I swore off streaming services when they started pulling episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they were worried someone might be offended
The DnD episode from Community (S2E14) can't be seen on any streaming services because one Asian character wears black makeup while cosplaying as a drow.
There's at least one ALF ('86-90)episode that you can only get the uncensored version via piracy.
(Episode in question is Try to Remember. ALF originally got an electric shock. It quickly got censored in reruns to have ALF slip and hit his head because the network worried kids would get shocked emulating ALF.)
That part really aggravated me. I already pay a hefty premium for Disney/Hulu so the fact that I do not get full experience, because someone thought an episode I pay for with subs is offensive really irks me. I am slowly getting to the point of pulling the plug and each time I see an ad for hulu on disney, I am getting a tiny little bit closer to pissing off wife and making kid cry in one go.
They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.
Or sometimes the licensor just doesn’t feel like paying for it. Netflix famously removed the iconic version of “Fly Me to the Moon” from the ending credits of their copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion and even more weirdly stripped the vocals from the similarly iconic ending credits theme of Naoki Urusawa’s Monster, both because they didn’t want to shell out the cash for the rights.
I was so surprised and bummed when I discovered this was a thing. My wife and I started watching the original Beverly Hills 90210—a sort of ridiculous snapshot of American pop culture in the early 1990s—on some streaming service, and after a few episodes I noticed the music was just...super wrong.
Reading online, I learned that a lot of the original music had been licensed only for the original run of the show, so even when it went to DVD in the early 2000s they had to remove a whole bunch of the original music. It's terrible on two fronts: one, the show is an awesome snapshot of 90s music, with tons of great stuff featured both as background music and in extended live performances, but they cut whole scenes and entire episodes that had too much of it, and two, whoever managed the process of picking replacement music clearly did not care at all, and used awful generic music that sounds like it came from a file called "BeachRiff.aiff" on a $29.95 CD library of royalty-free 60 second stock music samples.
I admit to finding a source of video files patched together from various sources with the original soundtracks intact, and it's simply MUCH more enjoyable. It seems, though, that some episodes of live performances are lost to time—or at least lost to the corporate owners who'd rather sit on the tapes in a warehouse somewhere than make them available.
what's really pointless is how they released the beavis and butthead episodes without the music videos. even the replays on mtv or mtv2 back in the 2000s couldn't play the music videos.
Back in the 90s, people just had no concept of today's media offerings. Content was edited specifically to work with the only home media they new of at the time, and that was interlaced TV at frame rates of 29.97 or 25. There was no concept for progressive displays. The only home video format that was in wide use was VHS, and TV shows just didn't find their way there. That was something for theatrical releases. TV shows were much more concerned about trying to make it to syndication. When it came time to licensing, that's all the producers had on their radar.
What's the point? This was much less a malicious thing than it is made out to be. Once the licensing ran out, that's it. They can't just YOLO their way through it, or they'd have been sued. It's possible they tried to negotiate new terms for the music, but terms couldn't be agreed. When it came time to release on DVD, the person involved for the music might not have been available or interested in doing it again. At that point, the music would never feel right when replaced. The last point being these producers would be doing this on the cheap, so your <$30 CD library wouldn't have been far off, except the music libraries would have been much more expensive than that. Decent royalty free music has only been a thing within the past 10-15 years.
Edit: one more thing about the music, it is a large expense for the production. the studios are usually willing to pay for it to air, because they know how much ad sales they have and build it into part of the per episode expense. negotiating for DVD release with no known amount of money to earn makes it difficult to negotiate a license for "real" music
Everybody knows all of this, and nobody thinks the companies doing it are doing it "maliciously." The point is that it is stupid, harmful and unnecessary, not a consumer complaint.
Of course these people did not want to sell a broken product; they sold a lot fewer copies because they were forced to by goofy laws and their financial circumstances.
I hate that kind of destruction of what I think should ultimately be considered property of humanity. When you create something, you're free to destroy or ruin it. Once you share it with somebody else, you should need their consent to destroy it.
The social responsibility for ensuring that things could be shared falls on libraries. You might check a few libraries for old copies of vintage media.
My sore spot is the original Rust In Peace album. It was rerecorded and the rerecording is horrible. Any copy of the original is treasure to me.
That's the thing: I don't feel like the studios really own something once it is released. It almost becomes the property of the viewers. Things like changing Star Wars is horrifying to most. It's almost as if the public should have to vote on any changes (e.g. I'd probably be willing to vote to remove some flubs, like a mic dangling in frame).
When the Bobs sold Back to the Future they put a clause in the contract that the movies could not be remade or altered in any way without their approval. They nixed the 3D versions that Universal was planned when 3D TVs were in vogue.
The TV series Scrubs was hit really hard by this — The soundtrack and sound-design in that show really drove home the emotion in the episodes, and when replaced, it really doesn't hit the same mark.
the DVD/streaming releases of Daria suffer from this. i used to have old TV rips of the show with the original contemporary MTV soundtrack but i'm not sure what happened to them. the stock music just doesn't carry the weight of the times.
I was literally complaining to my partner about this exact thing last night -- we ended up torrenting a collection of what look to be old VHS rips and really enjoyed them.
Mission Hill as well. If you want the original one, with tracks by Moby, Looper, the Toasters, and more, the only option is a fan made restoration project
If you want 4k, that fan restoration project is also the only way to get it
Ugh, the music licensing issue is horrible. I sold a movie to Netflix many years ago and they "couldn't afford" the awesome soundtrack so they switched it out with garbage which makes a so-so movie into a total turd.
