As the popular saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The new Zombieland film hasn’t changed its entertaining formula, but reports claim that the film was censored for political reasons.
To say that things are a bit messy in the United States lately is an understatement. Three of the largest social media giants have been accused of actively censoring some political voices. This has sparked a nationwide outrage with many claiming that these tech giants are tampering with the upcoming 2020 elections. It seems that this censorship has hit Hollywood as well.
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Earlier this year an independent investigatory news publication exposed Google for deliberately hiding conservative content from its search engines and YouTube results. The Google insider, and whistleblower, claimed that popular conservative voices were being suppressed or outright hidden by Google’s search algorithm. Among these conservative voices were comedians Mark Dice and Steven Crowder.
To test this people used a proxy while searching YouTube and Google and found that if the location was set to the USA that the blacklisted creator’s channels and content would not be anywhere near the first result and would often be found a few pages down the list. Even when searching for their channel or content using very specific keywords their content would still not show up and, instead, defaming content about the creators would be displayed in first position.
This kind of censorship, however, did seem to go beyond just censoring conservative voices it would also affect those who would challenge the Democratic National Committee’s former leader, Hillary Clinton. The controversial YouTube search list shows that any videos that could possible paint Clinton in a negatively light were buried by the algorithm.
Even presidential candidate Tulsi Gubbard — a Samoan-American congress woman, military veteran and a member of the Democratic Party — was censored by Google after responding to Clinton’s allegation that she was a “Russian asset.” Her campaign has since filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that they have undue influence to suppress freedom of speech and unfairly impact elections. And it doesn’t end here. It seems as though Hollywood is also being hit by political censorship.
Zombieland: Double Tap is an action packed zombie killing comedy. Like the first movie, it doesn’t take it self seriously and serves the purpose of allowing you to tune out from reality for a good 90 minutes and escape any real world drama that may be bothering you. The film is politically bi-partisan and does a great job of avoiding any divisive political issues. It does, on occasion, poke fun at both sides; from the freedom loving, gun-toting cowboy to the freedom hating, gun-loathing hipster. It even goes as far to make jokes at Donald Trump’s expense. But to keep things fair and balanced there was also a joke about the Clintons, but that scene was reportedly deleted after the producers were pressured by the DNC.
Hillary Clinton scene deleted from Zombieland: Double Tap
When the crew arrive at the White House, Tallahassee (played by Woody Harrelson) sits at the presidential desk and declares himself president of the United States of Zombieland while lighting up a cigar he found in one of the drawers. After putting the cigar in his mouth, Wichita (played by Emma Stone) makes a snide remark about those cigars being left overs from the Clinton administration. Tallahessee then spits the cigar out of his mouth with a disgusted look on his face. This scene did not make the final cut.
The Democratic National Committee allegedly pressured Columbia Pictures into cutting the scene from the film as it may be damaging to Hillary’s potential 2020 presidential campaign run.
This scene in particular is obviously a reference to the sex scandal that took place during Bill Clinton’s term but considering the film is set in the not-too-distant future the DNC reportedly believed that they might be alluding to Hillary future presidency. Is Zombieland censored?
Red Band trailer shows controversial scene
The scene was deleted after the Red Band trailer for Zombieland: Double Tap premiered. It is currently the only remaining evidence that the scene was originally intended to be in the film. The scene was then removed out of the cinematic trailer and the final cut of the film.
Clinton scene deleted from Zombieland: Double Tap.
The line spoken by Emma Stone was replaced with her saying “you would have brought a real dignity to the office,” a scene that was reportedly only filmed to fix the DNC-deemed problematic trailer.
Fortunately the scene is of no significance to the film and its removal does not really have any impact. Zombieland: Double Tap is still a very enjoyable movie. If you like the first one do yourself a favour and go see this one as soon as you can.