As we recently have learned about censorship and the copyright laws in our Mass Media and Society class, our latest blog assignment was to choose between two options. The first option is to find and explain an example of attempted censorship and the other is to state our opinion about the length for which a copyright persists. I chose to follow the first one and discuss one case of a type of suppression.
I recall passionately watching episodes of a Japanese television show called “Sailor Moon” back when I was a young child. That show has been very popular, especially among young girls. The show is so well-known and globally liked that it has been interpreted in several different languages. Since I was living in Belgium at that time of my childhood, the dialogues between the characters were translated from Japanese to French so that we could understand what was being said. Now looking back at some of the episodes on Youtube, it does not only refresh my memory of my favorite childhood television show but I also presently learned something that I never before was aware of.
Among the main female warriors in the show, there are two that are evidently very close to one another emotionally. One of the two females, Sailor Uranus, has always considered as a guy due to her boyish appearance. However, from her outfits which match the other female combatants, viewers ceased to mistake Sailor Uranus for a man and referred to her as a woman later on. Along with the puzzlement and controversy of that matter, the relationship of the two warriors has altered based upon the various cultural views of countries that air the television show. In Japan, the original version is that Sailor Uranus and her companion, Sailor Neptune, are actually lovers. However, in the English-translated version, the relationship changed for the sake of the children viewers and the two were labeled as cousins instead. The French edition modified them as simply cousins by adjusting their conversations to each other to restrain the audience from misreading them as lesbians. These unique, little differences by individual countries in that one aspect of the television show indicate that there was much disapproval toward the homosexuality subject.
Personally, I’m very pleased that some countries decided to greatly consider the mentality and well-being of children by altering that small part of the story. Since I’m a conservative type of person, I reject the idea of seeing two TV animated characters that happen to be homosexuals, especially when the show was created specifically for young kids. Children should not be witnessing something abnormal and unnatural at such an early age. If the countries had not chosen to censor that factor, I would predict that thousands of those kids were likely to believe that homosexuality is conventional and completely normal. That would put a terrible psychological affect on the young and innocent audience.
