in the show has been replaced with “women’s gossip is endless”. On the other hand, the audience perceived it as an “insult to their English”, as the English subtitles were in the original phrase in this scene.

After these censorships, the fans of the series criticized the censorship by showing their reactions on Wiebo, which we can call China’s Twitter. The hashtag #FriendsCensored (FriendsCensored), which fans opened to show their reactions, was viewed more than 54 million times last Friday. But once again, China did its thing and censored that hashtag the next day.