Jennifer Lawrence removed from Hunger Games posters in Israel

LOS ANGELES/TEL AVIV — Some Israeli towns have no appetite for the newest Hunger Games promotional posters.

The Jennifer Lawrence-starred blockbuster debut yesterday (Nov 19) in Israel, as it will in nations across the globe, but in the run-up to the first screening of the The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 here, a handful of cities across the Jewish State have cut Lawrence herself out of the film’s posters.

Most Israeli cities have been treated to the standard poster of the final Hunger Games instalment, featuring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen posing with her bow and arrow. But in the ultra-Orthodox suburb of Bnei Brak, as well as in Israel’s capital city Jerusalem — where several neighbourhoods are heavily religious — residents instead received a censored version of the poster, featuring only an image of the fiery crown.

Extremely religious versions of Judaism consider the female image to be licentious, and ultra-Orthodox newspapers, catalogues and advertisements routinely edit out photographs of females entirely. City posters in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem featuring images of women have been often been vandalised, and Bnei Brak specifically, the city municipality bans public images that could be deemed offensive to its religious population.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Wednesday that it was the film’s Israeli PR company who made the call to censor the posters, not the city governments.

“Unfortunately we are subject to unofficial coercion that forces us to be more careful,” Liron Suissa, VP of marketing for the company, Nur Star Media, told the paper. “We have had endless vandalisation, and clients prefer not to take the chance.

We allow everything, but we recommend hanging another visual when necessary. The decision is the client’s.” VARIETY.COM/REUTERS