‘Fight Club’ Ends After Censorship Reactions In China


Some viewers who watched “Fight Club” on a popular Chinese streaming platform last month noticed: severe, dystopian end cutand replaced with a message promoting law and order.

Now it’s back to the original final platform – and the pro-government message is gone. The parts still missing from the Chinese version of the 1999 cult classic seem to be the nude sex scenes.

The changes, which attracted international attention, were noticed by people who watched the movie on a broadcast platform owned by Tencent in the past weeks. a giant Chinese entertainment company.

Tencent has now returned 11 of the 12 previously cut minutes, The Hollywood Reporter said in an article this week. The New York Times confirmed that about a minute was missing, mostly of sex scenes featuring characters played by Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter.

“Fight Club” is not the first foreign film where the version made for audiences in mainland China differs from the original. For example, the Chinese version of the 2018 Queen biography “Bohemian Rhapsody,” cuts off references to singer Freddie Mercury’s sexuality.

Still, it’s unusual for foreign films in China to contain pro-government scripts; these are usually reserved for Chinese movies. It’s also rare for people who censor movies for the Chinese market to take back their handiwork.

As of Tuesday, it wasn’t immediately clear why or exactly when the original ending of “Fight Club” was restored at Tencent, or why the ending was changed in the first place.

Kenny Ng, a film professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said in an interview that he believes the changes, which ended last month, are a result of Tencent’s self-censorship. But he said it’s also possible that the movie’s Chinese distributor made the changes.

Tencent declined to comment. A spokesperson for the film’s Chinese distributor, Pacific Audio and Video, said the company was not involved in editing the Tencent version of the film and had only applied for permission to release the film in China.

Los Angeles-based New Regency, which produced “Fight Club,” did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Rules governing which movies releases in mainland China may or may not include have become more stringent in the past few years.

In the past, the rules were set by the State Council of China, a division of the State Press, Broadcasting, Radio, Film and Television Administration. But since 2017, censorship has been governed by the relatively stricter Film Industry Promotion Act. gives authorities more freedom to identify perceived crimes.

The law says films shown in China may not contain anything that would endanger the country’s unity, sovereignty, public order, or “community ethics.” In addition, anything that disturbs social stability, spreads superstitions or defames cultural traditions is prohibited.

The original ending to David Fincher’s “Fight Club” focuses on a successful plot to destroy a series of buildings. That violence was cut off in the censored Tencent version released last month. Instead, the movie ended just before the demolition. a note to the audience He said the police “quickly understood the whole plan and successfully prevented the explosion of the bomb by arresting all the criminals”.

The news that the movie was censored sparked controversy on social media in China and elsewhere. One of the controversial public figures was author Chuck Palahniuk, whose 1996 novel inspired the 1999 film of Mr. Fincher.

This week, Mr. Palahniuk wrote on twitter He said China was “doing the right thing” by restoring the film’s original ending. Her post included a drawing of a pink soap bar, a nod to the movie’s most recognizable props.

The text on the bar read “Right Club” instead of “Fight Club”.





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