Spectre may have earned over $100 million worldwide, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 may the final instalment of one of the most popular YA franchises of the decade, but that doesn’t mean the films are free from censorship abroad. India's film censor authorities have ordered that kissing scenes in the latest James Bond movie, Spectre, be shortened before it is released in the country, while the posters for Mockingjay – Part 2 have been edited in Israel, removing star Jennifer Lawrence.
India’s Central Board of Film Certification has ordered that four scenes in the new James Bond film be trimmed, including at least two kisses between the lead actors, Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci.
The censorship is caused by traditional cultural taboos regarding kissing and sexual contact between men and women; conservative ideals that have deeply affected the freedom of expression of Indian filmmakers, some of whom have resorted to showing two flowers bending and touching when they wanted to depict a kiss between the hero and heroine.
The cuts were met with outrage, as Indian Twitter users began using the satirical hashtag #SanskariJamesBond, or "traditional James Bond" to ridicule the cuts.
"James Bond's women must be feeling so safe now that our Censor Board is there to protect their honor from that creep," said Bollywood director and producer Shirish Kunder in a tweet.
The Times of India also weighed in, publishing an op-ed that said “it is quite ridiculous that in this day and age the censors should be cutting out or abbreviating something like a kissing scene from a film," The Times of India newspaper said Thursday in an editorial about the Bond film.
Cuts should be limited to scenes that might threaten public order "or where it transcends reasonable limits of vulgarity or violence," it said.
Meanwhile, most Israeli cities have been plastered with posters for the final Hunger Games installment, featuring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen posing with her bow and arrow. However, extremely religious subsects of Judasim consider the female image to be too provocative, and so in the ultra-Orthodox suburb of Bnei Brak, as well as in Israel’s capital city Jerusalem, a censored version of the poster has been circulated, featuring only an image of the fiery crown.
Posters that show images of women are routinely vandalized in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, and Bnei Brak’s city municipality bans public images that could be deemed offensive to its religious population. Due to the potential for offense and negative reaction, it was the film’s Israeli PR company who made the call to censor the posters, not the city governments.
“Unfortunately we are subject to unofficial coercion that forces us to be more careful,” said Liron Suissa, VP of marketing for the company, Nur Star Media. “We have had endless vandalisation, and clients prefer not to take the chance. We allow everything, but we recommend hanging another visual when necessary. The decision is the client’s.”