10 ms·

It's really interesting that such a bland, un-subversive show whose only mentions of sensitive topics are in bad throwaway jokes is so heavily censored. I guess

It's really interesting that such a bland, un-subversive show whose only mentions of sensitive topics are in bad throwaway jokes is so heavily censored. I guess a more interesting show would just not get aired at all.

swayvil 4y ago
It's a deeper level of censorship. Not only will you refrain from thinking about these things in a tolerant light, you will refrain from thinking about these things at all. It chops pieces off reality when you do that. Censorship is amazing. So popular (downvotes anyone?), so casually employed, yet so incredibly destructive.
- Sin2x 4y ago
  This idea can be easily reversed: It's a deeper level of indoctrination. When these things are covertly inserted in an innocuous sounding show, not only will you start thinking about them, you will subconsiously think of them in a tolerant light. China has its own culture and mores, why should it allow that kind of soft projection of Western power.
  - wozer 4y ago
    For some things that might be true. But when the indoctrination collides with reality in a harmful way, it's a different matter. Objectively, it is true that gay people exists and that there is no good reason to restrict their rights.
    - nightpool 4y ago
      Sure, but like other people in this thread are saying, it's not objectively true that the Chinese restaurant down the street is selling you dog meet and pretending that it's chicken, or that Chinese academics in the US are siphoning grant money and funneling it to Pyongyang. "Pervasive cultural norms colliding with reality" is a two-way street.
  - cutemonster 4y ago
    > China has its own culture and mores Correction: Xi and the CCP have their own culture and mores The people, though, want to see The Big Bang Theory uncensored. The people are different from Xi. They don't want the same things as he (except for the ones Xi has successfully brainwashed, or those who have a highly tribal brain). > why should it allow that kind of soft projection That sounds paranoid, I hope you don't mind. Reasoning in that way, almost all movies in the world wold be a "soft projection" and Nation State attack. But sometimes it's just jokes or reality and a good movie ... or would have been.
    - okasaki 4y ago
      Good thing we have HN user cutemonster to tell us what the Chinese people want.
      - cowtools 4y ago
        If the chinese people had the option between the censored and uncensored version, which one do you think they would prefer? On an individual level it is obvious that almost no one advocates for self-censorship. Most people are only enthusiastic about censorship when they are the censor and not the censored. The communist dictatorship is a parasitic form of governance, but most cannot escape because they're stuck at a local maxima.
        notahacker 4y ago
        I strongly suspect many if not most Chinese people would choose to see the censored version, especially if the stated reason for the censorship was "we have removed some things which may be insulting to Chinese people". Most people don't like being censored themselves, but don't confuse that for a moment with believing that most people want everything uncensored. For all public discourse in America constantly talks about free speech absolutism and the horrors of censorship, US TV has "decency" regulations and there's absolutely no mass movement to ensure that TV companies are not penalised for 'wardrobe malfunctions' and expletives are broadcast without bleeps. Why would people from a much more conservative culture where public discourse attaches no value to free speech but stresses paternalism and patriotism instead be so keen on hearing alleged rudeness about their country?
- RajT88 4y ago
  Indeed. It seems to have had the effect of removing pieces of reality. I had a conversation once with a Chinese national, about an article about LGBTQ+ people in China. "There's no Gay people in China" (me, points at a picture of 2 young Chinese men in the article) "They're from Hong Kong. There's no Gay people in China." OK then! (This was quite a while back, I suspect the same conversation today would play out differently, since the popular opinion is that HK is in fact part of China)
  - okasaki 4y ago
    What a bizarre and ridiculous view to form based on one conversation. I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who believe stupid things. Does that mean that western countries are "removing pieces of reality"?
    - RajT88 4y ago
      > I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who believe stupid things. Does that mean that western countries are "removing pieces of reality"? Yes. The past 20 years or so the media ecosystems have been trying to do exactly that, at least in the US where I live. Remove the bits they don't like, and invent out of whole cloth replacement bits.
    - aetherane 4y ago
      I have heard the same statement several times too. I think the point was in relation to the context of censorship of LGBTQ content.
    - astrange 4y ago
      I've heard this from Chinese lesbians too. They aren't out in China, but other people are completely incapable of noticing they're gay, and other women won't admit they're gay to them even if eg they have just had sex.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  Hence 1984's CrimeThink
