Dharamshala, 3rd November: The Disney+ streaming service in Hong Kong is missing an episode(episode 12 of season 16) of “The Simpsons” in which the cartoon American family makes witty humorous remarks regarding Tibet, the Tiananmen Square, Mao Zedong, and the Cultural Revolution. This raises concerns about the mainland China-style censorship in the city.
Beijing’s government passed a rule last month prohibiting the screening of films that are deemed a danger to the country’s national security interests. To put it another way, the new law suppresses and censors everything it considers “sensitive.”
The Simpson family travels to China in the episode “Goo Goo Gai Pen,” which first aired in 2005, and passes through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. It has a plaque that reads, “In 1989, nothing happened on this place.” The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, a student movement that devolved into a massacre when Chinese state troops opened fire on demonstrators, made the place famous.
It then depicts Marge’s sister standing in front of a tank, referencing the famous shot of a lone guy standing in front of a tank from the Tiananmen Square crackdown. On top of that, “Goo Goo Gai Pan” has a joke in which Homer refers to Mao Zedong, the former president of China, as “a little angel that killed 50 million people.”
The episode also features sharp remarks about Tibet, where Beijing has been accused of religious oppression, and the Cultural Revolution, a disastrous period of turmoil in Mao Zedong’s last decade of leadership.
Tibet, Tiananmen Square, and other controversial issues have been extensively controlled in mainland China throughout the years, whereas public vigils in honor of the victims have long been held in Hong Kong, which was a British territory until 1997 when it was reverted to Chinese rule. However, since the implementation of a broad national security law last year, censorship in Hong Kong has expanded significantly.
Changes to the city had strained relations between Beijing and Washington, which slapped penalties on Hong Kong and Chinese officials over the former British colony’s guaranteed autonomy and liberties, such as freedom of expression.