Being a parent won’t get you far with Hollywood — but being China will.
Warner Bros. admitted this week to editing out a scene from “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” that included dialogue about same-sex attraction, according to News.com.au. The studio made the edits to comply with Chinese censors.
“As a studio, we’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors,” stated Warner Bros. “Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators but, historically, we have faced small edits made in local markets. In the case of ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,’ a six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros. accepted those changes to comply with local requirements, but the spirit of the film remains intact.”
This is certainly not the first time Tinseltown has catered to China.
With the exception of film director Quentin Tarantino, who refused to recut his 2019 hit movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” to please Beijing, film studio heads have, in recent years, been all too eager to appease the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping’s regime in Beijing.
A study released in 2020 by PEN America, a free-speech watchdog, found several studios kowtowed to censorship pressures in China, home to the second-largest box office in the world.
For example, Paramount Pictures, the studio distributing “Top Gun: Maverick,” faced rebuke in 2019 for the “mysterious disappearance of the Taiwanese flag” in a trailer promoting the film. And in 2016, the MCU’s “Doctor Strange” — distributed by Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures — was edited to downplay a Tibetan character.
The author of the report, James Tager, said, “Our biggest concern is that Hollywood is increasingly normalizing pre-emptive self-censorship in anticipation of what the Beijing censor is looking for.”
But while Tinseltown is self-censoring itself to please China, it is waging a culture war against parents in the U.S. who are concerned by the over-sexualization of content geared toward minors.
The irony here is Warner Bros. is implementing a “Don’t Say Gay” policy of sorts in China while The Walt Disney Company is, in the U.S., vociferously condemning a Florida law that bars public school educators from teaching kids in pre-K through third-grade classrooms about sexual orientation and gender identity. That law has been mischaracterized by the media and leftist groups as the “Don’t Say Gay bill,” despite the fact that the law never uses the word “gay” and places no prohibition on its utterance.
Hollywood is willing to go to bat against Christians and parents at home but unwilling to stand up to China because that would mean sacrificing the biggest cash cow outside the United States.
Clearly, the takeaway here is this: Hollywood is more interested in the Chinese box office than it is in the sincerely held moral convictions of parents and families at home. Truly, it’s even worse than that: The entertainment industry — as has been shown by Disney — is actively interested in thwarting the beliefs of those in the latter camp.
All of this comes as The Walt Disney Company has launched an unabashed campaign to “repeal” Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law and CEO Bob Chapek has vowed to be a “better ally” to LGBT employees within Disney. Furthermore, the brand’s corporate president, Karey Burke, recently said in a leaked internal video that she wants to see “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters” in Disney content and the company’s diversity and inclusion manager, Vivian Ware, celebrated the fact the Disney parks in Anaheim, California, and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, have done away with mentions of “ladies and gentlemen” and “boys and girls” in their greetings.
“We don’t want to just assume, because someone might be, in our interpretation, maybe presenting as female, that they may not want to be called ‘princess,’” she explained. “So let’s think differently about how do we really engage with our guests in a meaningful and inclusive way that makes it magical and memorable for everyone.”
Film studios all across Los Angeles are eagerly and unreservedly infusing their movies and TV shows with leftist talking points and LGBT narratives, all in the name of advancing “equality.” That self-aggrandized “moral” fortitude, though, apparently doesn’t extend past our borders.
It’s becoming clear these Hollywood studios are only committed to advancing their overtly sexual agenda at home.
Reporting from Faith Wire.