- jollybean 4y ago
  Actually, I think there's a more benign reason and that is references to those kinds of things are just a bit below bar for normally civil programming. If you've ever watched the banal things that people go through to get something past daytime censors, or, get a PG rating for films etc. it's similar. This is not 'Xi's authoritarian' system so much as 'different cultural standards of the moment'. Respect that in some parts of the world they don't talk or joke about STD's in that context. I wouldn't want to be subject to it, but this is not the kind of censorship that's a problem. Note that in the West, we 'self censor' tons of jokes or things that might be a bit off. Finally - I'm 100% certain there are examples of this kind of censorship which are problematic, for example, the mention of 'Taiwan' etc..
  - peteradio 4y ago
    But this is streaming not broadcast daytime television. Censoring crude jokes/porn/violence that might be happened upon by a toddler flipping the remote makes quite a lot of sense.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    I wonder how China protects its censors from wrong ideas (seeing as how they must necessarily come into contact with it). Extra indoctrination? Some kind of surveillance layercake? I read a scifi where digital personality-recordings became popular for various office/industrial applications. Sorta like an AI, but human. They were used for censorship. The remedy for ideological contamination? Full reboot every morning.
    - jollybean 4y ago
      Chinese people know about 'STDs' - they just don't put them in programming. I'm sure they all know about Taiwan as well. So mostly it's just keeping programming in terms of what they define as 'civil' - and - with the added element of pulling 'political censorship'. It's about large audiences and averages not about the knowledge of a specific thing.
    - buscoquadnary 4y ago
      You choose people based on their loyalty to the party and fanatical devotion. It's a pretty straightforward way of doing it, heck somewhere else in this thread someone was already getting offended at the joke about the chicken. Some people just have no sense of humour and a fanatical devotion to a cause, they are useful if not very wise. This is one of those situations where they are useful.
m463 4y ago
I can't help but wonder what the first-pass of censors did to the big bang theory (I'm pretty sure internal review and the rating service that gave it tv-14 cut stuff out too)
sltkr 4y ago
Personally I'm mostly offended how stale and unoriginal a lot of these jokes are, but I can definitely see why the censors took offense at some of them. For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken") plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and cats, and the “passing off” remark implies that the Chinese restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be considered offensive. The author labels that joke as "harmless" but you don't have to be a Chinese censor to interpret it as reinforcing harmful stereotypes. I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and notice how few laughs you get. Similarly, the racist remarks about Chinese people made by Sheldon's mom are somewhat offensive if taken at face value. I guess the joke is supposed to be at her expense instead ("old people are racists" is an American comedy cliche, if a somewhat tired one) but it's conceivable that either the censors didn't get that, or they feared that their audience didn't get that, so they decided to cut it out entirely. "They wouldn't get that" is probably also the right explanation for censoring the joke about Jews eating at Chinese restaurants during Christmas, which is a very American tradition. That doesn't imply the joke needs to go, but I can see how that would, at best, leave Chinese viewers scratching their heads.
- throwaways85989 4y ago
- jjcon 4y ago
  > can definitely see why the censors took offense at some of them Take offense maybe… censor absolutely not
- stirfish 4y ago
  > I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and notice how few laughs you get. Yeah, the show isn't that funny. >For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken") plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and cats, and the “passing off” remark implies that the Chinese restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be considered offensive. I hadn't considered the cat/dog meat angle, thank you for the perspective. In that case, I'd probably cut it too. I was thinking more of chicken nuggets, where a dozen birds are liquified and poured into a mold. Like if you ordered the pork and was served a hotdog, the "passing off as" bit would still work, you know?
ndespres 4y ago
Some of these jokes which are censored for criticism of China are so tasteless that they ought to be censored in the American version as well, or better still, never written at all. A joke about whether the "chicken" at the local Chinese takeout restaurant is actually chicken? In the 21st century? That is supposed to be amusing?
- kogus 4y ago
  I think it's important to distinguish between government censorship and corporate self-censorship. Almost nothing should be censored by the government. Almost anything can be censored by private parties (however cowardly such censorship may often be).
