When hearing the word censorship, cartoons for children and TV series are probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Our brains immediately go to politics, human rights, journalist publications, freedom of speech, and many other historical and contemporary issues. No cartoon seems to carry sensible, political content that may become the target of censorship of any kind. But apparently, leaders and governments all around the world disagree on the matter, as the last 10 years have seen several kids’ cartoons or programs of entertainment ending up partly or entirely banned. Winnie the Pooh and civil rights concern one another much more than one may think.
Peppa pig can’t have two mummies
One program that has risked several times being partially censored or even not aired at all is Peppa Pig, the famous cartoon that tells the story of a family of pigs. The program had already made the news a couple of years ago when a British Muslim man had suggested online replacing the character of Peppa Pig with another character, Abdullah the Cat: he was concerned that his young son, who had always dreamt of becoming a doctor, after seeing the show had decided he would rather become a pig, impure animal according to Islam religion. The suggestion, for obvious reasons, had not been well accepted by the Internet community and by other Muslim fathers, who recognized the irrationality behind that thought.
A situation in which the show was censored took place in Australia. The authorities decided not to air the episode “Mr. Skinny Legs”, where the protagonist tries to overcome arachnophobia and ends up having tea with a spider, saying in the end that spiders are friends and they do not want to hurt people. The episode was not aired as broadcasters thought it would send a perilous message to Australian kids, who live in a country where several venomous species of spiders can be encountered.
Peppa Pig is now facing the possibility to be censored again, this time in Italy and for totally different reasons: under attack is an episode featuring a family with two mommy pigs, that was created following an online petition to have same-sex marriage on the program.
Even though the episode has not been streamed by Italian television yet, a member of the election-winning conservative party Brothers of Italy, Federico Mollicone, has preventively made a public request to the national television for the episode not to be aired on TV channels that sponsored with public taxes. He has argued that public shows should not participate in this kind of “indoctrination” and normalize situations that are founded on “gender ideology”. “Once again the politically correct has struck, at the expense of our children. Can’t children just be children?” he has said in an interview.
The episode in question may or may not end up being aired, but given the recent electoral results in the country, largely won by the Brothers of Italy party and the whole right coalition, and the popular consent they have raised, we can expect the cultural landscape of the country to become more and more conservative.
Who knew that Winnie the Pooh was political?
Let’s move to another part of the world, to discover other kids’ cartoons that have become weirdly controversial. This time it is Winnie The Pooh that has drawn attention, in particular for the frequent comparisons that have been made between the famous yellow bear and China’s president Xi Jinping.
The first time these comparisons were made was in 2013 when during Jinping’s visit to the US the public opinion made funny comparisons between the Chinese president next to Barack Obama with Winnie the Pooh next to his friend Tigger. These suggestions were not well taken by Chinese authorities, especially when they were made again in 2014: this time Winnie the Pooh was portrayed as being friends with the donkey Eeyore, alias Japan’s prime minister. After a few years, it is clear that this kind of satire had quite an impact on the diffusion of the program in the country.
First of all, Chinese broadcasting services shut down the international website of HBO after one of their speakers had guessed that Xi Jinping was being quite sensitive to the jokes.
Secondly, in 2018 the new film about the life of Winnie the Pooh, named Christopher Robin, did not air in China. Only 34 foreign films can be streamed in China per year, which makes the competition quite hard, so probably the unfortunate destiny of the movie can be partially explained also in this way. It is hard to believe, though, that the jokes made towards the president did not play an important part too.
But Xi Jinping’s not the only leader who is not too comfortable being self-ironic in public. Neither is Silvio Berlusconi, Italian former prime minister, who did not appreciate being made fun of in the American show How I met your mother, and whose TV company decided to cut his name out of the Italian translation of the series. The reference is made in an episode in which two of the main characters, Lily and Marshall, are planning to move to Italy and their friend Ted is trying to convince them to bring along an old red chair, a symbol of their past adventures together.
The couple does not want to, and Marshall says to his friend: “Ted, Italy does not need something wrinkled, red, leaky, and smells like booze and narcotics: they’ve already got former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi”. This joke was not well taken by Mediaset, the Italian TV company owned by Berlusconi himself: when the episode was aired on national television, in 2014, the Italian translation became something like: “Ted, Italy does not need this chair. They’ve already got so many problems with the government”.
But back to China again. Very recently, in September 2022, the government seems to have had issues with products entertainment made for kids again.
Five young psychologists from Hong Kong have just been condemned to spend 19 months in jail for having produced a series of books for children that are thought to be brainwashing and perilous instruments. The books tell the story of a group of sheep that need to stick together to fight off dirty and ill wolves: this, according to the Chinese government, is an allegory for the relationship between Hong Kong citizens and China. The psychologists, who have already spent one year in prison waiting for the sentence and have declared themselves innocent, are not likely to get out of prison any sooner, and they are not the only ones who have become the target of China. The head of the union of journalists of Hong Kong, who was about to fly to Oxford for a project of collaboration with the university, has been arrested too.
If you thought that cartoons and books for kids were only cartoons and books for kids, clearly you were wrong. And while seeing governments worry over cartoons and TV series can make you smile on some levels, at the same time it is quite scary to think that even such things as cartoons risk the possibility of being shut down. Once again we are faced with the evidence that everything is political, from newspapers to coloring books, and that politics can reach every aspect of our lives. A little reminder of the beauty and the importance of freedom of speech and of expression, which always needs to be preserved.
— National Editor Giulia Pession can be reached at pession.giulia@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @giuliapession and Facebook Giulia Pession.
