Last week, Delta was under fire because it was playing versions of “Booksmart” and “Rocketman” that had excluded the films’ respective same-sex love scenes.
The coming-of-age comedy “Booksmart” had a lesbian kissing scene removed, while kissing scenes between males and females remained. Coincidentally, the movie’s director, Olivia Wilde, saw the film on a Delta flight and said that the word “vagina” and genitals” were also edited out, while all curse words were left in.
Wilde took to Twitter with her disappointment – I won’t give screen shots because several of her tweets include adult language, but you can read them here.
Meanwhile, in Elton John’s biopic “Rocketman,” a gay sex scene and a kissing scene between two men (Taron Egerton and Richard Madden) were both taken out.
To be fair, the edits were not done by Delta; they were done by a third party. These contracted editing companies, or sometimes the studios themselves, regularly edit movies to remove, for example, references to plane crashes, brands of competitor airlines, and, apparently LGBTQ+ kissing scenes and appropriate terminology for “girl parts.”
However, after much backlash, this is Delta’s response about the removal of the LGBTQ+ kissing scenes and other things that had been cut…
The airline claimed that Deltas staffers usually pick between the original or edited versions of films it wasn’t aware that some scenes were edited out of the versions of “Rocketman” and “Booksmart” that were shown on its flights. Delta also says the two movies will no longer skip the same-sex love scenes and the scenes on both films were “unnecessarily excluded.”
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
2 comments
This took be by surprise because on the jet bridges, the ad for Comfort Plus has a male couple as the subjects in the ad.
I was surprised when I read the story as Delta is proud to advertise how LGBTQ+ friendly they are. I’d believe them when they say it was a case of the IFE people doing the edits and it slipped through the cracks.