E3, one of the biggest annual video gaming conferences in the world, has just ended and one of the biggest moments happened to be a gay one. That said, one streaming service didn’t want its viewers to see it.
During Playstation’s press conference on Monday, fans were shown a clip of The Last of Us Part II.
The sequel video game, developed by Naughty Dog, follows Ellie after a time skip from the first game. Then, the trailer for the game depicts Ellie dancing with another woman. The moment between the two grows ever more intimate before they share a tender kiss.
Unfortunately, Disney, which was streaming the video game conference, censored part of the kiss.
The stream for kid-focused channel Disney XD cut out a few seconds into the 10 second kiss.
Many people complained on social media before Disney later came out with an statement saying that they didn’t intend to censor the kiss but a violent scene that came after it. In the trailer’s following scene, Ellie is seen cutting a man’s throat.
A Disney XD spokesperson said:
“The Disney XD policy does not allow for gratuitous violence in programming that children may be viewing.
“During the channel’s General Audience, DX|P-branded programming from the E3 gaming conference yesterday, telecast editors omitted content that did not meet our policy standards, including several seconds of an animated video game scene that began with a kiss, but ended with a knife attack in which a character’s throat was slashed.”
The spokesperson added: “Only the latter, violent portion of the scene was not televised from the event.”
Technically, the spokesperson is right that only the throat cutting scene wasn't televised. After all, a few seconds of the kiss were televised before the cut off.
That said, the rest of the trailer, which can be watched below, includes multiple violent scenes. This has raised questions about where the line is drawn in terms of allowable depictions of violence.
The Last of Us 2 is a hotly anticipated video game that was announced last year. The first installment in the video game series saw the world crumbling in an apocalyptic setting. A zombie inducing disease has taken over the planet. Human survivors are then stuck between battling the zombie-like spore creatures and themselves.
Specifically, the first story follows Joel and Ellie. Joel is a man who’s lost his daughter and has nothing else to live for other than the promise of another day. Meanwhile, Ellie is a rowdy teenager who might be the key to Joel’s, and the world’s, survival.
After the reveal that Ellie was gay and then that she would be the protagonist of the sequel game, many were excited to see if her sexuality would be explored (even if just in the slightest).
Many were then excited to see that come to fruition in the E3 trailer, but its unfortunate that a tv channel, which has broadcasted several kisses to children before, ended up censoring this momentous trailer.
Either this was sloppy editing or blatant homophobia. No matter which, Disney messed up.
