2014
Censors in Dubai have cut nearly forty-five minutes from Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street due to excessive profane language and nudity. The film was noted upon its release for containing more than five-hundred uses of the F-word and features both male and female full-frontal nudity. Dubai filmgoers say the edited version is difficult to follow, while the local film board blames a foreign editor for the cuts. The Telegraph reports:
One woman wrote on the Facebook page for Reel Cinemas, which operates two theaters in Dubai, that she and her friend walked out after about forty minutes because they felt the movie was simply incoherent and unwatchable.
It is standard policy across most of the Middle East for governments to preview and censor uncut versions of movies, although the extent of the censoring may differ. Censors edit out even kissing scenes in local theaters and on certain Arab satellite television channels.
1939
Before the film was released, officials implementing the Hays code threatened to cut the “damn” from “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” the now iconic last line from Gone with the Wind. Producer David O. Selznick fought back:
It is my contention that this word as used in the picture is not an oath or a curse. The worst that could be said against it is that it is a vulgarism, and it is so described in the Oxford English Dictionary. Nor do I feel that in asking you to make an exception in this case, I am asking for the use of a word which is considered reprehensible by the great majority of American people and institutions.
I do not feel that your giving me permission to use “damn” in this one sentence will open up the floodgates and allow every gangster picture to be peppered with “damns” from end to end. I do believe, however, that if you were to permit our using this dramatic word in its rightfully dramatic place, in a line that is known and remembered by millions of readers, it would establish a helpful precedent, a precedent which would give to Joe Breen discretionary powers to allow the use of certain harmless oaths and ejaculations whenever, in his opinion, they are not prejudicial to public morals.