The tawdry teen drama Cruel Intentions has a few things that might not pass basic cable censorship muster, but last night’s rebroadcast on E! had a rather curious scrubbing that was noticeably off-brand for the entertainment news outpost.
TV Line reports that Saturday’s airing of the 1999 film had Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s iconic kiss scrubbed out in the network’s “sanitized” version. Not only is it a weird thing to slash for its pop cultural cache, it also reads incredibly strange that E! (broadcaster of programs like I Am Cait) would feel the need to remove a same-sex kiss. It’s the sort of edit that feels remarkably out of date. So much so that Oxygen faced flak for a similar edit in 2012 and changed its cut of the film as a result.
According to a TV Line network insider, the cut wasn’t deliberate. Instead, they claim E! simply had an earlier edited version of the movie that they didn’t do an in-house standards and practices evaluation of. The source figures that E! will switch to a more “contemporary” edit if Cruel Intentions appears on E! again. Certainly a plausible explanation if a bit unsatisfactory. E! declined to comment to TV Line on the matter. We’ll comment and heartily recommend networks hire some bright young folks to give these films a once over so these sorts of hiccups don’t happen again.
(Via TV Line)
