Credit: Universal PicturesFlorence Pugh appeared in several nude scenes for director Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer, but it seems she is now being censored in increasingly strange ways.
Oppenheimer stars Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, a real-life psychiatrist, reporter, and Communist Party member who had an on-and-off again relationship with physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). An early sex scene in the movie features Pugh entirely nude (reportedly the first time a scene of the kind had been filmed for IMAX) while questioning Murphy about the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text.
Now, it seems that the nations of India and Pakistan are refusing to show Oppenheimer with a fully nude Jean Tatlock, and are instead only releasing the movie with a blurred-out Florence Pugh for the relevant scenes.
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Even more oddly, it seems that some edits of Oppenheimer have completely covered the star with a digitally-composted black dress, as seen below.
A censored version of ‘OPPENHEIMER’ is being screen in several countries, with a CGI black dress covering Florence Pugh. pic.twitter.com/3SXea7pbCt
— Florence Pugh Daily (@bestofpugh) July 24, 2023
It is particularly notable that Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock is being covered by a CGI dress in Oppenheimer of all movies; Christopher Nolan is known for being one of the most prominent filmmakers to speak against the increasing use of digital graphics in cinema and for preferring both practical effects and physical film.
After all, if Christopher Nolan can replicate the Manhattan Project’s Trinity nuclear test without the use of CGI, it could be fairly argued that Florence Pugh being covered in a poorly-rendered dress is a borderline insult.
On the other hand, the Florence Pugh-Cillian Murphy sex scene in Oppenheimer is also being heavily criticized in India for non-nudity-related reasons. At one point in the scene, Cillian Murphy reads from the Bhagavad Gita, “I am become death. The destroyer of worlds,” a quote which he is reported to have said at the culmination of the Trinity Test.
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However, some conservative Indian government officials are describing the inclusion of Hindu religious verse in a sex scene as “a direct assault on religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus, rather it amounts to waging a war on the Hindu community and almost appears to be part of a larger conspiracy by anti-Hindu forces.”
Oppenheimer also co-stars Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and an enormous supporting cast of stars. For all that J. Robert Oppenheimer was a hugely debated figure in life, it seems odd this is what is causing controversy now.
Should Florence Pugh have been censored? Let us know in the comments below!