Once once more, “Disney” once morest Saudi Arabia. After the entertainment giant refused last November to make amends to the movie The Eternals, which deals with the story of a gay couple, and banned it from showing in the Gulf states, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is facing a ban in Saudi Arabia. Disney rejected Saudi Arabia’s request to remove the “gay community” reference, to allow it to be shown in the kingdom early next month. Nawaf Al-Sabhan, the general supervisor of the “Cinematic Classification Department at the General Authority for Audio-Visual Media” in Saudi Arabia, explained to AFP that the scene to be deleted (12 seconds) is related to the heroine, “America Chavez”, regarding her “mothers”, in reference to homosexuality. Nationality, revealing at the same time Disney refused to modify the scene. It is noteworthy that Saudi Arabia lifted the ban on all cinemas in late 2017, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took the lead in “reforms” in the kingdom, and homosexuality is considered a “crime” punishable by Saudi law, and may reach the death penalty. Information spread regarding the film’s ban in Kuwait and Qatar, and the UAE was excluded from the ban, at a time when the censorship of artistic works in Egypt decided to ban its showing as well because of the presence of a homosexual figure.
