Film Censorship In America

Since the first films played in nickelodeons, controversial movies have been cut or banned across the United States. Far from Hollywood, regional productions such as Oscar Micheaux's provocative race films and Nell Shipman's wildlife adventures were censored by men like Major M.L.C. Funkhouser, the terror of Chicago's cinemas, and Myrtelle Snell, the Alabama administrator who made the slogan "Banned in Birmingham" famous. Censorship continues today, with Utah's case against Deadpool (2016) pending in federal court and Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills (2013) versus the Texas Film Commission. This authoritative state-by-state account covers the history of film censorship and the battle for free speech in America.

Film Censorship is a concise overview of Hollywood censorship and efforts to regulate American films. It provides a lean introductory survey of U.S. cinema censorship from the pre-Code years and classic studio system Golden Age—in which film censorship thrived—to contemporary Hollywood. From the earliest days of cinema, movies faced controversy over screen images and threats of censorship. This volume draws extensively on primary research from motion picture archives to unveil the fascinating behind-the-scenes history of cinema censorship and explore how Hollywood responded to censorial constraints on screen content in a changing American cultural and industrial landscape. This primer on American film censorship considers the historical evolution of motion-picture censorship in the United States spanning the Jazz Age Prohibition era, lobbying by religious groups against Hollywood, industry self-censorship for the Hays Office, federal propaganda efforts during wartime, easing of regulation in the 1950s and 1960s, the MPAA ratings system, and the legacy of censorship in later years. Case studies include The Outlaw, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Scarface, Double Indemnity, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, and The Exorcist, among many others.

From the earliest days of public outrage over "indecent" nickelodeon shows, Americans have worried about the power of the movies. The eleven essays in this book examine nearly a century of struggle over cinematic representations of sex, crime, violence, religion, race, and ethnicity, revealing that the effort to regulate the screen has reflected deep social and cultural schisms. In addition to the editor, contributors include Daniel Czitrom, Marybeth Hamilton, Garth Jowett, Charles Lyons, Richard Maltby, Charles Musser, Alison M. Parker, Charlene Regester, Ruth Vasey, and Stephen Vaughn. Together they make it clear that censoring the movies is more than just a reflex against "indecency," however defined. Whether censorship protects the vulnerable or suppresses the creative, it is part of a broader culture war that breaks out recurrently as Americans try to come to terms with the market, the state, and the plural society in which they live.

As movies took the country by storm in the early twentieth century, Americans argued fiercely about whether municipal or state authorities should step in to control what people could watch when they went to movie theaters, which seemed to be springing up on every corner. Many who opposed the governmental regulation of film conceded that some entity—boards populated by trusted civic leaders, for example—needed to safeguard the public good. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (NB), a civic group founded in New York City in 1909, emerged as a national cultural chaperon well suited to protect this emerging form of expression from state incursions. Using the National Board's extensive files, Monitoring the Movies offers the first full-length study of the NB and its campaign against motion-picture censorship. Jennifer Fronc traces the NB's Progressive-era founding in New York; its evolving set of "standards" for directors, producers, municipal officers, and citizens; its "city plan," which called on citizens to report screenings of condemned movies to local officials; and the spread of the NB's influence into the urban South. Ultimately, Monitoring the Movies shows how Americans grappled with the issues that arose alongside the powerful new medium of film: the extent of the right to produce and consume images and the proper scope of government control over what citizens can see and show.

