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In order to distribute their films in China, U.S. filmmakers must submit them to Chinese censors for approval, which frequently require changes to films to portray China and the Chinese in a more favorable light. Given the millions of dollars to potentially be made in the large Chinese market, filmmakers have been willing to comply with Chinese censors, and have even begun to censor themselves by anticipating China's concerns and tailoring their films appropriately. In this way, China is able to influence the way it is portrayed in films not just for audiences in China, but in the United States and around the world. To combat the spread of Chinese propaganda in this way, Senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill, dubbed the SCRIPT Act, that would prohibit filmmakers from obtaining government assistance with their films unless they refrain from making changes to film content to accommodate the Chinese government. This Article examines whether the SCRIPT Act, by denying government support to filmmakers based on the content of their films, violates the First Amendment. While a bill might be crafted to do this in a way consistent with constitutional requirements, certain aspects of the SCRIPT Act make it likely to be unconstitutional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the popular image of the librarian as a passive organiser of books and other forms of print, librarians are and have been active selectors, collectors, and disseminators of print and print culture. As such, they serve as gatekeepers for their communities. In addition, librarians have included 'children's book reviewer' among their professional titles, serving as gatekeepers for readers at large and as de facto literary agents, and have inspired and nurtured poets and authors. Marilla Waite Freeman exemplified each of these roles in her nearly seventy years as a librarian. She was known for acquiring and promoting new forms of literature and opposing censorship, using motion pictures to encourage the reading of books, and lecturing and writing on modern library service, producing speeches and essays which were required reading in library schools of the day. She is identified as the model and inspiration for the librarian Helen Raymond in Floyd Dell's novel Moon-Calf and was a long-time friend of John Masefield, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. This paper will explore the ways in which her career exemplifies the librarian as literary muse and as gatekeeper and disseminator of print culture in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Production Code was not an imposition of the Catholic Church. The forces that implanted the code were more numerous and powerful, and its main objective was to maintain its hegemony over society at a time when it was weakening. One of the main keys to the defense of economic and ideological status quo was the creation of primary frameworks that would serve to interpret social problems in a univocal way. In this paper I treat the establishment of the code from the perspective of the analysis of these frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the exploitation, censorship and freedom of speech in films. Topics include the inception of the Production Codes or Hays code from the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America (MPPDA), a brief history of film industry in the U.S., and the implementation of Hays code in an underground films. Also discussed the influence of filmmakers John Waters in trash filmmaking and Michael Findlay in exploitation cinema and the limitation of the hays code.

The article offers the impact of censorship on the American horror films. Topics include the exclusion of films in free speech in 1915 as well as the creation of Production Code in Hollywood from the Members of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the disturbing content in horror films, and the depiction of rape in films such as "Last House on the Left," and "I Drink Your Blood," as well as moral schizophrenia theme in the film "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Production Code was not an imposition of the Catholic Church. The forces that implanted the code were more numerous and powerful, and its main objective was to maintain its hegemony over society at a time when it was weakening. One of the main keys to the defense of economic and ideological status quo was the creation of primary frameworks that would serve to interpret social problems in a univocal way. In this paper I treat the establishment of the code from the perspective of the analysis of these frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the American swimsuit and film industries during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Three examples will be used: Fatty and the Bathing Beauties from 1913 (prior to regulated film content), Footlight Parade from 1933 (when limited self-regulation had been put in place, but was not yet rigorously enforced) and the Tarzan film franchise (which spans both the second period and a later, third period of actual implementation and subsequent negotiation). Using these examples, the paper will consider several of the popular associations attached to the swimmer and the swimsuit. It will discuss the ways in which Hollywood utilised the swimsuit, the swimmer and swimming in both its films and its promotional materials and will demonstrate how through the sporting associations of both the garment and sports stars, film producers negotiated the processes of censorship and self-regulation while allowing the continued use of semi-naked and eroticised bodies, to their own profit and to that of the increasingly fashionable swimwear industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media crusades leveled at moving-picture exhibition in penny arcades and nickel shows are surprisingly consistent in their tropes and rhetorical strategies from the inaugural campaign in the San Francisco Call in 1899 to the famous one in the Chicago Tribune in 1907. This essay situates this emerging discourse on visual "corruption" alongside many other "evils" in the larger context of media activism. The critical tenet is the historiographie usefulness of mobilizing journalism as a day-to-day negotiation of media culture's functions in modernity's cityscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the absence of widespread government intervention into child protection censorship in the U.S. Topics discussed include rating systems of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB); role of while private self-regulatory associations for age rating systems; and limits to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

During a time when the word nigger was casually used behind the scenes in Hollywood, the industry was deciding whether or not the term could be used onscreen. The MPPDA's shifting policy on antiblack epithets was driven less by respectful consideration of Black spectators than by concern about state censors and the specter of Black revolt. It tells us much about how industry self-censors sought to mask American race relations through encoded textual signification. Thus, the industry's limited conception of Black humanity can be seen not only in its onscreen stereotypes but also in its inconsistent attempts to acknowledge Black spectators' offense as it did with other groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the key 1915 Mutual v. Ohio legal decision, which endorsed censorship of film in the United States. Placing the decision in the context of two other related decisions (Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros. [1911] and Pathé Exchange v. Cob [1922]) highlights the importance of the Supreme Court justices' conception of the nature of film as more akin to physical action than to opinion and expression. The article locates this conception in contemporaneous popular discourse on technology and the social scientific discourse on influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on extensive archival research, this article explores William (Wilhelm) Dieterle's 1941 film "The Devil and Daniel Webster," an American adaptation of Goethe's Faust, as an anomalous instance of Hollywood setting critical theory into practice. Dieterle was a German émigré who had worked with Murnau and Reinhardt in Berlin and become an accomplished Hollywood director. At Dieterle's request, his friend Horkheimer discussed the script with members of the New-York-based Institute for Social Research before filming began and provided Dieterle with a detailed report. Subsequent script development and the final (reconstructed) cut provide evidence of Dieterle's thoughtful engagement with critical theory as he strategized about circumventing American cinema censorship in order to pose questions about America's political andmoral legitimacy at a time when the US had not yet declared war on Germany. In the final analysis, he winds up closer to Goethe's critical political vision in Faust, zweiter Teil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the conflict that ensued when the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (a New York City-based organization that opposed any form of legal film censorship) entered the debate over Virginia's state film censor board. Virginia's engagement with film censorship emerged out of its history and politics, particularly in regard to race relations. Elite white Virginians lived in fear both of federal intervention (with the specter of Reconstruction not far behind them) and of a local usurpation of political power by black Virginians. The National Board of Review (NBR) was largely ignorant of this situation, which worked against their goals and ability to cultivate reliable allies. In the 1910s and 1920s, film raised issues about authorities – locally based and oriented versus nationally oriented authority, private authority and municipal, state, and/or federal authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the U.S. motion picture industry's creation and promotion of family-appropriate films in the 1930s. Focus is given to the level of impact the Production Code developed by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (MPPDA), had on the industry's shift away from the production of more adult-themed features during this period. Also examined is the connection between the rise of family films and the industry's embrace of sound in motion pictures. Family films discussed include "Little Women" and "Alice in Wonderland." The Catholic Church's role in the development of the MPPDA'S Production Code is also highlighted.

This article examines the relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Hollywood film industry from 1947 to 1959. Surprisingly, the CIA was almost entirely absent from American cinema screens during this period, and their public profile in other popular media, including television and the press, was virtually nonexistent. This conspicuous lacuna of publicity coincided with what some scholars have termed the “Golden Age” of US covert action – an era of increasing CIA intervention in Italy, Iran and Guatemala, to name only the most prominent examples. How was it that the CIA managed to maintain such a low public profile and in the process evade popular scrutiny and questions of accountability during such an active period of its history? Utilizing extensive archival research in film production files and the records of the CIA themselves, this article suggests that Hollywood filmmakers adhered to the CIA's policy of blanket secrecy for three interrelated reasons. First, it suggests that the predominance of the so-called “semidocumentary” approach to the cinematic representation of US intelligence agencies during this period encouraged filmmakers to seek government endorsement and liaison in order to establish the authenticity of their portrayals. Thus the CIA's refusal to cooperate with Hollywood during this period thwarted a number of attempts by filmmakers to bring an authentic semidocumentary vision of their activities to the silver screen. Second, up until the liberalization of American defamation law in the mid-1960s, Hollywood studio legal departments advised producers to avoid unendorsed representations of US government departments and officials through fear of legal reprisal. Finally, this article suggests that the film-industry censor – the Production Code Administration – was instrumental in reinforcing Hollywood's reliance upon government endorsement and cooperation. This latter point is exemplified by Joseph Mankiewicz's controversial adaptation of Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Overturning existing scholarship, which argues that CIA officer Edward Lansdale played a decisive role in transforming the screenplay of Greene's novel, this article suggests that Mankiewicz's alterations were made primarily to appease the Production Code Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the reception of the Swedish film I am Curious (Yellow) in America. As a mixture of political satire and a chronicle of a sexual affair, with functional and documentary material, the film was referred to by a U.S. government official as "the most explicit movie ever imported" when it arrived in America in 1968 and was released only after a federal appeals court reversed a lower-court verdict that had found it legally obscene. Although cleared for importation, I am Curious (Yellow) continued to be dogged by whether its sex scenes violated local and state obscenity laws. While the legal actions at times impeded distribution of the film, they also generated publicity for it, eventually making it one of the most profitable foreign-language films in U.S. motion-picture history. This paper discusses several court cases where the film's social value--or lack thereof--was the factor deciding whether it could be shown, and it also looks at critical reaction to the film. Noting that all popular-culture products are products of the societies they spring from, the paper also looks at how the film was received in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the reasons for the banning of the 1950 civil rights film No Way Out (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) in the North, this article interrogates the tenets and parameters of race within the white liberal consensus in the United States at the start of the 1950s. These liberal ideas come to light and come under critique in the emerging discourse of community politics within the black public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation of American cinema during the Progressive era was an exercise in governmentality with multiple spatial rationalities operating through networks at multiple scales. Although produced and distributed nationally, moving pictures were consumed locally. The National Board of Censorship governed movie content from New York, where most major film producers were headquartered at that time, yet it was dependent upon the activities of social reformers and officials in cities across the country in monitoring manufacturers' compliance with its decisions. But as those correspondents often regarded the image on the screen as intimately associated with other aspects of the movie-going experience, local efforts to regulate film often went further, depending upon local concerns about spectators. This paper explores how cinema was problematized in Atlanta and Minneapolis, two regional centers with different sexual and racial politics. It does so by building on recent discussions of spatial rationalities of moral reform efforts, and in this case, how tensions between generative and vitalist spatial rationalities conspired to produce a variable geography of cinema regulation that was networked and multi-scalar, and how these experiments in regulating a new medium of visual communication began to articulate a distinctive perceptual rationality of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the rating practices of films with smoking scenes and its indirect contribution to youth smoking in Great Britain, Canada and the U.S. The authors state that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that movies containing smoking scenes should be given an adult content rating. They also mention that film subsidy programs should recognize public health goals.

