@mintkoala The Victorians of course did expunge the naughty bits from Shakespeare, so maybe it would serve them right! But seriously, I don’t think the idea of taking words out of historical works is widespread at all. I think people use it as a devils advocate idea, and sometimes to discredit the arguments that a particular change ought to be made.
Every part of a play, film, song, advert etc is up for discussion by the creative team. So maybe you do want to keep ‘having a fag’ in a bit of dramatic realism, maybe you want to lean into it and show an American audience a particular world. But maybe in a 2 min advert you would make another choice if you think it’s easier to get into like that. If Hamlet is wearing a scene-stealing hat it’s either an active choice because it’s the look they’re going for, or a really badly thought through costume - and you can only do so much to control how people see it.
In Romeo and Juliet, the lines say she’s 14. You can either keep this in and play her literally as 14, keep this in but not play her as literally 14, more of an idea of youth, or cut the line. All those choices are valid, depending on the concept behind the production.
With Fairytale of New York the Pogues had the choice to keep the word, and say it’s essential to the song, or change it. And they chose to change it. The Fawlty Towers cut scene that caused such a furore a few months ago was cut years ago so that it didn’t restrict the audience. They could have said that the scene was so important it had to stay, and they would take a higher age guidance/accept that streaming services wouldn’t market it to families. Offensive humour absolutely has a market, but in this case they wanted to appeal to a broader audience so they cut an unimportant scene.