Dan Levy slams Comedy Central India
Schitt’s Creek, an Emmy award-winning Canadian series, has become a champion of LGBTQ representation because of the uplifting portrayal of the queer community in the series. It has been in talks for quite some time now because of several wins at Emmy this year. But this week the show was talked about for a different reason.
Twitter was heated up when Dan Levy, the co-creator and star of the show Schitt’s Creek, called out Comedy Central India for censoring the kiss between men, i.e. a kiss between his character David and Dustin Milligan‘s character, Ted, in the promo which was shared on its official account and aired in the country.
Dan Levy took it to Twitter and tweeted “You showed the kiss between two women, you showed the kiss between a woman and a man, then removed the kiss between two men? This is a show about the power of inclusivity. The censorship of gay intimacy is making a harmful statement against that message. #loveislove”
However, a day later the spokesperson for Comedy Central provided a clarification stating that the scene in question was aired in its entirety without edits.
The spokesperson further added that the kiss was removed only from the promo because there are codes in India that require broadcasters to be mindful of content running during the day. And they need to abide by those codes and ensure that they don’t run content that is not family-friendly during the day.
This is not the first time that there was censorship of content in various countries. China had eliminated LGBTQ content including same-sex kissing and the use of the word “gay” in the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. In fact, in the year 2015, with context to the movie Angry Indian Goddesses, the Censor Board of Film Certification had blurred images of Indian goddesses Lakshmi and Kali in the movie.