> They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.
1990s Beavis and Butthead episodes seem completely bizarre/pointless without the music.
When Mike Judge started releasing new episodes back in 2012-ish, it's noticeable how he mostly avoided music clips and focused on satirizing reality shows that were on the same network (MTV.) I assume this was to avoid licensing nightmares.
For me, it was when a movie wasn't the way I remembered it. Then I found a pirated copy.
Turned out the 'official' release was heavily edited, with tone, characters, and even some plot had been completely reshaped. I've found this to be increasingly prevalent, and not just in a "made for TV" or "adapted for Flying" type modifications.
This was what made me cancel Netflix 10 years ago.
They decided to remove stuff that cost them nothing to have in their library like Gone with the Wind. I'd never watch it but it was clear then they had decided they would be gatekeepers of what people can and cant watch.
They are choosing not to host a movie on their service, which I think is a bit different than say, Disney not allowing anyone to access Song of the South.
I cancelled Netflix too, but it's not true that it cost them nothing to have it in their library. Everyone in the movie still needs to get paid and simply having the show in the library costs them money.
I hate the censorship. But when some groups are willing to kill if you don’t censor then I can’t blame others for not wanting to be martyrs and put their lives on the line for it
What does that very specific example have to do with broad censorship as a phenomenon in media? Like how often do you think TV networks and streaming services are removing depictions of Mohammed in the stuff they make or license?
removing "fly me to the moon" from the end of NGE has nothing to do with Islam.
the Islamic prohibition on the Prophet isn't new, is something they take seriously and always have, and is not happening at the whim of the studio execs.
Not TV show editing, rather a satire magazine, but a now-deleted reply mentioned that Charlie Hebdo was pressured to censor and would not. They had staff members murdered because they would not censor.
But if it's what socalgal2 was talking about, then their comment was a non-sequitur. They saw the word censorship and rambled something almost entirely unrelated to the topic at hand.
That's why it's worth asking what they're talking about.
There was also South Park's episodes 200 and 201 where they got a slew of death threats for depicting Mohammad. Funnily enough, Mohammad's depiction was the least offensive of all the other religious figures they showed in that episode, which was basically the point of the episodes more or less.
The funniest part of it all is that the network decided to not only remove the episode after the initial airing, it even censored Kyle's speech at the end of 201[1] about fighting back against intimidation. The censorship was done in such a way that it looked like South Park was satirizing the censorship itself too [2].
They were responding to a comment about piracy not self-centering extant works. I could see where the comment does sequitur, just barely. Perhaps he is pushing an agenda, perhaps he was making conversation. I can see far further OT comments all up and down this post.
My issue is less with taking a tangent but the way the comment is framed as if it's a justification for what services are doing. Maybe one south park episode can be half-justified that way, and basically nothing else.
If a tshirt rental store was renting me my favourite tshirt (not available to buy) for two decades then decided it wasn't available any more because other people don't like the shirt design, I would be pissed and not want to support the tshirt rental industry any more.
That’s a bad analogy. It works against your point. It seems entirely, entirely reasonable to avoid a clothing store that refuses to stock hip styles simply because they’re “offensive”. For an example using the cliche, many people find a naked ankle to be completely acceptable.
Yours is wrong. Yours would work if you liked all the clothes there but then one day they stopped selling Kanye West’s Nazi shirt that you liked because people found it offensive. And then you stopped shopping there because of that.
The analogy requires you giving up what you want because they stopped carrying something others find offensive. Not that they don’t sell what you like all up. In which case it makes perfect sense not to shop there.
That's a really awkward analogy. A better one would be: Would you buy an album with all the curse words bleeped out?
A lot of people would, but others would prefer the uncensored version.
That’s a worse analogy. The other guy doesn’t want to use a service because they don’t offer content he wants because people are offended by it. There’s a bunch of clothes not sold at most retailers because it is offensive but you can buy them online directly from the manufacturer.
The analogy you gave would be better if they edited the content to be semantically equivalent but they aren’t. The content just isn’t available.
Now maybe the argument is that you’re paying for the service. In which case it would be like Costco where you have a membership and they definitely don’t carry offensive material.
The biggest problem IMO is that they are picking and choosing what is offensive. I can watch over 100 episodes of very offensive (to someone) episodes of Always Sunny episodes on Hulu. However, they decided 1 concept from 1 scene of a handful of episodes is more offensive than everything else and removed those.
I think an analogy could be Home Depot sells a dimming light with 10 settings. Some group of people can’t deal with 2 of those settings so the manufacturer removed 2 of the settings and now everyone gets a lower quality product because of this decision.
This can happen with piracy too. For example, I'm aware of at least one case where the highest quality option for a specific show edited out the gay scenes.
But that's unrelated to why tech. People advertising one version instead of another does not have a technical solution. The only thing tech can provide is the ability to keep copying the old version, regardless of what the original creator/distributor thinks.
You don't understand, it's terrible to censor movies but absolutely vital to make sure people can't make movies I disagree with.
edit: It's funny, I wouldn't be happy about a version of the old HBO series Rome reedited with anything gay taken out, but I'd be absolutely excited to watch a version of Queer As Folk with all the gay stuff edited out.
Calling removing scenes that you're bigoted against (and that's what it looks like in this case) "making a movie" is a large stretch. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it 1) was actually interesting in some way; 2) didn't pretend to be the original (i.e., different name in title). It's a problem if someone thinks that they're getting the original show and then gets something else, especially if it isn't obvious that it's something else.
I swore off streaming services when they started pulling episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they were worried someone might be offended