Three days ago, the censoring of a six-second sequence in William Freidkin’s “The French Connection” was reported by Hollywood Elsewhere.
The gist of this nixing had to do with Gene Hackman’s gritty cop character, Popeye Doyle, uttering the N-word. This was spotted on the Criterion Channel stream of Friedkin’s 1971 classic.
Well, apparently, the rights holders to the film are none other than Disney. Criterion had nothing to do with the censorship. It is presumed that the sequence was removed by Disney, which bought the film’s original owner, 20th Century Fox in March of 2019.
So the theory now is that Disney probably went in and censored it, but, you know, for your own good.
Disney routinely apologizes for its past “problematic” content, they’ve even installed warning labels on older films. Hell, theme-park attractions have been “cancelled” by them. Nothing is out of bounds for the mouse house.
If Disney is the party responsible for vandalizing an American classic to “protect” adults from a racial slur in a 50-year-old, R-rated movie, then one would presume that they will eventually release a statement about this.
Here’s the problem. For all the fan uproar this has caused, no trades have reported it. The fact remains that Disney owns the film and can do whatever the hell they want with it. Do I believe they will get pressured to reinstate the original cut of the film? No.
Why would anyone in the mainstream media actually call blasphemy on the nixing of the N-word, even if it was committed on an American classic?
Far less harmful words have been censored these last few months in classic books. Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie and Dr. Seuss have all been revised under the guise of a “sensitivity review.”
The reactionary times we live in are trying to negate whatever happened in the past. Instead of learning about it, and making sure the same mistakes don’t happen again — they are just trying to erase history.
My advice is simple: My recommendation to all of you is to buy as much physical media as possible (books, DVDs etc) before an inevitable purging of the classics becomes the norm.
