Chinese Fans of 'Friends' Angry After Show Re-released With Censorship

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese fans of U.S. sitcom 'Friends' have expressed dismay online after noticing censorship in recently released episodes of the beloved show, including of LGBT issues. Several major Chinese streaming sites, including Tencent, Baidu's IQiyi, Alibaba's Youku, and Bilibili, started showing a version of the first season of the show on Friday, its first re-release in China for several years. But fans soon noticed parts of the long-running show were different to what they had seen before and complained of censorship which included the removal of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-related content, as well as mistranslations. In one example, a conversation where a main character, Ross, explained his wife was a lesbian, was deleted. Another scene where another character, Joey, suggested going to a 'strip joint' was translated as 'go out to play' on the version shown on Tencent Video. As users started to notice the changes, they began discussing and 'boycotting' the move. The discussion was a 'hot search topic' on Weibo on Sunday. Reuters adds: But in a sign the discussion itself may have caught the attention of censors, searches on Weibo on Sunday for several variations on the hashtag or search term #Friendshasbeencensored produced either zero or limited recent results. The development follows a similar treatment of David Fincher's 1999 cult classic 'Fight Club.' Fans were shocked to find that a version of the movie that was made available on Tencent Video had a new ending where the authorities win. After much uproar, the original ending for the movie was restored.

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