Cancelled shows

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Seems someone called this list stupid after the original message I 
posted, so it makes me nervous posting again on the same subject. But 
being interested in all forms of censorship--and these cancellations were 
both cases of censorship, good and bad--I can't help but update people on 
the Ultraman Cosmos affair.

After the lead actor playing Cosmos was arrested, Mainichi Hoso quickly 
cancelled the popular series. They broadcast two more shows to use up 
some remaining footage and tie up some narrative loose ends, but the 
results were bizarre. How do you do a hero show without seeing the guy 
who transforms into the hero? It was like some cinema under authoritarian 
regimes: everyone, in the diegesis and the audience, knew this person was 
present, but he wasn't shown at all.  Shochiku, which has been 
advertising the movie version for months, decided to release it after 
editing out this person's face.

But then something bizarre happened. The "victim" in the case recanted 
and the police, left without a case, had to let the actor go without 
indicting him. (As usual with Japanese police, they refused to admit they 
were wrong and argued that the actor had really done something wrong, but 
"since an agreement had been reached with the victim," they let him go. 
The lawyers for the actor said that statement was false and constitutes 
defamation and they are planning to sue the police.) The actor's talent 
agency is livid and blaming the police for ruining the guy's career and 
the wideshows, which have been reporting this case a lot, have a lot of 
commentators (like film director Izuchi Kazuyuki) claiming the police 
"tread over the human rights of the actor and trampled the dreams of 
millions of Japanese children." Mainichi Hoso says they are now 
investigating whether to revive the show.

The case says a lot about the police (heck, it took them a year and half 
to process the original complaint and still got it wrong), but it also 
raises questions about self-censorship (was the network acting too soon 
on a case where there hadn't even been an indictment?), the perceived 
moral context surrounding the televisual text (one small, unjustified 
arrest and the show is cancelled), the relationship between text and 
reality and star and text, and about the consumerist context of the image 
text (the arrest affecting not only the show but the huge Ultraman toy 
and product industry).

Can anyone think of similar cases?

Just a disclaimer: My son is an Ultraman Cosmos fan. (I prefer Ultra 
Seven myself.)

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Yokohama National University