Its weird to have an article about the dangers of editing that doesn't clearly identify what the dangerous edit was. Seems like the hand wringing was about a scene the article-author incorrectly said was edited, so the article updated, but now the article is an empty shell of criticism without substance.
Could that same criticism not also be applied to this very news article that was retroactively edited or 'George Lucased' as the writer refers to it as.
From the article, here's the edit: It's a simple mistake of an expansive series costing $30 million an episode, really: the creative team set an episode of Stranger Things 4 on March 22, forgetting that it had been established as Will Byers' (Noah Schnapp) birthday in the earlier season.
So can someone explain to me why this is a plot hole? If the episode took place on March 22nd, Will Byers' birthday, we would expect... a birthday party?
Basically the whole episode revolves around one character's emotional difficulties and Will feeling a bit ignored by their mutual friend who is in town, all while Will's mother has suddenly left town the night before after giving a hasty, extremely vague and obviously fake excuse to her sons & other characters – read through the lens of "it's supposed to be Will's birthday" it makes all his close friends and his mother seem insanely cruel to be completely ignoring his birthday when in fact that wasn't what the writers were going for, they just didn't realize the visual date matched a line of dialog from a prior season.
It is odd that the whole dialog among very close teenage friends doesn't mention that it is the character's birthday at all. It is kind of clear in the episode that the writers just didn't realize it.
It’s all just Mandela effect and fans needing reasons to be mad.
There’s a notable “off-season” effect in TV subreddits. When there’s no new content but people still want to chit-chat, crazy theories and over-analysis start to get popular.
"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
I can't speak to the author's views, but it would to me. There's something very disconcerting about the ability of digital media to be "memory holed", and the Streisand effect is no longer a sure thing, in the age of big tech censorship infrastructure built by popular (media) demand.
At least with TV shows this isn't a problem. Everything is dumped on day 0 so the original releases are preserved. It wouldn't surprise me if there are hundreds of thousands of copies of the original releases floating out there due to torrents.
It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.
Journalists have been doing this the last few years without using a disclaimer. Personally, I think it's completely different as film and music is art. If this was done with music it would be especially damaging. Imagine your favourite songs being remastered and arranged for the worst. Artists could rework unsuccessful albums, which is weird.
The article even mentions Star Wars and George Lucas, something that happened 20 years ago, yet pretends this is the start of a dangerous trend. Cause it's TV (or streaming) instead of a movie / home video release I guess?
I think the medium is the main difference. An old movie you have on tape or whatever physical media and would need to go buy an additional copy of a new version of it. Whereas something primarily on streaming can change on you without notice and you cannot go back and watch the original.
Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too. It was never passed off as the original version, and part of the selling point was the edits. Rather than an update in place without any notice.
Exactly my thoughts as well. It's different with streaming than with something on a physical medium. With DRMed content it's a little different, because nobody can ever go back and see it (unless the rights-owners save the original allow them to do so, which seems unlikely if the thing is controversial enough to warrant an investigation in the first place).
> Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too.
Is that true? If so, it didn't last for long. There's no way to legally watch the original Star Wars now, unless you can find a physical VHS or Laserdisc.
I'd also point at this big old list of media effected by 9/11[1] - I think the most notable one at the time was 2002 Spiderman which released a trailer containing the two towers initially that was then edited (along with the movie) to remove that landmark.
With purely hosted media there is no way for purist fans to ever have the "original" or whatever version of it, unlike the people who were swapping around laserdisc and 35mm versions of the unspoilt cuts of Star Wars, etc.
In this specific case you could buy Stranger Things Season 2 on Blu-ray which would have the original version on it. But that is probably getting to be a rare case, especially since you can't buy Season 3.
There is. A web rip version of a given piece of media dating to sometime right after the premiere is as close as you can get to a “canonical” version without obtaining the master files. This is for pure-digital content, but things often get released on BR so that’s even higher quality source.
More, the author saw mention of it pop up on thier Twitter feed, so wrote an article to cash in on the current "controversy" with no actual research beyond Twitter.
Even on TV, HBO retroactively edited out George Bush's head from the spikes Joffrey makes Sansa look at in season one of Game of Thrones, all the way back in 2011. George Martin just joked about it in his interview on the upcoming House of the Dragon.
They didn't stop editing Star Wars 20 years ago, unfortunately. See Disney+ editing the scene between Greedo and Han Solo to make Greedo say "Maclunkey[0]" before shooting him.
And yes Greedo still shoots first because we live in the worst timeline.
4chan's /tv/ will produce a list of 100+ examples of censorship by the streaming platforms if you go make a thread about it.
