Disney+Hotstar has reportedly censored the mentions of the word 'beef' in its animated series DuckTales. In fact, the OTT has muted 'ham' in the word hamburger, while in the dubbed Hindi version it is referred to as "cheeseburger."
The issue was first noticed by a Reddit user, who wrote, "In the initial episodes of Season 1 of Ducktales (2017 reboot), one of the characters consistently mentions hamburgers. I've seen the episodes on YouTube before, but I wanted to re-watch before the rest of season 3 begins in September."
He further added, "So I started rewatching, and they've silenced "ham". So it sounds like __ burger. I rewound to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. It's been done for all instances that any character says hamburger, so it's 110% intentional. [sic]"
The first instance of censoring of 'ham' in "hamburger" is done at 11.35 minutes on DuckTales season 1 episode 1 "Woo-oo! and Gadget 360 has verified it. However, Disney+Hotstar has not spoken about the reason behind the censorship.
Other OTT platform controversies
In recent times, a couple of shows have come under attack for controversial content on the OTT platforms. Notably, Anushka Sharma-produced Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime had faced backlash online for hurting religious sentiment and a complaint was filed against the makers with National Minorities Commission for objectionable scenes.
The OTT platforms in India do no come under the purview of The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry. However, there are streaming services which self censor its content.
The government of India is keen to bring more regulation through DCCC (Digital Curated Content Complaint Council), a brainchild of IAMA (Internet and Mobile Association) and the I&B Ministry.
It may be recalled that Disney+Hotstar had done away with an episode of news satire talk show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver which was centred around Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity and controversies.
