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Has Moonwalker been released uncut on blu-ray?

NatureCriminal7896 said:
I always knew they rerelease on DVD with this scene funny to realize this tweet was post as soon this thread was made. good timing I guess. from watching the scenes, I can understand why they cut it. today if people saw this they would flip. but to me in my opinion maybe it was good to show that so kids know that drugs are bad. it's no differences like the commercials on tv tell people don't drink and drive etc. which is somewhat more info then this.

shoutout to Michael. these things were and this is a problem today.
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They might have edited the scene because the Blu-Ray was released not long after Michael died. They wanted to remove the references to drugs.
 
Galactus123 said:
They might have edited the scene because the Blu-Ray was released not long after Michael died. They wanted to remove the references to drugs.
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That would be incredibly knee jerk would it not?
 
Galactus123 said:
They might have edited the scene because the Blu-Ray was released not long after Michael died. They wanted to remove the references to drugs.
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I don't think these changes are done on individual bases, more like general automatic commands: erase references to drugs, blur nipples, beep out cuss words, replace cigarettes with lollypops... etc.
 
ozemouze said:
I don't think these changes are done on individual bases, more like general automatic commands: erase references to drugs, blur nipples, beep out cuss words, replace cigarettes with lollypops... etc.
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Kojak was way ahead of his time. :D

Kojaktelly.jpg
 
:laughing: Kojak is safe from censoring. :D


Back on topic :blush::

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entertainment

ozemouze said:
Pretending that something uncomfortable simply doesn't exist instead of explaining it is dangerous.
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That isn't new. The original version of Disney's Fantasia (with Sunflower) has not been out since it was originally released, never been on any of the home video versions. Warner Brothers have a lot of cartoons (like the Censored 11) that are not broadcast on TV nor released on home video. Warners also have the Dukes Of Hazzard TV show, which was removed from TV syndication a few years ago because people complained about the Confederate flag on the car. They do still sell Dukes on DVD though. CBS won't release Amos n Andy on DVD, nor is it shown on TV. The only version available to buy are low quality bootlegs, which don't have all of the episodes. It was taken off TV in the first place because of pressure by the NAACP in the 1950s. There isn't really anything wrong with Amos n Andy (the TV sitcom version), it's not like Stepin' Fetchit or Buckwheat. Many people today only heard about the show and have never seen it. They're going by the bad reputation or the original radio version with white actors and the movie with the same actors in blackface. Ironically, the blackface movie version is officially released, and you can still buy it. I think it's public domain though, not sure. You can also buy an official version of the silent movie The Birth Of A Nation.

Even in early Hollywood, there was the Hays Code and in the 1950s parents complained about comic books and so the Comic Code Authority was created to censor comic books. That was also the era of McCarthy/Hoover era of blacklisting entertainers and authors.
ozemouze said:
BTW I can't fathom how can this method prevail mostly in the US where freedom of speech and opinion is the most important thing, theoretically.
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The USA is primarily a Christian nation too. So a lot of things (including some laws) here are based on the bible and church. Money has "In God We Trust" on it. The bible belt is a large part of the US, so they have a lot of buying power. That's a reason Walmart, which is in a lot of small town areas, sell the clean edited versions of CDs and not ones with parental advisory stickers. Many artists record 2 separate versions of their albums. It's not just bleeped out words like in the 1980s, but totally different versions with alternate lyrics, one with profanity and one without. The heartland & rural areas are also the places country music & heartland rock like Bob Seger is most popular. Those are the kinds of performers that would be at a Farm Aid concert, which continues on to this day.


