The Big [Censored] Theory

What's the moral here?

There is also a lot of censoring in the "western" world.

It's also mostly justified by the exact same "reasons" like the ones mentioned in that blog post. Especial the "but the children" "argument" is used the whole time. And if that gets boring than it's "terrorism". Than again "the children".

Also there are a lot of things one can't publicity say for political reasons.

In Germany for example most people know: If you want to watch some more "controversial" movies, or play uncensored games you need to get them on the gray or black market. The German versions are very often heavily censored, or there is just no German version at all because the content is outright verboten.

Also communication online gets censored. It's impossible by now to say some (still) completely "legal" but "not politically correct" things online especially around mainstream media.

The censorship in the EU gets also stronger every year. Now they banned "dangerous" foreign media… Actually without any grounding in established law. But who needs laws? It will take as always many many years until some judge will have the last saying and declare the things the government did as illegal. But than the game will just start again, also as always: Making illegal "laws" takes weeks. Getting rid of them takes decades. Then they change the wording, and you need to sue through all instance form the beginning. Ad nauseam.

You’re really not making a strong argument by invoking the German example. The things that they forbid are mainly glorification of a most shameful regime. Holocaust denial comes to mind. Good riddance, I say.

It is more extreme in China than in America. In addition to sex, lgbt, and other things of a similar nature, movies with magic are especially rejected. Ever notice how movies seem to be getting more bland and milk/toast each year? its because there is a lot of money in China, and China only accepts a few foreign movies each year. Disney, Warner Bros, etc. all want a slice of that pie so they comply with Chinese censors as much as they can to get in. Germany is almost as bad, I agree, but companies aren't stooping to Germany. They stoop to China for the money, and it affects the whole of the west as a result.

I don't know if it's still true but a friend of mine married a German woman and we were a little surprised she had never seen "The Sound of Music" and she said, of course, it's banned.

I think its less holocaust and more pornography these days. That and violent video games are heavily censored for nonpolitical reasons like gore, nudity, etc. I am glad they censor the holocaust glorification, but I wish they would leave in the other stuff.

Given the down votes I guess I've got misunderstood.

I didn't made any argument up to now. I've asked for the moral of that blog post in the light of the fact that there is also quite some censorship elsewhere in the world.

Sure, Chinese censorship is bad (and the examples given are partly laughable in my opinion). But censorship is bad in general. This applies the same to for example the censorship we have in the EU. (And no, it's not "only some Nazi things").

Also it's a notable fact that the "justifications" given for our censorship are the exact same as the reasons given in, say, China (or likely elsewhere).

The concrete censored content may differ, but behind that is the exact same line of reasoning: That there is "inappropriate" content the people need to be shielded from.

That motivation is the part that is questionable at least. (Now I've made an argument).

Actually this reveals a lot in which way governments think about the population, no matter the country.

Still there seems to be a lot of black and white thinking in the line of "But we are the good ones, we have reasons, but just look what the bad ones do". I refuse to take part in this narrative. The world isn't as simple as that.

I couldn't find info on a ban. It was heavily/absurdly redacted due to the Nazi topics (1966 was two decades after the war), but some of those changes were promptly reverted. Can't say if that was due to the censor bureau, or if the censorship was a decision in the company.

Anyway, since it's VHS release you can buy the uncut version legally, and sellers are allowed to advert for it. It is rated as suitable from the age of 6 (FSK 6) since 2005. It simply wasn't that successful in Germany to begin with.

Sources (all German): https://www.schnittberichte.com/special.php?ID=176&Seite=6 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meine_Lieder_%E2%80%93_meine_T...

> milk/toast

FYI the word I believe you're looking for is "milquetoast" :)

> Germany is almost as bad, I agree, […]

I hope we didn't reach Chines levels by now, and that there is still hope.

But yes, we're working hard on that and "like" to reach their level soonish. Our variant of the Ministry of Truth gets shaped out a little more with every year. Since the so called "Netzwerkdurchsuchungsgesetz"¹ we've got really close I guess. But there's already more coming: "Chatkontrolle"²…

> […] but companies aren't stooping to Germany.

Well, we're the country that had had shooter games with green blood for years, because reasons (and companies obeyed). Also there are of course special versions of movies, extra for the German market, that are "reworked" here and there to pass the censors. Freedom of speech and freedom of art have strict limits, you know… Something something, because Nazis. (The above mentioned laws get actually partly justified "because Nazis"; but judge for yourself).

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¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act

>> The Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, NetzDG; German: Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken), also known colloquially as the Facebook Act (Facebook-Gesetz), is a German law that was passed in the Bundestag that officially aims to combating fake news, hate speech and misinformation online.

>> The Act obligates social media platforms with over 2 million users to remove "clearly illegal" content within 24 hours and all illegal content within 7 days of it being posted, or face a maximum fine of 50 million Euros. The deleted content must be stored for at least 10 weeks afterwards, and platforms must submit transparency reports on dealing with illegal content every six months. It was passed by the Bundestag in June 2017 and took full effect in January 2018.

>> The law has been criticised both locally and internationally by politicians, human rights groups, journalists and academics for incentivising social media platforms to pre-emptively censor valid and lawful expression, and making them the arbiter of what constitutes free expression and curtailing freedom of speech in Germany.

Of course it's only against "fake news, hate speech and misinformation online". Exactly like the laws in China…

Just for fun: Compare with the German Wikipedia page. Maybe you notice something. ;-)

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² https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...

>> The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence.