To be honest, I just personally don't care because I didn't trust the streaming platform that made 'Cuties' and '13 Reasons Why' with moral matters to begin with.
JRR Tolkien modified "The Hobbit" to better accord with what he had developed about Gollum and the One Ring for the upcoming "Lord of the Rings". He even retconned the modification, making the original version (published in 1937) the one that Bilbo told people. This is not a new thing.
Modifications to new editions aren't a new thing. What's new is the way that concept interacts with DRM-protected streamable content.
If the Forces of Order got their way and copyright was fully enforced, changes to a show released by streaming only would be a lot more permanent and in a way "more retroactive" than they are today. Maybe that's just a minor example of the much more general problem of archival presented by DRM, but maybe it's a little more sinister because there isn't any outward indication of the thing being a "new edition" like there is with a book (publishing info page) or a software release (version number). So a historian/archivist would need to go around perceptual-hashing the whole content to determine that there were actually two or more versions of that one episode of that one show.
> In the original 1937 edition of "The Hobbit" Gollum was genuinely willing to bet his ring on the riddle game, the deal being that Bilbo would receive a "present" if he won. Gollum in fact was dismayed when he couldn't keep his promise because the ring was missing. He showed Bilbo the way out as an alternative, and they parted courteously.
> As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistable power object, and Gollum's behavior now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully.
> Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut.
In the original version of The Hobbit, the ring is just a magic ring and Gollum willingly bets the ring on the riddle game. When Gollum can't find the ring, he instead offers to lead Bilbo out of the cave.
In later versions, the bet was if Gollum wins he eats Bilbo, if Bilbo wins Gollum shows him the way out.
It is then presented that Bilbo told everyone the first story although the second was the truth. Which is why the first version appears in The Hobbit as the conceit is that it is an account written by Bilbo or at least sourced from his writings.
The original pilot episode of Stargate: SG1 had a scene where a woman is stripped against her will by the villain. The camera lingers over her naked body for awhile while a bad puppet alien snake slithers around.
The show was originally on premium cable and the network insisted that they include nudity. The producers hated the scene and the fans generally don't like it. The actress has said that she was lied to about how much of her body would be shown in the final cut. It's very tonally inconsistent with the rest of the series. When the episode re-airs on basic cable they show an alternate cut of scene which is much shorter and removes the nudity. This version also appears on some home media releases.
I think that's ok, right? It doesn't change the intent of the scene. We still get that the villainous Goa'uld are evil and cruel. Anyone want to argue that no, actually, the weird alien-puppet-hissing-at-a-naked-lady scene HAS to stay in for the sake of artistic purity?
Ironically the version that's on Netflix includes the full-frontal scene, and for some reason that affects the rating of the entire series: Each episode is rated M and includes a "Nudity" tag, despite no other episode containing nudity.
Is there anything more ironic than the fact that this article was corrected?
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
> Viewers who still have physical copies of Stranger Things season one noticed something odd having gone back for a rewatch on Netflix: a scene wherein one-time weirdo Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) takes spying, lewd snaps of now-lover Nancy (Natalia Dyer) from a bush has been erased on the platform. And it's not the first time the Duffers have gone back to the cutting room after the fact.
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
It's a good thing that in this case the factual error was the assertion of "changing the story to better fit current political climate."
Without that fake bombshell (that they could have validated for $XX dollars by just buying the DVD) what is the difference between an article correction and a minor plot continuity correction?
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
Well, no, there isn't. What's important depends on what you're trying to learn. If what you're interested in is where the incorrect claim came from, then silently editing the GQ article would be exactly the same kind of revisionism as silently changing an episode of Stranger Things.
But of course, that's not the difference here. GQ made their correction correctly: with a notice attached to the new content describing what the old content said and what changes were made. That is very different from silently editing history; that is why GQ's correction is much less problematic than the hypothetical editing of Stranger Things. (It would be better to present the old content itself, rather than a description of it, but the notice is still hugely less problematic than a silent retroactive change.)
I don't see a problem with changing a story to fit the current political climate better, assuming that the original version has been archived by someone somewhere.
This merely seems to create new opportunities for doctoral theses in Film Studies.
Probably the most famous example of change for copyright is Tour Of Duty, which lost almost all its music in syndication, most notable the theme song Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones.
Indeed. Super Natural Season 1 has entirely different music on Netflix than it does on DVD due to licensing not covering a streaming clause (there were no streaming services in 2005 when the deal was done and nobody had even thought about such a thing). Season 1 has a kickass classic rock soundtrack on DVD, and with that show the music isn't just luster on top. It's actually an important part of the show/characters.
