Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s South Park was reportedly banned in China after mocking the country for its censorship, and berating Hollywood and even the NBA for kowtowing to China’s censorious whims. The name of the episode is called “Band In China”, it’s the second episode of season 23.
The issue was brought to the awareness of the gaming community courtesy of Censored Gaming, who tweeted about the censorship of the show in China.
> Western TV show criticises China’s strict censorship
> Said show then gets completely purged from Chinese internet#SouthPark pic.twitter.com/XXZeaDGxjP— Censored Gaming (@CensoredGaming_) October 7, 2019
The show was somewhat prophetic given that general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, initially tweeted out support for the Hong Kong protestors, but then deleted the tweet after receiving criticism from mainland Chinese, as reported by The Washington Post.
The absurdity of the censorship even prompted the official South Park Twitter account to issue a mock apology to highlight far down the rabbit society has already fallen.
The tweet links to the full episode that was banned in China over on the South Park website. It also links to an article from The Hollywood Reporter explaining why the episode was banned.
You can read the satirical apology below.
Watch the full episode – https://t.co/oktKSJdI9i@THR article – https://t.co/nXrtmnwCJB pic.twitter.com/Xj5a1yE2eL
— South Park (@SouthPark) October 7, 2019
If you’re unable to view the apology in the image, it states…
“Official Apology to China from Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
“Like the nBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all. Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10! Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China?”
The tweet was like more than 61,900 times as of the writing of the article. Since the episode was also linked in the tweet it also gave a hefty boost to Comedy Central’s animated show.
A lot of mainland Chinese critics responded by saying that just because there’s freedom of speech doesn’t mean everything should be supported. They attempted to turn the topic around by saying that if people support freedom so much that it should be okay to say that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center was good and that people should support the 9/11 attacks.
And this is what Chinese responding to Adam Silver after he said he supports Morey’ tweet for exercising his freedom of speech. The comment is saying “I can only say that I really support 911 since I have the freedom of speech.” The comment gained more than 10,000 likes in 3hours pic.twitter.com/NyRVRLX94o
— MarvelGirlFreeHK🇬🇧🇭🇰🇬🇧🇭🇰Hiddlestone (@ytchui_M) October 7, 2019
Now Chinese netizens are so pissed off that they keep posting “stand w 911″tweet which is soooo disrespectful and outrageous! #SouthPark #standwithmorey https://t.co/BhRICbCEol
— Michelle Poon (@poonmichelle228) October 8, 2019
It’s a truly bizarre geopolitical battle over the concept of freedom.
This isn’t the first time a show ran into issues with topical matter that had to be censored for the Chinese audience. CBS’ The Good Fight censored out a segment criticizing Chinese censorship to avoid having the show banned in the mainland.
Many other big corporations also avoid criticizing China or pointing out how censorious the State party is in order to keep doing business in the nation.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)
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