Something weird is happening with the release of the Australian horror movie “Together,” starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie, and it’s not the plot in which — spoilers! — their bodies start fusing together after a night in the woods.
No, it’s that the original version featured a gay couple getting married. But in the film’s Chinese release, someone digitally altered it — quite possibly using AI — and replaced one of the men with a woman, Bloomberg reports, and the homophobic and censorious implications are irking audiences across the globe.
“What’s happening outside the film is even more terrifying than what’s shown in it,” wrote a user on the Chinese social network Weibo, as spotted by The Guardian.
“This is disrespectful to the original work and another challenge to audience’s tolerance,” a movie goer wrote on Douban, another Chinese website, as reported by Bloomberg. “They want our money but won’t show us the the complete version. It’s also disrespectful to the LGBT community.”
China’s censors have a penchant for removing references to homosexuality in movies like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the Harry Potter franchise, but these previous attempts were clumsy and created confusing plot holes in movies by deleting scenes. Now, the sophisticated and seamless digital edit in “Together” signals what appears to be a new step in content suppression in China.
Thankfully, the outcry from the online peanut gallery forced the local distributor to halt the film’s wide release in China.
Again, it hasn’t been confirmed whether AI was used, but the mere whiff that a powerful technology like it can easily scrub controversial segments from a movie should send a chill through anybody who’s a minority or holds politically charged opinions. Because if censors want to erase a gay couple that appears only one minute in the movie, what lengths will they go to block out anything they don’t like in other places?
A Chinese gay rights activist, who declined to be identified for safety reasons, told Bloomberg that the probable use of AI in erasing a character in a movie shows that censors are eager to use advanced technologies that can erase queer people from everyday life.
That prospect is indeed scary — and probably more frightening than any horror movie.
More on censorship: Chinese Police Cracking Down on Naughty Fiction