Oppression by censorship affects the film industry far more frequently than any other mass media. Including essays by leading film historians, the book offers groundbreaking historical research on film censorship in major film production countries and explore such innovative themes as film censorship and authorship, religion, and colonialism.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the proliferation of movies attracted not only the attention of audiences across America but also the apprehensive eyes of government officials and special interest groups concerned about the messages disseminated by the silver screen. Between 1907 and 1926, seven states -- New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Kansas, Maryland, and Massachusetts -- and more than one hundred cities authorized censors to suppress all images and messages considered inappropriate for American audiences. Movie studios, hoping to avoid problems with state censors, worrying that censorship might be extended to the federal level, and facing increased pressure from religious groups, also jumped into the censoring business, restraining content through the adoption of the self-censoring Production Code, also known as the Hays code.But some industry outsiders, independent distributors who believed that movies deserved the free speech protections of the First Amendment, brought legal challenges to censorship at the state and local levels. Freedom of the Screen chronicles both the evolution of judicial attitudes toward film restriction and the plight of the individuals who fought for the right to deliver provocative and relevant movies to American audiences. The path to cinematic freedom was marked with both achievements and roadblocks, from the establishment of the Production Code Administration, which effectively eradicated political films after 1934, to the landmark cases over films such as The Miracle (1948), La ronde (1950), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1955) that paved the way for increased freedom of expression. As the fight against censorship progressed case by case through state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, legal authorities and the public responded, growing increasingly sympathetic toward artistic freedom. Because a small, unorganized group of independent film distributors and exhibitors in mid-twentieth-century America fought back against what they believed was the unconstitutional prior restraint of motion pictures, film after 1965 was able to follow a new path, maturing into an artistic medium for the communication of ideas, however controversial. Government censors would no longer control the content of America's movie screens. Laura Wittern-Keller's use of previously unexplored archival material and interviews with key figures earned her the researcher of the year award from the New York State Board of Regents and the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. Her exhaustive work is the first to discuss more than five decades of film censorship battles that rose from state and local courtrooms to become issues of national debate and significance. A compendium of judicial action in the film industry, Freedom of the Screen is a tribute to those who fought for the constitutional right of free expression and paved the way for the variety of films that appear in cinemas today.

Who decides what movies we should see? In some of the nation's largest cities motion pictures are screened by review boards meeting in secret. Their files are seldom open to inspection, and they often wield a nearly absolute power over what the public is shown. This is the story of motion-picture censorship in America. It begins in 1915 when the Supreme Court denied freedom of the press to movies. In a fast-moving account of court cases and behind-the-scenes skirmishes, Ira Carmen follows the history of movie censorship to the present day. He shows how very recent court decisions reflect new thinking on censorship and the nature of obscenity. Today, forty-seven states and countless cities and towns have obscenity laws on their statute books. Are the censors stout guardians of the public morality . . . or witch-hunters? In a series of dramatic interviews with film censors in major cities, Carmen captures the flavor of the struggle between censor and exhibitor. The interviews reveal how censors think--what kinds of films they suppress and for what reasons, how they feel about foreign films as opposed to American, how they are influenced by court decisions, and how well they abide by those decisions. This pioneering book reveals what effect court decisions really have at the grassroots level. It examines the role of the constitution in the censorship debate and asks how effective the American political and judicial systems have been in coping with the problem. Finally, it offers a challenging analysis of what kind of censorship, if any, is needed in a free society.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject History - America, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte), course: The "Roaring Twenties": Die Massenkultur der 1920er Jahre in transatlantischer Perspektive, language: English, abstract: For as long as there have been moving pictures, there have also been attempts to regulate their content. The first court case surrounding moving pictures has been recorded as early as 1897 and many more were to follow. While film was thus always subjected to scrutiny from various groups, the 1920s saw a more fervent battle for control over censorship which resulted in the formation of the 1930 Production Code remaining in effect until 1968. Lee Grieveson’s study Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America comprehensively describes long-lasting battles over movie content regulation and the discussion of the function of cinema. Yet, he is among many scholars who sees the 1915 Supreme Court decision in the case “Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio” as the culmination of these struggles as it proved “the validity of state censorship.” Justice McKenna is quoted ruling that “the exhibition of moving picture is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded ... as part of the press of the country, or as organs of the public opinion.” This ruling was not only significant for the increased state and city censorship which followed, but it also fueled censorship demands by various parties including religious groups, social reformers, politicians, and journalists who all called for the elusive concept of morality. The road from this first ruling which titled the film industry as a business to be regulated towards a formal censorship with the aim of restoring morality manifested in the so-called Production Code in 1934 will be the focus of this paper. The first part will consist of an analysis of the various parties involved in the attempt to regulate movie content in order to expose the individual motives behind their requests as well as their practices to reach their goal of censorship. The following part will then deal with the question of how well the reformers were able to realize their goal of censoring the movies during the first years of the 1920s. The questions posed above will mainly be studied on the basis of guiding works written by Gregory D. Black, Francis G. Couvares, Stephen Vaughn, Lee Grieveson and Leonard J. Leff. Analyzed sources will include newspaper articles, state review board standards, studies on audience behavior, and an original text written by a direct participant of the 1920 censorship struggle, MPPDA president William Hays.