 
Re: entertainment

DuranDuran said:
That isn't new. The original version of Disney's Fantasia (with Sunflower) has not been out since it was originally released, never been on any of the home video versions. Warner Brothers have a lot of cartoons (like the Censored 11) that are not broadcast on TV nor released on home video. Warners also have the Dukes Of Hazzard TV show, which was removed from TV syndication a few years ago because people complained about the Confederate flag on the car. They do still sell Dukes on DVD though. CBS won't release Amos n Andy on DVD, nor is it shown on TV. The only version available to buy are low quality bootlegs, which don't have all of the episodes. It was taken off TV in the first place because of pressure by the NAACP in the 1950s. There isn't really anything wrong with Amos n Andy (the TV sitcom version), it's not like Stepin' Fetchit or Buckwheat. Many people today only heard about the show and have never seen it. They're going by the bad reputation or the original radio version with white actors and the movie with the same actors in blackface. Ironically, the blackface movie version is officially released, and you can still buy it. I think it's public domain though, not sure. You can also buy an official version of the silent movie The Birth Of A Nation.

Even in early Hollywood, there was the Hays Code and in the 1950s parents complained about comic books and so the Comic Code Authority was created to censor comic books. That was also the era of McCarthy/Hoover era of blacklisting entertainers and authors.

The USA is primarily a Christian nation too. So a lot of things (including some laws) here are based on the bible and church. Money has "In God We Trust" on it. The bible belt is a large part of the US, so they have a lot of buying power. That's a reason Walmart, which is in a lot of small town areas, sell the clean edited versions of CDs and not ones with parental advisory stickers. Many artists record 2 separate versions of their albums. It's not just bleeped out words like in the 1980s, but totally different versions with alternate lyrics, one with profanity and one without. The heartland & rural areas are also the places country music & heartland rock like Bob Seger is most popular. Those are the kinds of performers that would be at a Farm Aid concert, which continues on to this day.
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Duranduran are you a historian of some kind? I'm not sarcastic or anything, i'm genuinely asking? Your post are always filled with a lot of information about the entertainment industry and I always learn something new from your posts (like this one).
 
The Birth Of A Nation is a more complex case as otherwise it was a landmark in early filmmaking (film language, innovation and technique wise), so it's an unavoidable part of film history, not like some silly cartoons or TV shows (and as such, it's more uncomfortable too). It was harshly criticized already when released (1915), so its racism didn't go under the radar, and Griffith made Intolerance partly in order to make amends for it.

The Hays Code was a sort of self-censoring, which isn't a good thing of course, but it operated in its own time period and not retroactively at least.

Galactus123 said:
Some of the short films were edited in the Vision box set too.
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Can you elaborate please? I know not every DVD edition contains the original Black Or White version, but the one with the graffitis added later, and there's the the original and the angel version for YANA, but what else?
 
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ozemouze said:
Can you elaborate please? I know not every DVD edition contains the original Black Or White version, but the one with the graffitis added later, and there's the the original and the angel version for YANA, but what else?
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I thought they removed the angel from YANA for the Vision release. Was it removed before? I was also under the impression that they removed something from Will You Be There. I could be wrong.
 
ScreenOrigami;4291443 said:
OMG, please don’t give them the idea to add a content warning for Leon Kompowsky! :eek:
This would be even worse than banning the episode.
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I meant without one of those warnings, sorry.
 
Galactus123 said:
I thought they removed the angel from YANA for the Vision release. Was it removed before? I was also under the impression that they removed something from Will You Be There. I could be wrong.
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I'm mixing the versions released on different DVDs :D. I thought the non-angel YANA was the original version but I could be wrong. Will You Be There has a quite charming version with scenes inserted from Free Willy, but I don't remember if it was released officially.
 
Galactus123 said:
Some of the short films were edited in the Vision box set too.
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I find it hard to place a 4 minute music video - by design for television - in the same bracket as a 90 minute feature film designed for cinemas. It doesn't massively bother me if a different image is seen over the music for a split second. But removing a scene (shortening its runtime) or removing important dialogue from a movie does. That said, Michael Jackson videos sometimes found themselves in the space between video and film, and when MTV used to air the Bad long form version certain scenes were indeed cut. It would definitely bother me if there were scenes from these long form videos cut on Vision.

However, I did think Vision gave us the fullest version of Bad yet...including the original credits and the reprise of Bad with the Dance Extended Mix adlibs and instrumentation. Out of curiousity, what specifically is cut on Vision?

DuranDuran, thanks for the informative post but it is patently clear why movies and television shows are cut on television. And this clearly will differ from network to network and country to country - and indeed time of the day of broadcast - for a multitude of reasons. But it is mostly irrelevant in a discussion regarding theatrical movies and their subsequent release on physical media.
 
ozemouze;4291570 said:
I'm mixing the versions released on different DVDs :D. I thought the non-angel YANA was the original version but I could be wrong. Will You Be There has a quite charming version with scenes inserted from Free Willy, but I don't remember if it was released officially.
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I’m currently building my MJ DVD collection, and it’s really a mess with all those different versions, especially since there’s no way to tell by looking at the cover which version of the short film is on each DVD. :D

I have the Free Willy version on my computer, and it’s without any TV logo, so I suppose it was officially released on a DVD at some point, but it’s really a mess to go through all those disks to find something specific.

Do we have a list of all versions of each short film and where to find them?
 
That explains why Michael was so mad when people cut his short films. for example, you rock my world was cut. you rock my world is actually longer that's why there two versions of this video. i don't like it either.
 
ChrisC said:
DuranDuran, thanks for the informative post but it is patently clear why movies and television shows are cut on television. And this clearly will differ from network to network and country to country - and indeed time of the day of broadcast - for a multitude of reasons. But it is mostly irrelevant in a discussion regarding theatrical movies and their subsequent release on physical media.
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I mentioned Fantasia which is a theatrical movie and the Sunflower scenes have never been on home video. They were edited out when the movie was re-released to theaters in the 1960s, long before there was home video. Also what about directors cuts or extended versions which sometimes replace the original version on home video? Some of these alternate versions delete scenes from the original. How about when studios fire directors after the movie is in production or change the movie before it is released? Like all those people talking about the Snyder cut of Justice League. There was a 1990s movie called The Program in which people were copying a certain scene in the movie which resulted in their deaths or being injured, and it was removed before it was released on VHS. On the DVD set of the 1970s TV show Hawaii 5-0, there is an episode about suicide that was left off. Some TV shows have also been edited when they were released on home video. Movies and TV shows have had songs changed on VHS/DVD because the song publisher, artist, or record company wanted too much money. That's not censorship, but it's still changed from the original.

There's also the case of album covers being changed because people found them offensive like this:
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DuranDuran;4291623 said:
I mentioned Fantasia which is a theatrical movie and the Sunflower scenes have never been on home video. They were edited out when the movie was re-released to theaters in the 1960s, long before there was home video. Also what about directors cuts or extended versions which sometimes replace the original version on home video? Some of these alternate versions delete scenes from the original. How about when studios fire directors after the movie is in production or change the movie before it is released? Like all those people talking about the Snyder cut of Justice League. There was a 1990s movie called The Program in which people were copying a certain scene in the movie which resulted in their deaths or being injured, and it was removed before it was released on VHS. On the DVD set of the 1970s TV show Hawaii 5-0, there is an episode about suicide that was left off. Some TV shows have also been edited when they were released on home video. Movies and TV shows have had songs changed on VHS/DVD because the song publisher, artist, or record company wanted too much money. That's not censorship, but it's still changed from the original.

There's also the case of album covers being changed because people found them offensive like this:
49e73553098122e9a4025b3478f008d6ee68c580.jpg
a5dc5f699e7927a4d98dfc62de41cc0844dfc4c9.jpg


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An ever better example would be George Lucas’s Star Wars and the countless versions that has been released on home video.
 
DuranDuran said:
Also what about directors cuts or extended versions which sometimes replace the original version on home video.
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That should be forbidden. :D

Seriously though, there are two cases usually:

- When the original intent was indeed a longer cut, and distributors/censorship shortened it by cutting out important scenes - in this case the extended cut is perfectly justified, moreover the best possible option.

- And there's when directors just can't let go of useless scenes and want to bundle everything into their film, losing focus and proportion (creative work is just as much about what to include as what to leave out). Or desperately try to "update" their oeuvres or give "meaning" where it isn't needed. Don't believe them if they say "it's art evolving itself", it's just insecurity and proof that directors don't always have the best judgement either.

While we're at it: if you ever intend to watch Cinema Paradiso, please watch the theatrical cut first (a charming love letter to cinema) versus the director's one (a perfect example of how can added scenes actually take away from the movie).
 
DuranDuran what does the Moonwalker change have to do with directors cuts or extended cuts of movies? Or album covers? I'm completely lost.

Are you just summarising things that change?
 
ChrisC said:
DuranDuran what does the Moonwalker change have to do with directors cuts or extended cuts of movies? Or album covers? I'm completely lost.

Are you just summarising things that change?
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You said Moonwalker was censored. I said society changes and older things might be edited/changed. I then said lots of things are censored like CDs sold at Walmart, comic books in the 1950s, and album covers. The album cover was changed because people complained about it. I also said that entertainment can be censored in the USA because of religious & civil rights groups, like when Jewish groups complained about They Don't Care About Us, so the offensive parts were bleeped out. You didn't understand that. So I don't know what to tell you. :tongue: If the parts of Smooth Criminal that were edited out are about drugs, then probably people today complained about drug references to children and/or in a movie marketed to kids. If Mr. Big tried to get an adult addicted, it probably wouldn't have been cut. Just like a lot of parents said that Joe Camel was marketing cigarettes to children, so they complained & started petitions. So the character was dropped.
 
DuranDuran said:
You said Moonwalker was censored. I said society changes and older things might be edited/changed. I then said lots of things are censored like CDs sold at Walmart, comic books in the 1950s, and album covers. The album cover was changed because people complained about it. I also said that entertainment can be censored in the USA because of religious & civil rights groups, like when Jewish groups complained about They Don't Care About Us, so the offensive parts were bleeped out. You didn't understand that. So I don't know what to tell you. :tongue: If the parts of Smooth Criminal that were edited out are about drugs, then probably people today complained about drug references to children and/or in a movie marketed to kids. If Mr. Big tried to get an adult addicted, it probably wouldn't have been cut. Just like a lot of parents said that Joe Camel was marketing cigarettes to children, so they complained & started petitions. So the character was dropped.
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There's nothing in here about extended cuts of movies or directors cuts.

I don't recall any discussion on They Don't Care About Us, so I don't think it's fair for you to assume I don't understand why that change was made. Actually it's quite an interesting discussion to have. But then Michael Jackson himself, signing off on a minor lyrical change, after significant media pressure and controversy, is a little different to a decades old movie that absolutely nobody was complaining about or even talking/writing about. And Michael made the TDCAU change mere months after the release of the album, I highly doubt society shifted from 'we are okay with these lyrics' to 'we are no longer okay with these lyrics' in that very short space of time. Actually, if you ask me, I think he was wrong to bow to the pressure, but I completely understand why he did it. Especially in the wake of the Triumph of the Will controversy and how Michael's image was in a 'rebuild' phase. Not to mention how a song isn't considered a work of fiction, necessarily. When a songwriter writes a song and sings it, it is assumed, by and large, to be their voice/their words - not a character in a play. And then we have Michael himself explaining the lyrics, and we have the before and after versions easily available for people to make up their own minds and choose which to listen to (if they are so inclined). For these many reasons it very different to the Moonwalker situation. I feel as though you just want to throw everything into the pot that ever changed in the field of entertainment. The reality is that these examples you cite are all wildly different circumstances on different types of media that are consumed in different ways and in different cultures with different values.

There are plenty of movies out there, as I said earlier in this thread, that feature children and drugs and other 'controversial' content that are increasingly available on home media whether it be physically or digitally - with the appropriate age restrictions - and nobody is going back en masse and deleting all these scenes quietly. But something you did touch on in your post is definitely relevant here, and that's specifically "for a movie marketed to kids". While I'd say that was the case at the time - and let's all remember millions of children all over the world saw the film on original release and, as far as I'm aware, there was zero controversy over this scene - would a 2010 blu-ray release of this film still be marketing at children? Admittedly the content still has more of a kids appeal than an adults one, there's no getting away from that if we consider it on those levels alone.

