University of Exeter Press
The Screen Censorship Companion
Critical Explorations in the Control of Film and Screen Media
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- 410 Pages
Throughout the history of film, censorship has existed everywhere—in all shapes, colours, and dimensions. The act of restricting the free production, circulation, screening, and consumption of movies was never unique to authoritarian regimes. Censorship has had far-reaching implications for filmmakers, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences across generations and across genres, including the self-censorship of audiences disciplined into particular viewership positions. Today, soft and hard censorship coexist in ever-more fluid forms; the banning, regulating, trimming, and tailoring of films for ‘harmless’ consumption all exemplify wider debates about access to media.
This companion brings together contemporary and historical views on censorship, covering Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The book considers Hollywood’s practices and the United States’ legislative context as important frames of reference for the study of filmed entertainment censorship, be they concerned with obscene materials or plain mainstream movie fare. American cinema remains a wider compass, as evidenced by how studies in this companion, which deal with local and regional censorship, appear to have American movies as their targets.
This volume showcases the broad international scope of censorship through detailed examinations of censorship practices. The diversity of case studies is an indication of the global reach of censorship—nothing can escape its grasp. Ultimately, the censorship of screen access is a struggle for power and control; this book demonstrates how intense this struggle can become, and how compromises and solutions are found.
A unique and flawlessly curated collection of expertly researched case studies, The Screen Censorship Companion brings compelling detail and illuminating analysis to our understanding of a global phenomenon--a century of moving-image regulation, in all its many shapes, forms and functions.
Annette Kuhn, Queen Mary University of London, author of Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality, 1909 to 1925
A comprehensive but also fresh and nuanced perspective on global censorship practices over the last century.
Kate Egan, Northumbria University, UK
As someone who regularly stresses the importance of considering censorship in evaluating film form across the decades, I am delighted by The Screen Censorship Companion. It is a remarkable and sorely needed collection—and accessibly written too—that I will be drawing on and teaching from in many if not most of my future courses, graduate or undergraduate.
Adrienne L. McLean, Professor of Film Studies, University of Texas at Dallas
It is rare to find anthologies based on conference proceedings in which all contributions are uniformly high quality and enlightening. That’s the case of the chapters included in this volume, with a state of the art of film censorship theorization as well as detailed cases from a wide array of countries and cases. The chapters share a broad understanding of censorship not only as state power but also as cultural, market and other forms of impersonal, structural, and multilayered types of censorship. They not only cover direct and explicit instances of censorship, but also indirect, implicit, and discreet cases, including challenging and innovative discussions on the methods needed to respond to the increasing complexity of this line of research.
José Carlos Lozano, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Texas A&M International University
Cinema, Screen Media and Censorship: An Introduction Daniel Biltereyst and Ernest Mathijs
DOI:10.47788/RSDL4520
1. ‘Forestalling Controversy’: The Production Code Administration and the Mediation of Political Censorship Richard Maltby
DOI:10.47788/AJXR2557
2. A Philosovietic Mode of Film Censorship: A Supplement to Studies of Cold War Italian Film Culture Karol Jóźwiak
DOI:10.47788/HHUW8463
3. Censorship of Foreign Films in People’s Poland in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s: A Case Study of Films about Hippie Subculture Konrad Klejsa
DOI:10.47788/MWLP4097
4. Sex, Drugs, Violence and/or Nudity: Differences in Film Age Rating Practices and Rationales in Denmark, France, Japan, Norway and the UK Elisabeth Staksrud and Marita Eriksen Haugland
DOI:10.47788/FTMX2611
5. The Last Convulsions of Democracy: Wolfgang Petzet’s Pamphlet Verbotene Filme and the Censorship Debate at the Close of the Weimar Republic Viola Rühse
DOI:10.47788/ODXR8776
6. Party Apparatchiks as Filmmakers: The Film Approval Commissions in Communist Poland, 1955–1970 Mikołaj Kunicki
DOI:10.47788/SNGT2135
7. Majors, Adults, Sex and Violence: Film Censorship under Military Dictatorship in Chile, 1973–1989 Jorge Iturriaga Echeverría
DOI:10.47788/NOXF9829
8. Fighting for a Free Cinema in a Country That Is Not Free: Film Censorship Abolitionism in Argentina (1978–1983) Fernando Ramírez Llorens
DOI:10.47788/XCJE5862
9. Censorship, Criticism and Notions of Quality in Post-War French Cinema Daniel Morgan
DOI:10.47788/RFGD3515
10. Hopes and Fears of Transformation: FOCINE and Informal Practices of Film Censorship in Colombia (1978–1993) Karina Aveyard and Karol Valderrama-Burgos
DOI:10.47788/BEZG4529
11. State Censorship of Debut Films in the 1980s People’s Republic of Poland: The Example of the Irzykowski Film Studio Emil Sowiński
DOI:10.47788/SVEO2240
12. Banned in Detroit: The Interconnectedness of Film, Literary and Media Censorship Ben Strassfeld
DOI:10.47788/HBSC1824
13. Splicing Back against the Censors: How Archive/ Counter-Archive Saved the Ontario Board of Censors’ Film Censorship Records from Destruction Michael Marlatt
DOI:10.47788/XLVW2388
14. Italian Film Censorship (1948–1976): A Quantitative Analysis Mauro Giori and Tomaso Subini
DOI:10.47788/HIIB3780
15. Historicizing the Censor: Path-Dependent Patterns of Film Censorship in Turkey İlke Şanlıer and Aydın Çam
DOI:10.47788/PRKT5596
16. Don’t Be Afraid, It’s Only Business: Rethinking the Video Nasties Moral Panic in Thatcher’s Britain Mark McKenna
DOI:10.47788/GTGZ8668
17. The Ontario Film Review Board Meets the New French Extremity Daniel Sacco
DOI:10.47788/HJES6116
18. Invisible Censors, Opaque Laws and Surveilled Subjects Julian Petley
DOI:10.47788/EUHI2366
19. What Is a Hard Core? Obscenity, Pornography and Censorship Linda Williams
DOI:10.47788/TMRX1263
