Censorship

Related terms:
See also:	List of Content Banned by Archives, Timeline of Major Fandom Purges, Restrictions, and Hassles Regarding Fanworks and Their Content
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Fan reaction to 4Kids decision to change Sanji's cigarettes for lollipops in One Piece. By KaeDD (2009)

According to Wikipedia, Censorship "is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information". Censorship can be carried out by the government or by private institutions.

A common form of censorship is removing certain curse words from songs on the radio, or from movies shown on television. Sometimes these words are replaced with more 'appropriate' terms, sometimes just taken out altogether. R-rated films also see their more sexual scenes and imagery removed when aired, as well as gore and intense violence.

It can also mean entirely disallowing something from appearing, such as laws against cigarette commercials on TV, which may also extend to substance use being edited out of aired shows, too. Sometimes television networks may deem specific episodes or entire shows inappropriate to air; for example, the BBC in the UK refused to air certain episodes of Star Trek, Starsky & Hutch, and other American shows. Some governments have policies intended to encourage the development of local media that may restrict air-time for media produced in other countries. Some countries censor a range of topics in media, which influences the creation of local media and can exclude some foreign media from being imported. Meanwhile, rating systems, whether required by law or self-imposed by an industry, can sometimes be seen as a form of censorship, as a higher rating can cause a loss of revenue, thus discouraging certain art from being made.

Many forms of bias exist, which may lead disproportionately to censorship: religious beliefs, political beliefs/efforts, racism, and more.

Some may even consider the lack of diverse voices within Hollywood to be a form of censorship.

Censoring Canon: Fans Reactions

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Parody comic to Haruka and Michiru's censorship attempt. By Chibi Jennifer (2012)

Censorship is often not well received. People react to censorship by expressing their criticism and discontent on social media, or by making memes or parody fanart.

In the Sailor Moon anime, where Haruka and Michiru are a canonical couple, the English dub changed their relationship to cousins. This generated lots of edits and memes, where people would screenshot them holding hands or looking tenderly at each other and caption it with "such good cousins!". Earlier in the series they had also changed Zoisite's gender to make Kunzoi het instead of gay.

Censoring Fandom

Incidents and patterns of censorship or attempted censorship of fans:

• Print Zines and Customs
• Illegality of Slash
• Cease and Desist letters sent to X-Files fans (1990s)
• Strikethrough and Boldthrough (2007)
• Reporting AO3 to the FBI (2018?)
• Blocking of AO3 in China (2020)
• Blocking of AO3 in Russia (2023)
• Arrest of Haitang Literature City writers in China (2024)

Example Fanworks

• carmilla + unnecessary censorship - a vid using the bleep sound effect for humor (2015)

Meta/Further Reading

• How Free to Speak? (1979)
• Open Letters to Star Wars Zine Publishers (1981)
• Censorship and the Ethics of Editors (1988)
• Net Censorship (1990s)
• Copy Catfight: How intellectual property laws stifle popular culture (2000)
• AO3 & Censorship (2016)
• Let's have a talk about censorship (2020)
• Media imperialism, fan resistance and state censorship: BBC Sherlock Slash fandom in China
• The West is forcing Japan to censor all anime (2024) by Asmongold TV