By Mary Margaret Olohan
Disney removed a scene showing a lesbian kiss from a new “Star Wars” movie in Singapore, where same-sex marriage is illegal.
The final “Star Wars” movie, “The Rise of Skywalker,” features the franchise’s first same-sex kissing scene, the Guardian reported. Singapore’s media regulatory body, Infocomm Media Development Authority, said Tuesday that Disney cut the clip in order to prevent the film from losing its PG-13 rating.
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“The applicant has omitted a brief scene which under the film classification guidelines would require a higher rating,” an Infocomm Media Development Authority spokesperson said in a statement.
Children under 16 would have been prohibited from seeing the film if the next highest rating, NC-16, were applied. The lesbian kiss lasted for a few seconds, The New York Times reported.
Same-sex marriage and sex between men is illegal in Singapore, but an LGBTQ group told the Guardian that the law does not specify whether sex between women is illegal. Men who have sex with other men may face up to two years in prison.
Film director J.J. Abrams had said before he released the film that “it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film,” the Times reported. Abrams also said in a 2017 interview with The Daily Beast that it is “insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world.”
The film director responded to backlash against the scene by telling MovieZine that the scene lent itself as an opportunity to show a lesbian kiss “without it being heavy-handed or making too loud of a deal.”
“Part of the whole experience was to see a same-sex couple have a moment together that was explicitly saying in this galaxy, everyone is there and is welcome,” he told MovieZine.
Disney did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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