  - ginger2016 4y ago
    Government censorship can look at lot like corporate censorship, remember Zuckerberg said Facebook limited the reach of the news story because FBI informed them something. I am sure this is probably not the first time American government “requested” a corporation to censor something without the public knowing.
pphysch 4y ago
Western/American cultural messaging is very deeply baked into the popular media. What is necessarily aligned with, and un-subversive to, Western values may not be so for other sets of values. In short, "bland", "un-subversive", "sensitive" are culturally relative terms.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> such a bland, un-subversive show ... is so heavily censored American censorship is honestly no better, it's just that the show was written with the specifics of American censorship in mind.
- function_seven 4y ago
  Bullshit. Sorry, this "we're the same" retort is exhausting. The United States government does not employ censors to remove portions of shows before allowing them to air (or stream, whatever). The closest thing I can think of is DoD not giving access to a movie unless it paints Navy pilots in a certain light. Okay, fine. Not nearly the same as what this site is showing us. Yes, we have cultural taboos, like any culture. Studios have more trouble presenting some viewpoints over others. Chappelle gets protested, that one episode of Community was memory-holed on Hulu (but not on Amazon!). We ban pornography on public airwaves (but not on streaming or cable or satellite, or Blueray). If you compare and contrast the pervasiveness of censorship between China and the United States, the difference is huge. When it comes to artistic freedom, the US is way better than China. Maybe you can say we can improve even more, sure. But that's a long way off from our censorship being "honestly no better".
  - briantakita 4y ago
    Not Bullshit. If the Government & Corporations care so much about others censoring, they should lead by example. Lectures by hypocrites will otherwise be ignored...even if the censorship that you may like is categorized as being justified by you. If you don't like China's censorship policies, then appeal to China's sensibilities as their censorship is categorized as justified by them. Otherwise, the Chinese government will simply point out that lectures from hypocrites have no bearing.
    - ryanobjc 4y ago
      Absolutely wrong, the founders knew it, you should know it, everyone knows it. There's a big difference between using the rule of law to shape what can and cannot be said or sold or published. Compared to different private publishers/agents/etc deciding what they wish to do. The marketplace solves the latter problem - and it has! People are getting caught up in the "chicken" joke, but if you read the read of the article you'll see that crime dramas had to be re-shot so the "side of justice" wins in the end. What kind of anodyne cultural bullshit is that? Only the good guys win - BY STATE LAW. So absolutely not, the US and China are not even remotely the same. To suggest so is so ridiculous offensive it opens one up to accusations that they are a Chinese sock puppet... and it's a totally reasonable opinion to hold!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 4y ago
Actually, I wonder if that would be a "good" way of making a comedy that can be shown everywhere. Just film like 40 minutes per episode for a 30 minute slot, but only include throwaway jokes to they can be removed as needed.
- stirfish 4y ago
  I read somewhere that if you're writing humor for kids, you have to strip out a lot of the context: they might not know what an Eiffel Tower is, but they will understand Big Thing. Maybe comedy that can be shown everywhere is comedy a child can understand?
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Comedy doesn't translate well, even among people of similar demographics. What makes one person fall out of their chair with laughter will make another roll their eyes. You can water jokes down and make them generic, but rarely will you elicit more than a chuckle from people once you've completely diluted a joke. What was the last "dad joke" you heard that made you laugh uncontrollably? I think it's pointless to try an appease everyone. People should make comedy for their audiences and those who don't find it funny are free to ignore it. Just like, I think people should write sci-fi or thrillers for their audiences, rather than for everyone.
briantakita 4y ago
China has a policy against feminizing men...so it's possible that the government sees the show as being a bad influence. The Chinese government probably also wants Chinese, not western, women to be seen as sexy.
permo-w 4y ago
someone should try and get Brass Eye released in China
GuB-42 4y ago
I suspect some of it is just censoring for the sake of censoring. It is a common problem, if your job is to inspect something and you find nothing wrong, how do you show that you did your job? Here is an anecdote: in the game "Battle Chess", the graphists were quite happy with how their work turned out, but they knew it will be reviewed, and the reviewers will have to say something. So they added a small duck going around the queen piece, in a way that was easy to remove. As planned, reviewers said "everything is fine, but remove the duck", which they did, leaving the original design intact.

