Popular Children's Cartoon, 'Peppa Pig' Banned In China as "Gangster Culture"
At some point last year, young adults embraced the innocent cartoon as a symbol of subversion, even getting tattoos of Peppa.
The Chinese government won’t stand for it any longer, reportedly wiping videos of the program from the popular user-created Chinese video site Tik Tok.
Peppa is getting purged from social media, but it’s tougher to regulate the character on the streets. Chinese retailers are still selling oodles of Peppa Pig merchandise, with everything from temporary tattoos to watches getting swept up by Peppa-obsessed teens.
Peppa has been fully embraced by China’s Shehuiren subculture, a word that literally means “society person,” but refers to slackers and other “gangsters” who drop out of society. And now that an undesirable subculture has adopted Peppa, the government wants to rid the country of its corrupting influence.
Mentioning Winnie the Pooh is still banned on Chinese social media since the popular Disney character became a meme, poking fun at Chinese president Xi Jinping. Walking along with President Obama in 2013, Xi was compared to the roly-poly Pooh bear, kicking off a flurry of only lightly disguised ridicule.
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