Readit News
ADDED: They did apparently retro-edit around a plot hole but not what people were getting upset about.
[1] https://twitter.com/strangerwriters/status/15519011967005900...
So can someone explain to me why this is a plot hole? If the episode took place on March 22nd, Will Byers' birthday, we would expect... a birthday party?
There’s a notable “off-season” effect in TV subreddits. When there’s no new content but people still want to chit-chat, crazy theories and over-analysis start to get popular.
It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.
The original article called the alleged removal of that scene, "wimpish laziness."
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220727142524/https://www.gq-ma...
Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too. It was never passed off as the original version, and part of the selling point was the edits. Rather than an update in place without any notice.
Is that true? If so, it didn't last for long. There's no way to legally watch the original Star Wars now, unless you can find a physical VHS or Laserdisc.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected...
History happened. No need to create a past and future-projected vacuum as a consequence of past events.
https://www.xxlmag.com/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo-changes/
And yes Greedo still shoots first because we live in the worst timeline.
To be honest, I just personally don't care because I didn't trust the streaming platform that made 'Cuties' and '13 Reasons Why' with moral matters to begin with.
If the Forces of Order got their way and copyright was fully enforced, changes to a show released by streaming only would be a lot more permanent and in a way "more retroactive" than they are today. Maybe that's just a minor example of the much more general problem of archival presented by DRM, but maybe it's a little more sinister because there isn't any outward indication of the thing being a "new edition" like there is with a book (publishing info page) or a software release (version number). So a historian/archivist would need to go around perceptual-hashing the whole content to determine that there were actually two or more versions of that one episode of that one show.
> As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistable power object, and Gollum's behavior now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully.
> Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut.
http://tolkien.cro.net/tolkien/changes.html
In later versions, the bet was if Gollum wins he eats Bilbo, if Bilbo wins Gollum shows him the way out.
It is then presented that Bilbo told everyone the first story although the second was the truth. Which is why the first version appears in The Hobbit as the conceit is that it is an account written by Bilbo or at least sourced from his writings.
The show was originally on premium cable and the network insisted that they include nudity. The producers hated the scene and the fans generally don't like it. The actress has said that she was lied to about how much of her body would be shown in the final cut. It's very tonally inconsistent with the rest of the series. When the episode re-airs on basic cable they show an alternate cut of scene which is much shorter and removes the nudity. This version also appears on some home media releases.
I think that's ok, right? It doesn't change the intent of the scene. We still get that the villainous Goa'uld are evil and cruel. Anyone want to argue that no, actually, the weird alien-puppet-hissing-at-a-naked-lady scene HAS to stay in for the sake of artistic purity?
Ironically the version that's on Netflix includes the full-frontal scene, and for some reason that affects the rating of the entire series: Each episode is rated M and includes a "Nudity" tag, despite no other episode containing nudity.
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
> Viewers who still have physical copies of Stranger Things season one noticed something odd having gone back for a rewatch on Netflix: a scene wherein one-time weirdo Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) takes spying, lewd snaps of now-lover Nancy (Natalia Dyer) from a bush has been erased on the platform. And it's not the first time the Duffers have gone back to the cutting room after the fact.
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
It's a good thing that in this case the factual error was the assertion of "changing the story to better fit current political climate."
Without that fake bombshell (that they could have validated for $XX dollars by just buying the DVD) what is the difference between an article correction and a minor plot continuity correction?
Well, no, there isn't. What's important depends on what you're trying to learn. If what you're interested in is where the incorrect claim came from, then silently editing the GQ article would be exactly the same kind of revisionism as silently changing an episode of Stranger Things.
But of course, that's not the difference here. GQ made their correction correctly: with a notice attached to the new content describing what the old content said and what changes were made. That is very different from silently editing history; that is why GQ's correction is much less problematic than the hypothetical editing of Stranger Things. (It would be better to present the old content itself, rather than a description of it, but the notice is still hugely less problematic than a silent retroactive change.)
This merely seems to create new opportunities for doctoral theses in Film Studies.
r/DataHoarder (of course) post for this news last week - commenters list minute changes they've noticed like reruns being cut for advertisements and copyright: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/w38e1z/strange...
In other Netflix shows:
- 13 Reasons Why: suicide removed,[1] song replaced (edit: coinciding with condemnation of the show by the artist[2])
- Dark: details changed for continuity with later seasons[3]
[1] https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=378736
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/CSHFans/comments/8tloai/oh_starving...
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/ctbsbd/apparently_som...