Season one of Vikings renewed people’s interest in the myths and figures of the early medieval world. Season after season, the show created an immersive world full of issues from the Viking era. So immersive that a Vikings fan can give you a hundred reasons to watch the show–warriors, monks, pagan gods, and whatnot. As intriguing as it might be, a Twitter user couldn’t help but notice something unusual in season five.
Netflix
Aroon Deep, a journalist, noticed and shared his observation on Twitter that Netflix India has blurred all the scenes containing meat, nudity and violence.
Netflix India has censored meat (among quite a few other things) from Vikings. Same scene from India and Italy. pic.twitter.com/NXCE9Kzmh4
— Aroon Deep (@AroonDeep) May 31, 2020
Aroon further shared the response from the streaming giant’s customer care department.
Netflix customer care's comment on this: pic.twitter.com/1ivwhlEq3f
— Aroon Deep (@AroonDeep) May 31, 2020
On seeing Aroon’s tweet, other users also complained about blurring out or completely eliminating a scene on other occasions. While scenes with nudity were blurred, some of the scenes showing violence were completely eliminated. Twitterati further pointed out that the Indian version of episode 12 is about 42 minutes long. However, the international version of the show is about 46 minutes long.
@NetflixIndia still watching vikings s5 e12 and in one scene cooked meat on the table is censored…?what is up with that! pic.twitter.com/d0vFDxU8aH
— Sanjay vg (@SJvg21) April 25, 2020
This is from UAE. An Arab country. Not censored here. FYI https://t.co/J68hN0fguE pic.twitter.com/HmkFFIEpv2
— SID (@ssaig) June 1, 2020
@NetflixIndia Vikings censored on Netflix …. is this Netflix or pvr now? Used to love Netflix for being uncensored and not ruining content…. pic.twitter.com/tl6ZLfbVMI
— Eashan Parekh (@EP2511) January 28, 2020
Dear @NetflixIndia if this news is true, you will loose lots of subscriptions including mine.https://t.co/UwmTlS8vS7
— आत्मनिर्भर Godfather (@The_Godfather1) June 1, 2020
According to media reports, Netflix India says it hasn’t censored the content but it’s the original content that they have received from History 18, the original broadcaster of the show.
And here we thought that because of online streaming platforms, we would be able to watch international TV shows and movies without the beeping of profanities and annoyance of blurred images. While we have been able to do so in the past, is this set to change? We certainly hope not.
Featured Image: Twitter