Historically, in both Australia and the United States, the issue of film censorship has been a source of conflict between the film industry, community groups and the government. This article compares the methods used to regulate film content in each jurisdiction between 1900 and 1940. It argues that while the legal structure and community pressure groups had a significant influence on the form of control that was implemented, it was the economic strength and structure of the film industry in each country that played a pivotal role in determining the method of film censorship that was adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categorization processes are generally treated as consistent mappings of the underlying characteristics that they group. Yet, in many cases, the identities of actors influence these processes. When identity matters, high-status actors often obtain more favorable classifications. We examine these processes in the context of the Motion Picture Association of America's parental guidance classifications of movies (G, PG, R, NC-17). We find that, conditional on a given level of content, films distributed by the Association's members and those that involve more central producers and directors receive more lenient classifications than those carried by independent distributors and involving more peripheral personnel. Conversely, and again conditional on content, films involving directors with a history of producing R-rated features receive more restrictive ratings. We discuss the mechanisms that might account for these effects. Regardless of the mechanism, however, because ratings influence revenue and consequently profitability, the movie certification system in the United States places independent distributors and peripheral individuals at a disadvantage, relative to their larger and more central rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court case Joseph Burstyn v. Wilson (1952), not only declared the vague-definition of sacrilege on Italy film titled Miracle (1950), but concluded that expression by means of motion pictures is included within the free speech and free press guaranty of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. This paradigm-shift case deeply influenced the transformation from American film censorship system to rating system. Investigating the reasons behind Supreme Court's decision, this thesis shed light on present a detail description of film censorship history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an exploration into the publication history of the novel "Sanctuary" by William Faulkner, its adaptation into the film "The Story of Temple Drake," and its context within the policies of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) and other groups concerning film content and decency policies. The policies of the MPPDA in the 1930s under the leadership of Will H. Hays are discussed, noting the harsh negative reception of the work due to its graphic subject mater. The industry's reactions to the work are outlined as well as their reflections on the larger social attitudes of the era.

This article situates the production, censorship and circulation of information in Starship Troopers within the War on Terror, examining the manipulation of political allegiances by mass communications media, paying particular attention to the role of spectacle. The film's political critique coexists with the pleasures of spectacle it offers as an example of blockbuster Hollywood sf cinema. The article explores this problematic, seeing Starship Troopers' intimate proximity to spectacle and censorship as the exercise of political power similar to the US's detainment of 'illegal enemy combatants' in certain geographical zones, and the censorship surrounding Guantánamo Bay. It argues that the invisibility of the detainees is made visible to deter would-be opponents of the War on Terror, and to divert attention away from more brutal zones of interrogation, a process understood as 'the spectacle of censorship'. Starship Troopers obscures political critique even as it reveals it; the games of ellipsis and revelation played by the plot and characters mirror the film's depiction of the political language of censorship and spectacle. Such parallels can be read as a self-reflection on American popular culture's ability to mobilise audiences' (political) allegiances, although it also evidences the film's genesis in the apparatus of spectacular image production under discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As movies became part of airline enterainment, executives exercised caution when selecting films for a general audience. To make sure the audience felt comfortable, the airline industry also censored films. Studios and directors not only tolerated airline editing standards but even supplied the alterations in order to enhance their films' profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-radicalism in the United States has a long history. During World War I, it was transformed into anti-communism and became embedded in the political culture of the United States for the next seventy-plus years. The author states that there were many varieties of anti-communism, but it can be divided into two main categories: official or governmental, and unofficial or nongovernmental. This article traces the development of those varieties that most impacted the motion picture industry, led to the blacklisting of hundreds of employees, and cast a pall of censorship over movie making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a brief history of the mixture of race and censorship in postwar Memphis, Tennessee. The author charts how censors used their power of control over various media as a method to enforce segregation. When the U.S. Supreme Court made 'obscenity' the sole justification for censorship that become the word employed to limit the black population's exposure to depictions of interracial equality. One example was Censor Board member Lloyd Binford's banning of films like "Brewster's Millions" and "Sailor Takes a Wife."

The article focuses on Joe Breen who won the fourth honorary Oscar Award at the twenty-sixth Academy Awards ceremony held on March 25,1954. He was awarded for his conscientious, open-minded, and dignified management of the Motion Picture Production Code. Breen had served almost twenty-one years as the head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), the body that censored all films shown in the theatres of the U.S. Breen had cultivated a reputation that bore little resemblance to open-minded and dignified. As a chief enforcer and interpreter of the Production Code, Breen was capable of being high handed and capricious. Breen was totally dedicated to enforcing both the spirit and the letter of the code and was also capable of quoting passages in the Code that did not exist. For many film historians, the image of Joe Breen is that of a belligerent, profane and sanctimonious bigot. Although he presented himself to Hollywood as a self-confident and indefatigable defender of the Code, private correspondence of Breen reveals a very different picture.

Discusses the proposed Family Movie Act of 2004 in the U.S. which would allow a person watching a motion picture on DVD at home to use a combination of hardware and software as necessary to filter out certain types of content that the viewer would prefer not to see or hear or have children see or hear. Examples of the types of content that could be filtered; Allegation made by Democrats that the bill is a Republican attempt to censor the movie industry and to improperly force the settlement of a pending federal lawsuit.

Pennsylvania was one of the leading proponents of state-controlled censorship. As such, the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors provides an interesting case study of government-legislated film censorship boards. This article is about the latter era of the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors and Ellis Paxton Oberholtzer's tenure as Board Secretary, which appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of the Pennsylvania Heritage. Oberholtzer's tenure coincided with an era of great societal reform in the U.S. Oberholtzer believed that the majority of Americans were depraved and needed someone to supervise what was being produced by the movie industry for their viewing. As a member of the Board of Censors, Oberholtzer felt that he was caught in the middle between an uneducated populace and greedy film makers who were devoid of conscience.

Though intended as source of entertainment, American combat films made during the Second World War were vehicles of propaganda. The director of the U.S. Office of War Information grabbed the idea of instilling propaganda in motion pictures by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Layers of censorship imposed on the media made it almost impossible for the film industry to know the truth about the military performance, and the public was kept equally unaware of it. News of negative character was also suppressed, and all this expedited with the help of movie propaganda.

During the past two decades, American society has been significantly transformed by the convergence of two ongoing cultural evolutions: the proliferation of popular media made possible by advanced technology and the liberalization of media content. As more children spend increasing amounts of time with music, movies, and electronic games, which share increasingly more violent, the effects of violent imagery on youth of the U.S., becomes of paramount concern. In April 2001, Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced the Media Marketing Accountability Act (MMAA) , which endeavored to prohibit the targeted marketing to minors of adulterated media as an unfair or deceptive practice. The MMAA generated much controversy when it was proposed, as critics were quick to point out that legislation designed to restrict media advertisements based upon the content of the undenying media is censorship. Nonetheless, the MMAA was innovative and is still worthy of comment. The U.S. Congress has little ability to directly regulate motion pictures, music recordings, or electronic games based upon content.

Focuses on the formation of a film censorship board in Mobile, Alabama. Negotiations between city officials, residents and theater operators over the establishment of a movie censorship board; Promotion of film censorship ordinance; Arguments for film censorship; Attempts of local women to establish a censorship board.

The article examines how a wide range of groups, particularly the left, struggled for control of class consciousness in the U.S. during the era of silent films. From 1907 until the late 1920s, worker filmmakers had repeatedly encountered clashes with censors, film industry personnel, and federal agencies concerning the types of class images spectators would be allowed to watch. Most of the present cinematic images and understandings of class relations are partially the outcome of the struggle for control of silent films.

Reports on how the motion picture `Rebel Without a Cause' passed through the elaborate censorship mechanism that governed Hollywood production in the 1950s. Function of the Production Code Administration in censoring motion pictures; Enforcement of the Production code; Banning of nudity, vulgarity, obscenity, profanity; Growing public anxiety over juvenile delinquency.