A couple of days ago, flying from Washington to LA, I was happy to discover that the in-flight entertainment was actually a decent movie: The Queen, featuring a fantastic performance by Helen Mirren. (Not that Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights, which I managed to see on more than one flight in December, wasn’t a piece of cinematic magic in its own right.)
At one point in the film there was a strange moment of silence, as if the soundtrack had momentarily cut out. Airplane movie technology being what it is, this hardly registered as unusual. But then it happened again, and later on it happened yet again — and every time, when one of the characters was clearly about to say a particular word. The word was “God.”
So, like, anyone know what’s going on here? This is clearly an intentional feature of the “edited for content” version of the film that was being shown by United. I checked with others (same airline, different flights) who confirmed the phenomenon — the word “God” has been censored out of United Airlines’s version of The Queen. As far as I could tell, the word wasn’t being used in any especially problematic context, whatever that might be — basically it was people saying “God only knows” or “for God’s sake” or something equally mild. Someone apparently thought that somebody should be shielded from hearing the word “God,” but I honestly don’t know if it was for fear of having the Lord’s name taken in vain, or dislike for heavy-handed religiosity. Neither one of which would have fit the circumstances at all. (Could Richard Dawkins be succeeding in his nefarious campaign to criminalize all forms of religious speech?)
According to the World Airline Entertainment Association, the edited-for-airlines versions of films are provided by the film distributors themselves. But I couldn’t find anything from Miramax, who distribute The Queen, about this particular phenomenon. I simply refuse to believe that someone is going around deleting the word “God” from movies, for whatever reason, without stirring up enormous resistance (or at least argument) from someone else, for whatever other reason.
Worst of all, the Internets are failing me. I’ve googled around, searching for any chitchat about film distributors expurgating the word “God” from airline movies, only to come up short. Can I really be the only one to have noticed this? I feel lost without the internet to guide me.
Here’s the real problem:
How will they ever make a movie about the Higgs?
They’ll have to call it the “>BLEEP!< particle”!
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I noticed this phenomenon today! I don’t even think these were in the context of taking the Lord’s name in vain. At one point, I think QE2 or someone says, “God and country,” which is not taking the name in vain. Either there’s another motive or someone is really lazy on the bleeping.
I’m so fed up with people being so sensitive that we have to shield everyone from everything that might be considered offensive. It’s the same mentality that lead to all activities being oversafe for fear of lawsuits. It’s sickening.
I work for the airlines and this is an unusual situation.
Could have simply been an error on the part of the editor.
I just saw this on a flight last Friday. On my flight out, they had “Gridiron Gang.” I was surprised to hear an f-bomb that was left in the movie. I wrote it off as an erroneous miss by the editors. It was still evident in my mind on my return trip. I then watched “The Queen” with more open ears. I was very surprised at the God omissions. The comparison of the two movies’ editing would be laughable if it weren’t so offensive to me as a Christian.
I had the exact same experience, but twice in one day. On Continental and the connecting flight Delta. God was definitely deleted on both airlines.
I have alerted 2 radio stations here in Hawaii, what else can we do. This is totally outrageous and unaceptable.
Aloha,
Ray Heitzman
Since I fly for a major US airline, I originally thought it might have been an unusual editing error, and I have since found out that it was exactly that!
We, and I think also the other carriers usually edit out the word “God” when connected to a blasphemy like “G-d damn it”, but I heard that an inexperienced editor went overboard and cut out every utterance of “God” to play it safe. I also heard that this overedited version of the film was being replaced as fast as possible with the right one.
Apparently, they made a mistake with ‘The Queen’
‘God’ mistakenly bleeped out of in-flight showings of ‘The Queen’
Here’s the CNN reference to the story:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/25/god.bleeped.ap/index.html
I don’t even bother to watch movies on US flights. I only ever flew Virgin here for years (and they don’t censor any movies to any extent at all) and was bemused to discover, when I flew Continental for the first time (that flight was a codeshare with Virgin), what was done to the films. The only ones worth watching were 50 years old because they didn’t get butchered.