The Moonwalker film was passed in 1988 with a PG restriction by the BBFC (meaning anyone of any age can see it but the parent may decide some content is unsuitable for their child). The Moonwalker film again had its certificate reviewed by the BBFC as late as 2005 and again was passed uncut. What was considered "safe" for children to watch in 1988 was still considered so almost 20 years later albeit with the parent signing off and making that decision for their children. And when Moonwalker appeared quietly on DVD for the first time this was no big event in society - the audience by now was pretty small - and nobody cared or complained about the drug scene. Then in 2010 suddenly everything changed? Despite no one caring about what had been freely available on a modern media for years. They were selling to a small audience, and were overly concerned about a very small fraction of that already small audience getting offended and decided to quietly remove it just in case. Which is just cheap to me. As I asked earlier in the thread, were the filmmakers given the opportunity to make the edits themselves or consulted somehow?

And hey, the DVD is still in shops. Perhaps all the DVDs have been withdrawn from sale and have been replaced with the 'safely' sanitised version? Has anyone bought it in the last 10 years to confirm? If I was betting I'd say absolutely no change whatsoever has been made to the DVD because nobody cared about this scene in the first place. And I dare say, if the film ever receives an anniversary release or treatment (where any kind of effort or care is made) I would not be in the least bit surprised to see the scene back where it was before.
 
DuranDuran said:
You said Moonwalker was censored. I said society changes and older things might be edited/changed. I then said lots of things are censored like CDs sold at Walmart, comic books in the 1950s, and album covers. The album cover was changed because people complained about it. I also said that entertainment can be censored in the USA because of religious & civil rights groups, like when Jewish groups complained about They Don't Care About Us, so the offensive parts were bleeped out. You didn't understand that. So I don't know what to tell you. :tongue: If the parts of Smooth Criminal that were edited out are about drugs, then probably people today complained about drug references to children and/or in a movie marketed to kids. If Mr. Big tried to get an adult addicted, it probably wouldn't have been cut. Just like a lot of parents said that Joe Camel was marketing cigarettes to children, so they complained & started petitions. So the character was dropped.
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The fact that it always happened doesn't make it right or safe from criticism.

Plus there's a major difference about censoring Joe Camel, a cartoon character (= may appeal to children) smoking (making it look "cool" to kids), so it basically shows smoking in positive light, or if there's a drug reference in e.g. Moonwalker, connected to the bad guy (= not exactly what the kids relate to) and the whole message is clearly about condemning drug use/trading (it's a threat in the film, not something cool).
 
ozemouze said:
The fact that it always happened doesn't make it right or safe from criticism.

Plus there's a major difference about censoring Joe Camel, a cartoon character (= may appeal to children) smoking (making it look "cool" to kids), so it basically shows smoking in positive light, or if there's a drug reference in e.g. Moonwalker, connected to the bad guy (= not exactly what the kids relate to) and the whole message is clearly about condemning drug use/trading (it's a threat in the film, not something cool).
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Also a great point!
 
oh my goodness we really gonna fight about this? every place is different and have different rules etc. time has change and not everything was made in the past wouldn't get away today. lol! boy we all have too much time in our hands. please give us a cure for this virus so we all can live life again. :laughing:
 
NatureCriminal7896;4291732 said:
oh my goodness we really gonna fight about this? every place is different and have different rules etc. time has change and not everything was made in the past wouldn't get away today. lol! boy we all have too much time in our hands. please give us a cure for this virus so we all can live life again. :laughing:
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We’re not fighting. We’re discussing. :)

When discussing an artist’s work (any artist, not just Michael), it’s important to consider why, when, what was done by whom, as it shapes the reception of the work by the public. When you’re talking about the legacy, those are some of the things to talk about, so that they end up correctly in the history books.
 
:doh: okay i'm gonna leave this thread because people don't get it. it was nice knowing all of you have a blessed day and stay safe.
 
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