swayvil 4y ago

It's a deeper level of censorship. Not only will you refrain from thinking about these things in a tolerant light, you will refrain from thinking about these things at all. It chops pieces off reality when you do that. Censorship is amazing. So popular (downvotes anyone?), so casually employed, yet so incredibly destructive.

Sin2x 4y ago
This idea can be easily reversed: It's a deeper level of indoctrination. When these things are covertly inserted in an innocuous sounding show, not only will you start thinking about them, you will subconsiously think of them in a tolerant light. China has its own culture and mores, why should it allow that kind of soft projection of Western power.
- wozer 4y ago
  For some things that might be true. But when the indoctrination collides with reality in a harmful way, it's a different matter. Objectively, it is true that gay people exists and that there is no good reason to restrict their rights.
  - nightpool 4y ago
    Sure, but like other people in this thread are saying, it's not objectively true that the Chinese restaurant down the street is selling you dog meet and pretending that it's chicken, or that Chinese academics in the US are siphoning grant money and funneling it to Pyongyang. "Pervasive cultural norms colliding with reality" is a two-way street.
- cutemonster 4y ago
  > China has its own culture and mores Correction: Xi and the CCP have their own culture and mores The people, though, want to see The Big Bang Theory uncensored. The people are different from Xi. They don't want the same things as he (except for the ones Xi has successfully brainwashed, or those who have a highly tribal brain). > why should it allow that kind of soft projection That sounds paranoid, I hope you don't mind. Reasoning in that way, almost all movies in the world wold be a "soft projection" and Nation State attack. But sometimes it's just jokes or reality and a good movie ... or would have been.
  - okasaki 4y ago
    Good thing we have HN user cutemonster to tell us what the Chinese people want.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      If the chinese people had the option between the censored and uncensored version, which one do you think they would prefer? On an individual level it is obvious that almost no one advocates for self-censorship. Most people are only enthusiastic about censorship when they are the censor and not the censored. The communist dictatorship is a parasitic form of governance, but most cannot escape because they're stuck at a local maxima.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        I strongly suspect many if not most Chinese people would choose to see the censored version, especially if the stated reason for the censorship was "we have removed some things which may be insulting to Chinese people". Most people don't like being censored themselves, but don't confuse that for a moment with believing that most people want everything uncensored. For all public discourse in America constantly talks about free speech absolutism and the horrors of censorship, US TV has "decency" regulations and there's absolutely no mass movement to ensure that TV companies are not penalised for 'wardrobe malfunctions' and expletives are broadcast without bleeps. Why would people from a much more conservative culture where public discourse attaches no value to free speech but stresses paternalism and patriotism instead be so keen on hearing alleged rudeness about their country?
RajT88 4y ago
Indeed. It seems to have had the effect of removing pieces of reality. I had a conversation once with a Chinese national, about an article about LGBTQ+ people in China. "There's no Gay people in China" (me, points at a picture of 2 young Chinese men in the article) "They're from Hong Kong. There's no Gay people in China." OK then! (This was quite a while back, I suspect the same conversation today would play out differently, since the popular opinion is that HK is in fact part of China)
- okasaki 4y ago
  What a bizarre and ridiculous view to form based on one conversation. I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who believe stupid things. Does that mean that western countries are "removing pieces of reality"?
  - RajT88 4y ago
    > I'm sure you can find plenty of people in the west who believe stupid things. Does that mean that western countries are "removing pieces of reality"? Yes. The past 20 years or so the media ecosystems have been trying to do exactly that, at least in the US where I live. Remove the bits they don't like, and invent out of whole cloth replacement bits.
  - aetherane 4y ago
    I have heard the same statement several times too. I think the point was in relation to the context of censorship of LGBTQ content.
  - astrange 4y ago
    I've heard this from Chinese lesbians too. They aren't out in China, but other people are completely incapable of noticing they're gay, and other women won't admit they're gay to them even if eg they have just had sex.
KineticLensman 4y ago
Hence 1984's CrimeThink
jollybean 4y ago
Actually, I think there's a more benign reason and that is references to those kinds of things are just a bit below bar for normally civil programming. If you've ever watched the banal things that people go through to get something past daytime censors, or, get a PG rating for films etc. it's similar. This is not 'Xi's authoritarian' system so much as 'different cultural standards of the moment'. Respect that in some parts of the world they don't talk or joke about STD's in that context. I wouldn't want to be subject to it, but this is not the kind of censorship that's a problem. Note that in the West, we 'self censor' tons of jokes or things that might be a bit off. Finally - I'm 100% certain there are examples of this kind of censorship which are problematic, for example, the mention of 'Taiwan' etc..
- peteradio 4y ago
  But this is streaming not broadcast daytime television. Censoring crude jokes/porn/violence that might be happened upon by a toddler flipping the remote makes quite a lot of sense.
- swayvil 4y ago
  I wonder how China protects its censors from wrong ideas (seeing as how they must necessarily come into contact with it). Extra indoctrination? Some kind of surveillance layercake? I read a scifi where digital personality-recordings became popular for various office/industrial applications. Sorta like an AI, but human. They were used for censorship. The remedy for ideological contamination? Full reboot every morning.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    Chinese people know about 'STDs' - they just don't put them in programming. I'm sure they all know about Taiwan as well. So mostly it's just keeping programming in terms of what they define as 'civil' - and - with the added element of pulling 'political censorship'. It's about large audiences and averages not about the knowledge of a specific thing.
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    You choose people based on their loyalty to the party and fanatical devotion. It's a pretty straightforward way of doing it, heck somewhere else in this thread someone was already getting offended at the joke about the chicken. Some people just have no sense of humour and a fanatical devotion to a cause, they are useful if not very wise. This is one of those situations where they are useful.

