‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Released In China Minus LGBTQ Content

The Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody might have gained a multitude of Oscars, together with Best Actor for Rami Malek, but it surely got here below appreciable fireplace for softening frontman Freddie Mercury’s homosexuality. If you thought the movie was cowardly, you haven’t seen the model launched in China. As per CNN, the nation’s censors chopped out any and all LGBTQ content material.

That leaves… nicely, nonetheless quite a bit. CNN highlights solely a handful of “offenses”: a close-up of a completely clothed male crotch, two kisses between two males, characters spouting the phrase “gay,” all the cross-dressing “I Want to Break Free” quantity, and the grope-heavy scene that introduces Mercury’s future associate Jim Hutton. The latter leaves a plot gap, with Hutton magically showing later out-of-nowhere.

In 2016, Chinese censors formally banned any portrayal of “abnormal sexual behavior,” which the powers that be determined included something remotely LGTBQ.

Still, some members of China’s LGBTQ neighborhood have been glad that Bohemian Rhapsody was launched there in any respect. The nation solely permits a low variety of Western movies to play theatrically within the nation, and apparently, minimally homosexual or not, Bohemian Rhapsody’s $888 million world haul, as of this writing, was too huge to disregard.

Others weren’t so stoked. Filmmaker and LGBTQ activist Fan Pop mentioned it was “dangerous” to interpret this as a win. “If everyone becomes content with this kind of ‘victory,’” he mentioned, “then the whole world will always submit to authority, creators won’t be respected and there will be no protection for the interests of the audience.”

This is all unlucky, however whereas they have been butchering the movie, did they a minimum of return and re-edit the one infamous hyper-cut assembly scene that brought about anger, particularly after the movie gained the Oscar for Best Editing?

(Via CNN)