34 2GM Wednesday January 26 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood actress,
has been formally cleared of obsceni-
ty 15 years after the Hollywood actor
Richard Gere publicly kissed her at
an event in India.
Shetty, 46, best known to British
audiences for appearing in Celebrity
Big Brother, joined the Pretty Woman
star on stage in Delhi for an Aids
awareness event in 2007. Gere was
filmed kissing Shetty on the hand
before tightly hugging her and kiss-
ing her repeatedly on the cheek.
The incident provoked fury from
radical Hindu groups, who burntKeiran Southern Los AngelesShark attacks rose globally last year
as the easing of lockdown measures
and a tourism revival sent swimmers
and surfers back into the water.
The report by the International
Shark Attack File recorded
73 shark incidents world-
wide last year, com-
pared with 52 the
previous year.
“Shark bites
dropped drastical-
ly in 2020 due to
the pandemic.
This past year was
much more typical,
with average num-
bers from an assort-
ment of species and
fatalities from white
sharks, bull sharks and tiger
sharks,” said Tyler Bowling, manager
of the database at the Florida Museum
of Natural History in Gainesville.
There were nine unprovoked fatal
Change of scene The Australian actress Margot Robbie at Chanel’s spring-summer haute couture show for Paris Fashion Weekattacks last year: six in Australia, New
Zealand and New Caledonia and one
each in Brazil, South Africa and the
US. There were five deaths in 2020.
The US has the highest overall
number of recorded cases, account-
ing for 64 per cent of the global total.
Florida remained the most danger-
ous area, with 60 per cent of
the US total.
Despite the increas-
es, scientists said that
the number of cases
and deaths re-
mained within
long-term avera-
ges and that fatali-
ties, in the long run,
were becoming less
frequent as beach
safety, medical treat-
ment and public aware-
ness increased.
They attributed the cases to
“sharks being sharks” and more
people entering their habitat. The
rises and falls in numbers reflect
factors such as human population
growth, increased recreational
activities and shifts in the shark
population.United States
Jacqui Goddard Miami
Shark attacks rise as more
think it’s safe to get in water
recorded
world-
m-
e- t-
and
white
and tiger
Bowlingmanager
ous area, w
the US t
Des
es, s
the
an
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lo
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ness incr
They attrib
“sharks being shTiger sharks were among the species
behind a total of 73 attacks last year
In an oft-repeated line from the 1999
film Fight Club, a gorgeous anarchist
named Tyler Durden bellows that
“the first rule of Fight Club is you do
not talk about Fight Club”.
No one seems to have taken this
quite as seriously as the censors who
prepared David Fincher’s classic for
streaming in China.
At the climax of the original, the
film’s unnamed narrator, played by
Edward Norton, realises that Tyler,
the character played by Brad Pitt, is
a projection of his own troubled
mind. After vanquishing him, he
stands hand in hand with his girl-
friend, Marla, at the top of a tower
block watching as the plot his alter
ego set in motion — to destroy con-
sumerism — comes to fruition and
neighbouring skyscrapers explode
and fall.
In the Chinese version, distributed
by the streaming service Tencent
Video, viewers are greeted instead
with a message informing them that
police successfully foiled the plot.
They “arrested all the criminals”Beijing changes Fight Club
ending to let the police win
and Tyler, who is a distinct person in
the new ending, was put on trial and
“sent to a lunatic asylum, receiving
psychological treatment. He was dis-
charged from the hospital in 2012.”
Screenshots of this ending circulat-
ed on Chinese social media, where
they were met with ridicule, and sug-
gestions of how other American films
might end. “Probably Ocean’s Eleven
would have all been arrested,” saidone commentator, according to Vice
magazine. “The Godfather’s entire
family would end up in jail.”
Henry Gao, an associate professor
of law at Singapore Management
University, said Chinese censorship
had long targeted anything seen “to
propagate violence, to overthrow the
government”.
He added: “Tyler was just a fantasy.
In China you don’t even have thefreedom to fantasise. Even in your
fantasy you have to comply with gov-
ernment law.”
A source close to the distributor
said that the edits were not made by
Tencent. A spokesman for the com-
pany declined to comment.
Adam Nayman, author of David
Fincher: Mind Games, pointed out
that the Tyler alter ego worked part-
time as a cinema projectionist and
spliced single frames of hardcore
pornography into family films. Now
another censor had intervened, with
a different intent. “The second I read
this I thought: ‘The Chinese govern-
ment is Tyler Durden’,” Nayman said.
Fight Club joins a long list of Holly-
wood films to fall foul of Chinese cen-
sorship. The original ending to Lord
of War, 2005, has the protagonist, an
arms dealer called Yuri Orlov played
by Nicolas Cage, evading jail.
In the Tencent version, which is
about 30 minutes shorter, a caption
reads that Orlov “confessed all the
crimes officially charged against him
in court, and was sentenced to life im-
prisonment in the end”.
This happier ending jape could really
catch on, leading article, page 29China
Will Pavia New YorkFight Club has
joined a long list
of films to fall
foul of Chinese
censorshipIndian star finally cleared over Gere kiss
effigies of both while accusing them
of insulting Indian values. A
judge issued arrest warrants
for the actors on charges of
obscenity and indecency.
The charges against
Gere, 72, were quickly
dropped, allowing the
star, one of the world’s
best-known Buddhists, to
return to India to meet
the Dalai Lama. But Shet-
ty’s case languished in
India’s justice system. Itwas finally discharged
in Mumbai last week
after a judge said it
was “groundless”.
Shetty’s lawyer had
argued the case rested
on the fact that “she
did not protest when
she was kissed. This
by no stretch of imag-
ination makes her a
conspirator or perpe-
trator of any crime.”
Gere later apologised for his
exuberant display, which was
apparently to show that kissing
did not spread HIV/Aids.The clinch outraged
radical Hindu groupsGEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES