Disney censors The Simpsons in Hong Kong
Tiananmen episode is missing from streaming platform amid fears of pressure from Beijing
‘China will not hesitate to use its economic muscle to get its way’
DISNEY+ has been accused of surrendering to Chinese censorship in Hong Kong by dropping an episode of The Simpsons featuring Tiananmen Square from its streaming service.
The platform, which opened in the state earlier this month, offered Hongkongers 32 seasons of the show but eagle-eyed fans have spotted that one is missing.
As of yesterday, episodes 11 and 13 of Season 16 were available but episode 12 – Goo Goo Gai Pan – was not.
The 2005 show satirises the Chinese state’s heavy censorship of discussion around the June 1989 massacre.
In one scene, the animated Simpsons family visits Tiananmen Square where they encounter a plaque that reads: “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”
Homer also calls Mao Zedong, the ruthless communist revolutionary a “little angel”.
The episode also makes reference to the “Tank Man” photograph that has become a defining image of the studentled pro-democracy protests.
It features Lucy Liu, a Chinese-american actress who guest-voiced as Madam Wu, an adoption centre worker who battled with Marge’s older sister, Selma Bouvier, when she was trying to adopt a baby.
It is not clear whether Disney preemptively removed the episode or whether it dropped it following pressure from officials.
The company has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The omission of the episode fuels overall concerns about censorship in Hong Kong, where draconian laws have attempted to silence dissent and prodemocracy protests.
It has also raised questions about Western companies self-censoring their content in order to protect their interests in China’s lucrative market.
“Whether it’s self-censorship or whether it’s direct censorship, it is based on the calculation of how significant the China market is to Disney, or any other American company,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
“It is about the China market. And the clear understanding that the Chinese government will not hesitate to use its economic muscle based on the size of its market to get its way,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
It is not the first time Disney has courted controversy over its dealings with the Chinese government. Last year it faced calls to boycott its remake of the film Mulan after it emerged that some scenes were filmed in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, the site of widely documented human rights abuses against the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities.
The film’s credits also thanked several Chinese government departments which had been sanctioned by the US for human rights abuses.
Disney defended the decision to film parts of Mulan in Xinjiang in the interest of “authenticity”. Until recently, semi-autonomous Hong Kong boasted significant artistic and political freedoms compared with mainland China.
But Beijing has steadily tightened its grip on the city in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests which started two years ago.
A recently passed censorship law bans films deemed a threat to national security, with penalties as high as three years in prison. While China has largely erased references to the Tiananmen Square massacre from books and the internet on the mainland, it has long been openly commemorated in Hong Kong.
However, in the last 18 months Hong Kong has banned an annual candlelight vigil for the victims of the massacre.
Officials have blamed the cancellation on social distancing regulations during the pandemic.