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This Just In: Delta Airlines Has Finally Learned That Elton John Is Gay

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Delta’s in-flight screenings of Rocketman cut almost all LGBTQ content in this biopic of one of the most famously gay celebrities of all time. Can they just let us live already?

Delta Airlines is at it again, y’all. In a weird move that feels relatively sudden, Delta has begun to censor recent LGBTQ films that play on its flights. They are actively choosing to play the films, but not any of the gay parts. 

Earlier this past month, Olivia Wilde’s breakout teen comedy, Booksmart, fell victim to this when Delta cut the lesbian kiss scene from its in-flight showings, despite the fact that this is a very important scene in regard to character development and plot. Delta also decided to cut out as many gay references as possible from their showings of Rocketman. Which would mean that, in a weird power move, the airline wanted to see if they could cut down the biopic about the life of musician Elton John down to two minutes. 

We are nearing the end of the year 2019, and apparently there are still people who might not have heard that Elton John is gay. I suppose they’re the hypothetical people Delta is protecting here.

This bout of censorship came to light when Entertainment Weekly Digital Director Shana Krochmal decided to enjoy Rocketman on a flight this week. Upon realizing that some pretty crucial elements to the story were missing, she shared this on her Twitter account. 

“On Delta today, discovered that Rocketman is stripped of almost every gay reference or scene that [Elton John] fought to keep in the film’s mainstream release, including a simple chaste kiss,” Krochmal wrote on her Twitter. 

She also noted that the scene where John Reid assaults John was left in its entirety. There are a lot of jokes that we could continue to make about the fact that Delta allowed this to be an option to be streamed, despite completely stripping the bread and butter of the film from the streaming version. But the fact that the scene of Reid harming John was left in with no question is really no laughing matter. 

What exactly are we saying here? It has been noted a thousand times by so many people that, with the advent of smartphones and iPads, people watch all kinds of significantly more graphic things out in public where anyone can see — and yet, it always seems that seeing two consenting adults who love each other and happen to share the same gender is where the line is drawn. Meanwhile, of course, violence against those same people is perfectly acceptable. 

A spokesperson for the airline did speak to Pink News in regard to Krochmal’s tweet, and stated that not only do they not do the editing, they just play whatever edited version the studio sends, but they do not specifically ask for the removal of LGBTQ content. 

“We value diversity and inclusion as core to our culture and our mission and will review our processes to ensure edited video content doesn’t conflict with these values,” a spokesperson for Delta told Pink News.

In their own coverage of this incident, Advocate quoted a 2017 interview in which a Delta spokesperson had told their publication at the time that “Delta has committed to not showing a film at all when an edited version is required but goes beyond omitting explicit material to remove scenes that reflect the diversity of our employees and customers.” Advocate then pointed out that such a policy, if followed, would have prevented the screening of a “degayed” Rocketman. And yet.

Editorial use only. No book cover usage. Mandatory Credit: Photo by David Appleby/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (10242448j) Taron Egerton as Elton John ‘Rocketman’ Film – 2019 A musical fantasy about the fantastical human story of Elton John’s breakthrough years.

To bring it back around — we are nearing the end of the year 2019, and people are still uncomfortable when two consenting adults kiss or show any kind of affection, simply because they happen to be LGBTQ. This is where we are. Still.

For every step we take, things like this pull us two steps back, and make sure we continue to “sleep with one eye open,” reinforcing that traumatic thought process that is ingrained in us in varying ways.

Every day, incidents like this remind us that we still have to prove ourselves legitimate in the eyes of some. Until things like Elton John kissing his husband, or two teen girls holding hands, become normalized to the point that no one cares anymore, there is still going to be ground to cover in the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Top Photo: Paramount Pictures

Rocketman Is One Of The Most Important Films You’ll See This Year

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Elton John biopic Rocketman isn’t just a blast for music-lovers everywhere — it’s also a groundbreaking and important film for the LGBTQ community.

Let’s be honest. Elton John is pretty difficult to dislike. Even if you’re not a fan of his music, most people pretty much agree that he is a genuinely great person, whether because of his over-the-top personality and confidence, his humanitarian work, or a combination thereof. 

Rocketman, a musical-style biopic about John’s life, is very similar to Bohemian Rhapsody (the film biography of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, released back in November), in that neither of them were very hard sells to begin with. Like Queen, John is one of those artists whose back catalogs most people are willing to sit through even if they aren’t that obsessed with his music. Everyone has at least one Elton John song they love, even if they don’t know its by him. 

That being said, Rocketman is not only a solid film from a narrative perspective, it is also one of the most important LGBTQ films you will watch this year. 

When I went in, I honestly did not know too much about the history of John’s life. I knew enough to know that he is gay, he is British, and he has made some of the best songs we’re all still singing under our breath for the last forty years. He is also who Lady Gaga should be thanking for being one of the groundbreakers for her style, and I’m positive she would strongly agree with that. 

The film’s narrative is spun as a flat-out rock musical, with John’s songs used to further the narrative in various appropriate places. As soon as six year old John (then going by his birth name of Reginald Dwight) started singing “I Want Love,” I should have known this wasn’t going to be the campy ride that I initially thought it would be. 

And I am glad for that. 

Much like many (okay fine, most) of his peers in the 1970s and 1980s, John experimented with and became addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping (an addiction which, in the factual montage at the end, he cheekily admits he still suffers from), and bulimia, among other things.

Throughout the film, John deals with these many issues, even as his star skyrockets to the top after meeting lyricist and future best friend/right-hand man, Bernie Taupin. After rehab he admits to Taupin that he fears he won’t be nearly as good as he was under the influence. Taupin then smiles and reminds John that the drugs and alcohol never had anything to do with his talent. 

We also, amidst other things, see John’s various heartbreaks; from his parents after coming out as gay, to the abuse he endured through his manager John Reid, to his suicide attempt. Rocketman is important for so many smaller reasons, including the fact that it is the first major Hollywood film to feature a gay sex scene. But it’s most important due to the fact that it is such a overwhelmingly supportive and powerful queer narrative. 

I want to see thousands more of them. 

Every day, we wake up to even more dark realities on our screens, from basic rights being threatened or ripped away outright to members of our own community, especially black trans women, being murdered just for having the audacity to exist. 

Films like this and Bohemian Rhapsody are important in this climate, and not just because of representation. They are important because they go down into the darkness, they show these people at the bottom of the barrel and they show that, despite it all, they still came back up and conquered the world. We need these narratives more than ever because they remind us that we too can crawl back up, our nails clinging deep in the dirt as we climb up and keep going. 

I want this LGBTQ biopic train that we have to keep going. I want to see so many more. I want to see the biopic on Marsha P. Johnson. I want to see a biopic on Carrie Brownstein. I want Wanda Sykes to tell me her life story. Tell me about Danica Roem and her life. Someone please get to work on making Mr. George Takei the best film ever made. 

I want all of them. Because when we see these people we already look up to — and how, despite being thrown into the bowels of hell, they came out kicking and screaming and laughing in the face of adversity — it gives us strength to fight our own battles. At the end of the day, isn’t that in and of itself the queer experience? As John sang, “Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did? Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid. I’m still standing after all this time.”

Stand tall and sing with him. See Rocketman.