University of Exeter Press

The Screen Censorship Companion

Critical Explorations in the Control of Film and Screen Media

    • 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.


    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

    Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at Ghent University, Belgium. He is the (co-)editor of several volumes on cinema audiences and censorship. In 2020 he published a monograph on the history of film/cinema censorship in Belgium, Verboden Beelden, and made a documentary with Bruno Mestdagh on film cuttings (Ongezien/invisible, 2020, Cinematek).

    Ernest Mathijs is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He has written on cult cinema, the reception of Canadian and European genre cinema, The Lord of the Rings, reality-TV, Thomas Pynchon, and on Delphine Seyrig. In 2020 he co-wrote the two-part documentary The Quiet Revolution.

    ISBN
      DOI https://doi.org/10.47788/YXNW9912
      • 410 Pages
      Subject: