If it’s not X-rated, surely it’s acceptable on an airplane.”įollowing the backlash, Delta says it’s going to restore same-sex love scenes on its in-flight version of “Booksmart,” as well as “Rocketman,” which it had also previously censored out. There’s censorship, airline to airline, of films, which there must be some kind of governing board to determine. Which, in our case, is … female sexuality?Īt the Academy’s Governors Awards on Sunday night, she told Variety, “I don’t understand it. Turns out some airlines work with a third party company that edits the movie based on what they deem inappropriate. I finally had the chance to watch an edited version of Booksmart on a flight to see exactly what had been censored.
Celebrities, including the movie’s director Olivia Wilde, caught wind of the incident. Traveler Michaela Barton, who was flying from Melbourne (MEL) to Manchester (MAN) on Etihad with a connection in Abu Dhabi (AUH), tweeted about her disappointment with this censorship. In the film, there’s a scene involving some sexual encounters between the two airlines allegedly not only cut the entire scene, but cut out the words “vagina” and “genitals” from the movie entirely, according to The Washington Post. More recently, reports surfaced that airlines have been censoring “Booksmart,” a recently-released comedy starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever. Image provided by TPG reader of the in-flight entertainment on Oman Air
We reached out to Oman Air for a confirmation or denial of this alleged incident, and received no comment. Alleged case in point: A TPG reader who asked to remain anonymous emailed us to say that, on an Oman Air flight in June 2018, he noticed that the audio blanked out the word “Jew” from a line spoken by a character while watching an episode of “Will & Grace. The only real ethical consideration - and it’s a biggie - is if and when editorial decisions to respect cultural differences drift into something darker. Each airline has its own requests and we respect our customers’ wishes.” That includes for sensitivities across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Mike Miller, the vice president of corporate communications, said, “We dub and edit movies for global audiences, including children on board, and at the same time we are required to obey local laws and local religious sensitivities. Global Eagle calls itself the leading onboard movie, TV, games and music provider for airlines. Jovitah Toh, CEO of Hong Kong-based Encore Inflight Limited, said: “Each airline will provide the distributors with their censorship guidelines and distributors will work with them on the edits - for example, nudity, implicit sex scenes, religious representations, plane crashes, competitor airlines’ logos, swear words and images or mention of pigs or pork for Muslim carriers are the general items that are edited.”Īs a distributor, Toh added, “We offer the airlines the choice of a theatrical/broadcast version or an in-flight edited version.” In-flight entertainment content providers serve not only as middlemen (and women) between the studios and airlines, but also are charged by the latter to provide what they consider to be the most appropriate and desirable content for their customers. Yes, in case you didn’t know, there’s a whole industry that caters to killing time in the sky. And it sort of is - because the airlines that pay companies to screen out content they deem offensive don’t really care how you, a member of the captive audience, feels about it. With today’s ever-expanding range of in-flight entertainment options, from live television to streaming movies and content on demand, you might think the issue of censorship on a plane is, well, a nonissue. Often, a message to that effect even showed up on the screen, perhaps warning you about the film being edited for format as well as content. It was always a given that the in-flight movie was going to be slightly altered from the original. And if your movie was edited not just for length but other, objectionable-to-some things, what could you do? Pout and read the in-flight magazine, maybe, or just sit back and watch. Maybe you forked over a couple bucks for a truly egregious pair of Flintstones-style headphones, imagined you had popcorn - and all was right in the sky. Who can forget the thrill, in those daft old pre-digital days, of hearing a flight attendant announce your choice of one movie, and then hearing that little projector drop down from your airplane cabin?