Disney+ omits ‘The Simpsons’ Tiananmen episode in Hong Kong

Walt Disney Co.’s video service has omitted an episode of The Simpsons in Hong Kong that mentions the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, in what appears to be one of the first cases of a major US streaming giant censoring content in the city.

In the missing episode, Goo Goo Gai Pan, the cartoon family visits the Beijing square where a character confronts a line of tanks -- a reference to the famous Tank Man photograph -- and a sign reads “Tien An Men Square: on this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” 

On Disney+, which launched in Hong Kong on Nov. 16, episodes 11 and 13 of season 16 are viewable in the Chinese territory, but not episode 12, which first aired in 2005. That episode was available over the weekend in Singapore, where Disney+ launched earlier this year. 

“This is the first notable time an American streaming giant has censored content in Hong Kong,” said Kenny Ng, an associate professor specializing in film censorship at Hong Kong Baptist University. 

“Basically, the whole story is for streaming companies to be more tailored to a Chinese audience and to not offend the Chinese government,” he added. “This is likely to continue in the future with more companies with financial interests in China.”

The Hong Kong government and Disney didn’t respond to requests for comment.  

Hong Kong passed a film censorship law last month banning content that runs contrary to the interests of a Beijing-drafted national security law, with penalties as high as three years in prison for those who screen non-approved content. Streaming services Netflix Inc., Vimeo Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. declined to comment at the time on how the law might affect them. 

China imposed the security law on Hong Kong in June 2020, in the wake of the previous year’s mass anti-government protests. Since then, it has been used to target freedom of expression, with 85 percent of roughly 100 cases brought under the law stemming from speech-related crimes. 

In recent years, authorities have also cited Covid-19 rules to ban an annual candlelight vigil for victims of the 1989 crackdown, which for decades had been the only one allowed on Chinese soil. Estimates of the death toll ranged from hundreds to as many as 2,600 after Communist Party leaders sent troops into Tiananmen Square and surrounding streets to violently clear protesters. 

China has since forbidden any memorials and virtually scrubbed the event from history books and the internet on the mainland. Authorities in September seized assets from a museum in Hong Kong memorializing the event, prompting organizers to shut it down shortly afterward, and charged key organizers of the annual vigil with inciting subversion under the security law.

Hong Kong public libraries have removed 29 of the 149 titles they carry about the Tiananmen massacre over the past 12 years, totaling 263 individual books, Hong Kong Free Press reported earlier this month. Of those that remain, only 26 are on display with the rest available on request, the news outlet reported.  

(Bloomberg)