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The Big [Censored] Theory

(pudding.cool)
1444 points feross | 4 comments | 29 Aug 22 17:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.889s | source
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still_grokking ◴[29 Aug 22 21:08 UTC] No.32643578[source]▶
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.

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gernb ◴[29 Aug 22 21:24 UTC] No.32643766[source]▶
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.
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archi42 ◴[29 Aug 22 23:02 UTC] No.32644653[source]▶
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...

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1. still_grokking ◴[29 Aug 22 23:34 UTC] No.32644873[source]▶
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!

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2. archi42 ◴[30 Aug 22 07:05 UTC] No.32647473[source]▶
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).

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3. still_grokking ◴[30 Aug 22 16:33 UTC] No.32652295[source]▶
> 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).

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4. archi42 ◴[30 Aug 22 19:57 UTC] No.32654338{3}[source]▶
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.