?A dangerous experiment to try?: film censorship during the twentieth century in Mobile, Alabama

Abstract

Studies of film censorship in the United States typically focus on either a major metropolitan area1 or a national organisation involved in the arena.2 Numerous studies exist that approach film censorship from the national level.3 In contrast, this is a micro-study in the sense that it examines a particular municipality and considers censorship from the local rather than the state or national level. A number of older studies exist that deal with municipal and state censorship, but they utilise a legal perspective, avoiding any engagement with the historical and cultural specificities surrounding the particular local incidences.4 Recently, a few book chapters and articles have appeared that are attuned to local conditions, although not many. These studies usually look at a narrow time period5 or explore the battle of state and/or municipal censorship boards over a certain film or the films of a particular filmmaker.6 Because of their restricted scope, they do not provide an opportunity for analysing broader historical patterns in film censorship that the present study of censorship in the twentieth century in Mobile, Alabama, offers. Although many states and a few urban cities rejected film censorship, past studies have focused on its implementation. Unlike these other studies, the concern here is with its rejection. This article explores the negotiations throughout the twentieth century between certain residents, theatre operators, and city officials in Mobile, Alabama,7 over the establishment of a movie censorship board. While most cities of significant size across the US established during the first half of the twentieth century a film censorship board, if a statewide one did not exist,8 the city of Mobile continually refused, despite numerous requests, to impose any specific restrictions on the movies beyond the general laws already in existence related to building construction and obscenity. Debates regarding whether a local film censorship board should be established reveal much about a community's understanding of the role of government and business within society and its philosophical perspectives on life, religion, and even economics. They are discursive sites where local social values and attitudes emerge into the open and, therefore, are available for analysis. Local community groups undertook concerted efforts during the 1910s, 1920s, 1940s and 1960s to persuade the city government of Mobile to establish a censorship board. None of these attempts succeeded. From the perspective of city officials, the battle between theatre operators and these residents could have easily become framed as a choice between business boosterism or community control and therefore required careful navigation. Because city officials in the first half of the twentieth century skillfully framed their lack of action as one in support of consumer democracy and citizen empowerment, no political backlash occurred, After