m463 4y ago

I can't help but wonder what the first-pass of censors did to the big bang theory (I'm pretty sure internal review and the rating service that gave it tv-14 cut stuff out too)

sltkr 4y ago

Personally I'm mostly offended how stale and unoriginal a lot of these jokes are, but I can definitely see why the censors took offense at some of them. For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken") plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and cats, and the “passing off” remark implies that the Chinese restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be considered offensive. The author labels that joke as "harmless" but you don't have to be a Chinese censor to interpret it as reinforcing harmful stereotypes. I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and notice how few laughs you get. Similarly, the racist remarks about Chinese people made by Sheldon's mom are somewhat offensive if taken at face value. I guess the joke is supposed to be at her expense instead ("old people are racists" is an American comedy cliche, if a somewhat tired one) but it's conceivable that either the censors didn't get that, or they feared that their audience didn't get that, so they decided to cut it out entirely. "They wouldn't get that" is probably also the right explanation for censoring the joke about Jews eating at Chinese restaurants during Christmas, which is a very American tradition. That doesn't imply the joke needs to go, but I can see how that would, at best, leave Chinese viewers scratching their heads.

throwaways85989 4y ago
jjcon 4y ago
> can definitely see why the censors took offense at some of them Take offense maybe… censor absolutely not
stirfish 4y ago
> I dare you to show that scene at a liberal college and notice how few laughs you get. Yeah, the show isn't that funny. >For example, the joke about the Chinese restaurant ("I'd be more concerned about what they're passing off as chicken") plays off of the stereotype that Chinese people eat dogs and cats, and the “passing off” remark implies that the Chinese restaurant owners are deceptive and would immorally and illegally serve their guests a different kind of meat than advertised. I can definitely see how that joke would be considered offensive. I hadn't considered the cat/dog meat angle, thank you for the perspective. In that case, I'd probably cut it too. I was thinking more of chicken nuggets, where a dozen birds are liquified and poured into a mold. Like if you ordered the pork and was served a hotdog, the "passing off as" bit would still work, you know?

ndespres 4y ago

Some of these jokes which are censored for criticism of China are so tasteless that they ought to be censored in the American version as well, or better still, never written at all. A joke about whether the "chicken" at the local Chinese takeout restaurant is actually chicken? In the 21st century? That is supposed to be amusing?

kogus 4y ago
I think it's important to distinguish between government censorship and corporate self-censorship. Almost nothing should be censored by the government. Almost anything can be censored by private parties (however cowardly such censorship may often be).
- ginger2016 4y ago
  Government censorship can look at lot like corporate censorship, remember Zuckerberg said Facebook limited the reach of the news story because FBI informed them something. I am sure this is probably not the first time American government “requested” a corporation to censor something without the public knowing.

