Canadian actor Keanu Reeves is getting canceled by China for appearing at a concert associated with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama.
From “The Matrix” series to “John Wick,” the actor’s blockbuster titles have vanished from virtually all of China’s biggest streaming platforms such as iQiyi and Tencent, where searches for his name now yield no results.
Reeves’s apparent offense was to appear at a March 3 virtual concert organized by Tibet House, a New York-based nonprofit founded at the request of the Dalai Lama. The spiritual leader is exiled in India, where he established a shadow Tibetan government that Beijing has labeled as being separatist.
At least 19 films starring Reeves have been scrubbed from Tencent Video, according to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the content removal.
Reeves incurred the wrath of Chinese nationalists and state media in late January when news emerged of his plans to participate in the pro-Tibet event. It was about a month after the fourth installment of the matrix franchise, “The Matrix Resurrections,” hit Chinese theaters upon clearing the regime’s tight restrictions on imported films. A social media troll account, sharing two now-deleted screenshots of the news, said then that the actor was being “muddleheaded.”
“Are these actors really not afraid of losing the Chinese market?” it said in a post that got thousands of likes.
The regime’s internet censorship machine, curiously, waited at least 10 days before quietly getting to work, catching some Chinese fans by surprise. On March 13, confused users began wondering aloud on Chinese social media Weibo why they suddenly couldn’t watch The Matrix series.
The scrubbing has put Reeves on an ever-expanding list of Western celebrities who have run afoul of the Chinese regime for not toeing its political line.
American singer Katy Perry was denied a Chinese visa for an upcoming Victoria’s Secret show in Shanghai, after Chinese officials discovered a 2015 incident in which the singer draped a Taiwanese flag as a cape over her sunflower dress during a concert in Taipei.
Not all Chinese netizens were happy with the censors’ actions.
“I just watched half of [The Matrix Revolutions] and was just about to finish it, and now it’s taken off the shelf,” wrote one Weibo user, adding a crying face emoji.
Another professed to be “speechless.”
“This is one of my favorite movies!” the user said.
A third shared that they had rushed to buy the blu-ray discs for the Matrix trilogy after learning about it being blocked, and said they had to be content in “pretending that the fourth [movie] doesn’t exist.”
Some also felt a sense of helplessness coming up against Beijing’s sweeping censorship apparatus.
“I disagree with banning Keanu Reeves, although whether I agree or not doesn’t help,” one post reads.
