Also, love the presentation on this page.
I’d like to know how curious this would make non-HN people, and those living in more censored places.
My assumption is that they take it for granted and just continue to watch the show. It might be hard for them to even find the uncensored clips.
Once we got satellite and I started watching American channels I had my first encounter with censorship. Bleeps and blurs and random spots where audio cuts out. It was very jarring. I couldn't understand it at all and still can't. It really stands out, breaks the flow, makes everything feel cheap and ugly. In real life people swear and sometimes there is nudity. That never bothered me. But the jarring edits "protecting" me from these? Those certainly do.
Excessive profanity generally makes things sound less eloquent, but limited use can be really good for emphasis.
However, when I first started seeing this stuff as a kid I had no idea why and it really struck me as odd.
I think the funniest thing I've heard about censorship was Magnus Uggla, a Swedish artist, complaining that because he had a UK firm produce one of his music videos it was a real struggle getting them not to blur a scene where they're drinking shots.
Are you referring to the UK version of the 1987 animated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" TV series? I never realized it was considered controversial! [0]
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(...
Huh, you weren't kidding. Banned and censored in the UK, banned in Canada, Germany, and several US states... because of Bruce Lee? Bizarre.
https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980096
On this, Dragon Ball is heavily edited too
I think people a lot of us started to get out of the common path because of the limitations (which censorship is at the basic level) we hit. My hypothesis would be that simply “curious” people get pushed into the “hacker” bucket by getting refused something that seems reachable with some creativity.
The dumb example is people will get creative and jumping through hoops to get foreign porn. Growing non-authorized plants is another example, where people have to learn so much by themselves to make it happen. Even getting pirated non-censored versons comes to require more and more technical proficiency I think, and looking at industry’s reaction it seems there’s a decent number of people sailing the seven seas.
I'm not sure if I would notice a Chinese show was censored.
The glitches serve to remind them daily that their government is manipulating them.
The dilemma that China's leaders have is that they need an educated workforce, capable of logical and critical thinking, but they can't stop that workforce thinking critically outside work.
I suspect that the vast majority of Chinese viewers barely notice, or just assume that there was some sort of problem with the source material when it was imported into their country. Most probably don't make the connection that portions have been censored, because this is just what they've grown up with, and seems normal.
I think you both under- and over-estimate Chinese people in this regard. Certainly they are well-educated, but they've been raised culturally very differently than you or I. It's not impossible to be smart and know how to think, but also close off your mind to certain classes of criticism because you've been raised to value unity and harmony above other concerns.
We also forget that, in the mid and late 1900s (or, like many of us, just weren't born yet), many (though not all) of the same kinds of censorship were present in American TV, and to some extent movies as well.
I do find the Chinese version to be more insidious (and more dangerous, given current surveillance and content-blocking technology), and much of it probably is, but I do think some of it is just unconscious nationalism and "othering" on my part, as much as I try to stamp out that kind of thinking in myself.