pphysch 4y ago

Western/American cultural messaging is very deeply baked into the popular media. What is necessarily aligned with, and un-subversive to, Western values may not be so for other sets of values. In short, "bland", "un-subversive", "sensitive" are culturally relative terms.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> such a bland, un-subversive show ... is so heavily censored American censorship is honestly no better, it's just that the show was written with the specifics of American censorship in mind.

function_seven 4y ago
Bullshit. Sorry, this "we're the same" retort is exhausting. The United States government does not employ censors to remove portions of shows before allowing them to air (or stream, whatever). The closest thing I can think of is DoD not giving access to a movie unless it paints Navy pilots in a certain light. Okay, fine. Not nearly the same as what this site is showing us. Yes, we have cultural taboos, like any culture. Studios have more trouble presenting some viewpoints over others. Chappelle gets protested, that one episode of Community was memory-holed on Hulu (but not on Amazon!). We ban pornography on public airwaves (but not on streaming or cable or satellite, or Blueray). If you compare and contrast the pervasiveness of censorship between China and the United States, the difference is huge. When it comes to artistic freedom, the US is way better than China. Maybe you can say we can improve even more, sure. But that's a long way off from our censorship being "honestly no better".
- briantakita 4y ago
  Not Bullshit. If the Government & Corporations care so much about others censoring, they should lead by example. Lectures by hypocrites will otherwise be ignored...even if the censorship that you may like is categorized as being justified by you. If you don't like China's censorship policies, then appeal to China's sensibilities as their censorship is categorized as justified by them. Otherwise, the Chinese government will simply point out that lectures from hypocrites have no bearing.
  - ryanobjc 4y ago
    Absolutely wrong, the founders knew it, you should know it, everyone knows it. There's a big difference between using the rule of law to shape what can and cannot be said or sold or published. Compared to different private publishers/agents/etc deciding what they wish to do. The marketplace solves the latter problem - and it has! People are getting caught up in the "chicken" joke, but if you read the read of the article you'll see that crime dramas had to be re-shot so the "side of justice" wins in the end. What kind of anodyne cultural bullshit is that? Only the good guys win - BY STATE LAW. So absolutely not, the US and China are not even remotely the same. To suggest so is so ridiculous offensive it opens one up to accusations that they are a Chinese sock puppet... and it's a totally reasonable opinion to hold!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bee_rider 4y ago

Actually, I wonder if that would be a "good" way of making a comedy that can be shown everywhere. Just film like 40 minutes per episode for a 30 minute slot, but only include throwaway jokes to they can be removed as needed.

stirfish 4y ago
I read somewhere that if you're writing humor for kids, you have to strip out a lot of the context: they might not know what an Eiffel Tower is, but they will understand Big Thing. Maybe comedy that can be shown everywhere is comedy a child can understand?
mywittyname 4y ago
Comedy doesn't translate well, even among people of similar demographics. What makes one person fall out of their chair with laughter will make another roll their eyes. You can water jokes down and make them generic, but rarely will you elicit more than a chuckle from people once you've completely diluted a joke. What was the last "dad joke" you heard that made you laugh uncontrollably? I think it's pointless to try an appease everyone. People should make comedy for their audiences and those who don't find it funny are free to ignore it. Just like, I think people should write sci-fi or thrillers for their audiences, rather than for everyone.

briantakita 4y ago

China has a policy against feminizing men...so it's possible that the government sees the show as being a bad influence. The Chinese government probably also wants Chinese, not western, women to be seen as sexy.

permo-w 4y ago

someone should try and get Brass Eye released in China

GuB-42 4y ago

I suspect some of it is just censoring for the sake of censoring. It is a common problem, if your job is to inspect something and you find nothing wrong, how do you show that you did your job? Here is an anecdote: in the game "Battle Chess", the graphists were quite happy with how their work turned out, but they knew it will be reviewed, and the reviewers will have to say something. So they added a small duck going around the queen piece, in a way that was easy to remove. As planned, reviewers said "everything is fine, but remove the duck", which they did, leaving the original design intact.