Stuff has always been censored, like when theatrical movies are shown on regular TV. There is a version of E.T. on DVD where a scene with guns is edited out and changed to walkie talkies. A lot of entertainment made in the past wouldn't fly with today's cancel culture/me too generation. If you watch some older movies and TV shows you'll see there's a lot of smoking, even on talk shows like Johnny Carson & Mike Douglas. There's no smoking on TV talk shows now, and no cigarette commercials. Entertainment changes with society in general.
I'm not talking about movies being shown on television or commercial advertising. That's a completely different argument. Why would that have anything to do with a DVD release of a well-known movie?
Spielberg's editing of E.T. has been criticised many times, as cheap censoring in the wake of the September 11th attacks, and I wouldn't consider that as any kind of example of a trend in famous movies being amended, which it appears you're suggesting. Also I might add, although the censored version of E.T. was exhibited in
cinemas on it's 20th anniversary, when it came to the 20th anniversary
DVD release, both the new version and the original
uncut versions were presented. And when E.T. was last shown on television in the UK (within the last year) they reverted back to showing the original uncut version. And guess what, nobody gasped that the cops were holding guns haha
In fact, in the modern day, the strictness that led to older films being cut on their home video/DVD release has been substantially
relaxed and a lot of films that never saw the light of day in their uncut form are now freely available. We are further seeing a relaxation in sexual content too, with the likes of an erect penis passing into films without a cut (no jokes please!) - and yes, also making it onto the DVD.
In the UK, all content released to the home market on physical media, and cinemas, is subject to age classification. So things that were deemed unsuitable for certain age groups receive the appropriate age rating. It is increasingly rare to see films now passed with an 18 certificate when films that 30-40 years ago with similar content would have automatically received this rating or indeed, would have been refused a certificate unless cuts were made.
I mean do you really think I couldn't go on Amazon now and purchase a DVD of a film from the same period as Moonnwalker that features a reference to drugs?
The Disney+ situation re: racially offensive content from 70 years ago is on one hand understandable and I would consider under the category of 'societal change', but their insistence to make everything child friendly, on the other hand, is also cheap censoring. Netflix I think came under fire for the amount of smoking on screen in their own productions, but they haven't gone back and edited every movie available and edited it to show lollipops instead(!)
The Moonwalker edit has absolutely nothing to do with society changing. Warner Brothers merely made a choice to exorcise the content that they considered may be controversial to a
minority family audience 'just in case' and in turn short changed the audience who paid for the film as it was intended to be seen. I dare say Warner Brothers never even consulted the filmmakers or Michael Jackson (if he was still with us) prior to making the cuts. As I say, it's cheap censoring.
Edit: also regarding the Prince change. I have never seen the Prince version. I saw the film in cinemas in 1988, I owned a VHS copy purchased in 1994, I have the DVD from the 2000's and the Blu-ray - they all reference(d) Mantovani.