>> Other consequences of the proposal are ineffective network blocking, screening of person cloud storage including private photos, mandatory age verification leading to the end of anonymous communication, censorship in Appstores and the paternalism and exclusion of minors in the digital world.

Never heard of this movie but it says clearly on the German Wikipedia page:

> In Deutschland wurde der Film zunächst in einer stark gekürzten Fassung gezeigt, in der sämtliche Bezüge auf den Nationalsozialismus fehlten und der Film mit der Hochzeit Marias endet und nicht – wie in der Originalfassung – mit der Flucht der Trapp-Familie aus Österreich.

[eng]:

> In Germany, the film was initially shown in a heavily edited version, in which all references to National Socialism were removed and the film ends with Maria's wedding, and not—as in the original version—with the Trapp family's escape from Austria.

LOL, sounds even more scary than the Chinese version of Fight Club!

Milk/toast somehow also captures the essence of it.

Next sentence: Schließlich erwirkte das amerikanische Produktionsstudio jedoch, dass dieser dritte Akt des Films auch in der deutschen Fassung gezeigt wird.

Translation: Eventually, however, the American production studio managed to ensure that this third act of the film was also shown in the German version.

Wikipedia isn't clear on the process or the timeline (and there is no source given), but I read it like this was "fixed" during the initial cinematic run.

Plus, whatever the cutting was, it's available uncut since at least the home video release, and I presume it was shown in cinemas uncut after at most a month. And the current rating is FSK-6 (suitable for children over 6). So it's not banned, and never was. The closest it gets is the 1966 initial cinema cut (which I agree to call a ban, but as stated, from the data given I don't believe lasted for long).

Yes, games were censored, but they stayed the same for the rest of the world. Its a simple value change to make the blood green, so it was easy to pull off. For companies vying to get into China, they have to change the whole product for nearly everyone to get accepted, or have massive amounts of that product censored, and made to be a lesser product as a result. For those companies, why would you risk not only being rejected but having your movie gutted when you can just rewrite the whole thing to work with what the Chinese want? Thankfully videogames are not nearly as concerned with getting china dollars as movie studios so we aren't getting that kind of widespread global censorship yet. But really, its only a matter of time unless something cracks.

After I was corrected, I looked up the origin of the word. It first appeared as the name of a character in a comic strip, "Caspar Milqutoast" who the author described as "speaks quietly and gets hit with a big stick." He named it after the food which is the most meek of meals.

The Wikipedia says this: "The character's name is derived from a bland and fairly inoffensive food, milk toast, which, light and easy to digest, is an appropriate food for someone with a weak or "nervous" stomach"

I never knew that this comic was a thing, but now I want to read it

> but I read it like this was "fixed" during the initial cinematic run.

> and I presume it was shown in cinemas uncut after at most a month.

You're not form Germany, right?

Changing the mind of a public authority is in any case a very long process as a German authority (and especially the board of censors!) will never admit it did something wrong. Usually you need to go through all instances. Things like that can take decades.

I'm to lazy to research this case here as it's not really important but I'm quite sure it took at least a few years before they reverted any censoring decisions.

"Schließlich erwirkte" point in that direction actually. "Schließlich" would be better translated as "lastly" or "finally"—which means "after a long fight" most of the time.

Also the German Wikipedia is sneaky. You need to weight every word! It says "the last part was also shown in Germany". That does not mean they restored the Nazi references. I'm quite sure they didn't (at least fully) as most Nazi stuff is banned. They're more liberal with that in "art settings" just the last 20 years or so. Before that even small references have been heavily censored.

It took for example decades to unban Wolfenstein 3D in Germany. You know, that game where you kill Nazis. But because the Nazis in that game use Nazi symbols it was verboten for a very very long time. (They didn't accept that video game are art, so there were no exceptions like for example movies; that's something that changed just lately).

I get your point (and there is something to it).

But still there are "international" versions of content and some "special versions" for some countries—and not an ultimately "pre-censored" version that would "please everybody" (or better said, all boards of censors at once regardless country).

For US audience you need for example to censor nipples. In Germany we make jokes about that. But here a swastika is a very big problem, US people would not mind OTOH. Making a Mohamed joke will get you banned elsewhere; and so forth.

So I don't really see an acute danger of "pre-censoring".

The actual scandal is that the content industry just obeys all that madness. Of course, because they're only interested in the money. The actual messages are completely irrelevant and get changed fundamentally at a whim without remorse. That's the part that makes me think.

I'm from hier ;-) and I'm painfully aware how long some institutions take. However Hollywood was/is an important outlet of the allies, and the movie depicted bad stuff done by the Nazis (I think? never saw it). So I believe it's reasonable that they have exerted some influence (stuff like that certainly happened in the french sector, I was told).

It was released uncut on VHS (1978 in the US, so 1979/1980 in Germany; VHS for home use came about 1976). So if it was "eventually/finally shown uncut" that probably refers to running in the cinema; this leaves only the option that (a) during the initial run they moved from the cut to the uncut version or (b) there was a rerun at some point [maybe for the VHS release].

Anyway, I find it difficult to research this and also don't care enough; the movie is just too obscure in Germany, and certainly not my favorite genre.

P.S.: Yes, I know about Wolfenstein; but that's a different medium in a different age.

I still remember when they censored the Hitler scene in Castle Wolfenstein. You know, the one where he is presented as a raving syphilitic madman - literally the opposite of glorification. For those that haven't seen it, here's the comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQ1eBiRRRo