Fleet-footed Performers at the Edges of Colonial Law: Jack Johnson, Maud Allan and the Struggles of Cinema Censorship in British India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the archival entanglements that brought together world-champion boxer Jack Johnson and world-famous dancer Maud Allan, with the legal and political history of cinema censorship in early twentieth century British India. Focusing on the battles waged to prevent these performers being viewed by Indian audiences, these episodes are situated within the wider context of developments in technology, economy and law in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both famous stars in their own right, their expansive transnational reach presented a particular set of problems for colonial administrators tasked with managing the precarious relationship between race, gender and the imperial political order. Indicative of much more than exceptional moments, this article argues that these incidents were symptomatic of a series of changes within and beyond the British Empire which were pressuring the colonial state to reconsider the suitability of a legal architecture constructed for a nineteenth century world, and to imagine one that could meet the challenges of the twentieth century. As the article argues, the difficulties faced managing these two performances would expose the limits of the colonial state’s legal apparatus at this juncture, as well as the scope of its political imagination. When colonial lawmakers turned their hand to the radically novel challenge of the cinema, neither would be easily overcome.