China’s censors scrub multiple scenes of lesbian character in US sitcom Friends, sparking outrage among fans on mainland

The censors have practically buried the lesbian identity of character Carol Willick in season 1 of Friends broadcast by local streaming video providers
A scene of two male protagonists kissing on New Year’s Eve in episode 10 of the show was also deleted

China’s internet censorship

Iris Dengin Shenzhen

Published: 5:48pm, 12 Feb 2022

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China’s censors have deleted multiple scenes and altered reference about a recurring lesbian character in the 1990s US television sitcom Friends, which has sparked outrage among the popular show’s large audience on the mainland.

That has practically buried the lesbian identity of recurring character Carol Willick in the first season of Friends, which major Chinese streaming video providers including iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and Bilibili started airing online on Friday. The Willick character initially appeared in the show’s second episode.

Although one mention of the word “lesbian” was left uncut in the second episode of the show, the Chinese subtitles blatantly omitted it in translation. A scene of two male protagonists kissing on New Year’s Eve in episode 10 of the show was also deleted.

Other scenes and conversations about sex in the 24-episode first season of Friends also came under strict scrutiny from Chinese censors. In one scene, for example, the phrase “multiple orgasms” was translated to “women have endless gossips” in the Chinese subtitles.

While mainland Chinese audiences are used to foreign TV shows and films being censored, the scope of alterations in the first season of Friends available on domestic streaming video providers sparked heated discussion on social media.

“Friends censored” immediately became the No 1 trending topic on microblogging platform Weibo on Friday. The hashtag, however, was apparently also censored, as search of the topic hashtag on Weibo yielded no results early on Saturday.

Chinese censors removed scenes involving lesbian character Carol Willick in Episode 2, “The One With the Sonogram at the End”. (L-R) Joan Pringle as Dr Oberman, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Jessica Hecht as Susan Bunch and Anita Barone as Willick. Photo: Getty Images

“Seriously, If you can’t broadcast [the complete version], just don’t do it at all,” said one of the most popular comments posted on Weibo. “[The streaming video platforms] spent big bucks to buy the rights [to the show], but efforts to alter lines and edit out scenes ended up being slammed by the audience. What for?”

Some online users called for a boycott of the heavily censored version of Friends, while sharing pirated resources of the original show. That included the version of Friends that aired on Sohu Video, a small Chinese streaming video site that was licensed to broadcast the show online in 2012 before the rights expired in 2018.

That 2012 version kept the LBGT and sex scenes as well as the correct Chinese subtitles. Sohu, however, is currently streaming the same censored version that other local streaming video services provide.

Can 1990s US hit Friends rescue China’s struggling video-streamers?

Most of the episodes in the censored version of Friends run for about 21 minutes or less. By comparison, each episode in the Netflix version of the show generally runs for 23 minutes.

The censorship of Friends comes amid Beijing’s tightened grip on online content especially those from foreign markets.

In 2015, the Chinese government issued rules for the production of television series banning content that expresses or displays “abnormal sexual relations or sexual behaviour, such as homosexuality”. The same year, China’s National Radio and Television Administration directed all foreign series be registered and obtain a licence before being broadcast.

China’s censors recently altered the violent ending of the 1999 film Fight Club, available on Tencent Video, into a less intense, more law-abiding version, which sparked widespread backlash online last month. Tencent restored the original ending last week.

Friends: The Reunion ignites copyright battle among Chinese video sites

The official return of Friends had been eagerly anticipated by fans in mainland China, where the show was widely popular among the country’s urban youth. The US sitcom, which aired on NBC for 10 seasons between 1994 and 2004, first became popular in China as an English-language learning tool in the 1990s, when Beijing introduced economic reforms and encouraged exchanges with the West.

Last May, Friends: The Reunion, a special production of the sitcom, was streamed on major Chinese video platforms. But cameo appearances from Lady Gaga, Korean boy band BTS and Justin Bieber were removed.

China’s heavily censored version of Friends is expected to be rolled out at one season per week. While the first two episodes of the show are currently free to watch, mainland viewers needs to pay a subscription to watch the rest of the show on the local streaming video platforms that carry it. Youku is owned by Alibaba Group Holding, parent of the South China Morning Post.