Emirates Accused of Discriminating Against LGBT Scenes
Meg Butler January 05, 2019
Amsterdam, Netherlands - April 19, 2015: An Emirates Airbus A380 with the registration A6-EOA taking off at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS) in the Netherlands. The Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner. Emirates is an airline based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is the biggest customer for Airbus A380 aircraft.
Have you caught an in-flight movie on Emirates recently? If you watched the hit show Killing Eve, or Oscar-nominated Ladybird, you may have noticed that the same-sex scenes were omitted.
Writers at The Standard certainly did, and they are taking Emirates Airlines to task for contradicting its policy of inclusion.
In 2017, Emirates publicly stated that, “as a multicultural global company, Emirates does not discriminate against people of any race, religion or sexual orientation. Diversity is a foundation of our brand.”
But, while several airlines censor content, The Standard points out that although you aren’t allowed to see Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer kiss in Killing Eve, you can see Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts get romantically semi-nude in Notting Hill. And, they argue, choosing to censor LGBTQ+ content while leaving in the hetero stuff is contradictory to their inclusive stance.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Emirates has responded to say that while they acknowledge that those scenes were censored, they weren’t the ones who did the censoring:
“Emirates does not have rights to edit any licensed movie or TV content, as we acquire content produced by the studios and distributors. Emirates acquires mostly theatrical unedited versions of content, but as a family friendly airline serving an international audience, where there is excessive violence, sex, nudity or language, we opt to license the edited versions created by the studios/distributors.”
But should they feel obligated to do something about it?
To read more on this story, go to The Standard.
Why are we bringing up this issue now? It's a re-hash of same problem when Brokeback Mountain was shown on IFE. It's more than 10 years (movie released in 2005) and we still argue over this? It's clear society has not progressed at all.
The director cut hundreds of hours of scenes from the film. Egads! Every time a movie is played on TV, scenes are cut to allow more commercials. On airplanes, personal seatback screens are often visible to the passengers, so movies are often edited to remove scenes that might be considered inappropriate for some audiences. Rarely does a single scene make or break a movie. If you don't like the movies shown on Emirates, you can a) fly another airline, b) read a book, or c) bring your own movies on your device. I just flew 23 hours to New Zealnd, and I never even turned on the IFE. Some people thrive on being offended.
Emirates is a Dubai, UAE based company. In the UAE open homosexuality carries punishments that range from jail time to floggings, beatings, torture, death, fines and deportation if you are a non-citizen. Most of the law in the UAE regarding homosexuality is based on Sharia Law, which is related to Islamic teachings. Is Emirates, a company located in an Islamic country, owned by people who practice Islam, wrong for editing out scenes of homosexuality in movies they paid for to show on their planes? I think not.
"Decency standards"??? Well oh mah lord. I do hope CBR is just your name and not your location. We really dont need any more of you.
Cairns, if my calling out systemic homophobia makes you uncomfortable, then clearly it is you who needs to get over something.