Os_a_s

I just watched some of the Oscars on CCTV (Chinese Central Television), as I love the show and wouldn’t miss it for the world. I was also waiting particularly to see what happened if (when, because we all knew he was going to when it) Ang Lee (李安) won for Best Director. CCTV had managed to edit the four+ hour show down to about two-and-a-half hours, so obvious cuts had been made to both filler and even some speeches, and though I they hadn’t been cutting the major awards, I had a feeling that if Lee (who is Taiwanese) won, there might be some edits.

Indeed there were. After listening to the broadcast, I went on-line to see what I missed. According to Oscar.com, the speech went something like this:

Wow. I wish I knew how to quit you. First of all, i want to thank two people who don't even exist. Or I should say, they do exist, because of the imagination of Annie Proulx and the artistry of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Their names are Ennis and Jack. And they taught all of us who made "Brokeback Mountain" so much about not just all the gay men and women whose love is denied by society, but just as important, the greatness of love itself. Thank you. Thank you members of the Academy for this tremendous honor. And to everyone at Focus Features, in particular, David Linde, James Schamus, thank you for your love and support. To Bill Pohlad, Tory Metzger, Ira Schreck , Joe Dapello, many thanks, and a special thanks to David Lee. And thanks to my wife, Jane Lin, and my boys, Han and Mason. I love you. On "Brokeback Mountain," I felt you with me every day. I just did this movie after my father passed away. More than any other, I made this for him. And finally, to my mother and family, and everybody in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Thank you.

The first thing missing: the whole first part! The censoring bureau has actually banned Brokeback Mountain from showing in movie theatres (though it’s available in all the illegal DVD stores) due to its “questionable” content. Thus, all those references to homosexuality were gone. In other words, what the Chinese saw started from “Thank you. Thank you members of the Academy…” We stopped after “Han and Mason,” and cut back in as he said “谢谢大…关系.” The first part means “thank you everybody.” The last part was clearly bad editing as it doesn’t make any sense in Chinese. Unfortunately, what is found in the above transcript doesn’t have what he said in Chinese, because I’d quite frankly be interested to know what it was. I’ll have to try to find a recording, or I can hope we get it past the censors when we watch the un-cut version on StarWorld on Wednesday.

In any case, besides cutting out references to homosexuality, the other thing that was clearly cut was references to Taiwan and Hong Kong…of course, since they are both parts of China, why would he need to mention them separately?! Well, at least that’s the Chinese mindset.