Censorship In America Research Articles

Reproductive Justice, Race, and the Prescience of the Past

The question of control—over bodies, knowledge, narrative, and nation—interweaves throughout Dana Medoro’s Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Early Nineteenth-Century Abortion and Stephanie Peebles Tavera’s (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. Medoro focuses on discourses of life and women’s (non)reproductive sexuality in Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction. She establishes that the two authors were deeply skeptical of medicolegal definitions of life that created racial and economic hierarchies; through focal characters and indirect, playful prose, they critique discourses of life that valued some lives over others in the creation of Anglo-American nationalism. Tavera investigates late-nineteenth-century woman-authored medical fiction as directly engaging many of the same concepts Medoro explores. (P)rescription Narratives calls attention to the ways that Comstock-era censorship colluded with race science, medicine, and the law to limit women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy. It demonstrates literature’s agential capacities as the writers it addresses explicitly refute and redirect objectifying narratives. Combined, these texts show that questions of what “counts” as life, and by what (and whose) paradigms those lives can be lived, are hardly theoretical musings. Rather, they determine, systemically and corporeally, “life’s legibility and reproduction … in the name of American citizenship” (Medoro 19). These texts, in other words, are highly relevant and important as literary and cultural scholarship, making a powerful argument for the study of the humanities. But they are also important because they document the subversive and agential power of the written word to discern, document, and possibly heal—to affect change for today and the future.

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship by Stephanie Peebles Tavera (review)

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship by Stephanie Peebles Tavera (review)

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship

Book Censorship in the United States: A Government Documents Story

In recent years, book bans and censorship have been serious topics of conversation in the United States. The American Library Association has been compiling data regarding censorship in libraries for more than twenty years. An announcement on March 22nd, 2023, reported 1,269 book censorship demands in 2022, the highest number yet recorded.According to the announcement, this data is compiled through reports given to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and challenges covered in the press. However, many censorship attempts are not reported, so this annual data is an incomplete overview of yearly trends. “Challenge” is defined as a complaint or attempt at removal; some challenges are resolved without removing the item from collections, while others do result in restriction or removal. Despite continual reports of challenges, ALA finds that most Americans are against book censorship and believe librarians make good decisions when building collections.

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship by Stephanie Peebles Tavera (review)

(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship by Stephanie Peebles Tavera (review)

Literacy is Freedom

Throughout history, books have been banned. Reasons have varied; however, the impact often remains the same. Laws and policies, violence and death often accompany destructive movements that attempt to censor individuals to ensure the group remains ignorant, docile, and obedient. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 offers a critique of this narrative. The critique discusses and questions how the censorship of books and publicized violence control the minds and actions of many. Within this article, there is an exploration of literary censorship in the United States targeted toward one specific group – Black Americans. From the 1730s to present-day, literacy has consistently been stymied by laws, policies, violence, and death for Black Americans. This article seeks to draw comparisons between Fahrenheit 451 and the historical patterns of censorship, as well as examine how those practices continue today. Fahrenheit 451’s narrative is a discussion of subjugation through book censorship. Literacy continues to be blocked between the intersections of education and policy for Black Americans with systems in place to sustain subordination. It is important to understand that as Black Americans continue to strive for literacy, they are also striving for freedom.

Stephanie Peebles Tavera, (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship

Stephanie Peebles Tavera, <i>(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship</i>

Hollywood Screwball Comedy, 1934–1945: Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals

Hollywood Screwball Comedy, 1934–1945: Sex, Love, and Democratic Ideals

Stephanie Peebles Tavera, (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship

Stephanie Peebles Tavera, (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship

A History of Censorship in the United States

Censorship is a centuries-old issue for the United States. The importance of intellectual freedom and the freedom of speech is particularly evident in libraries, organizations dedicated to the access and spread of information. Issues regarding censorship and intellectual freedom have even reached the US Supreme Court. The following essay serves as a history of censorship in the United States, particularly in its libraries, and how the same issues of censorship have now transitioned into the digital age.

CENSORSHIP IN INDIA VIS-À-VIS FREEDOM OF SPEECH: COMPARISON OF THE EXTENT OF CENSORSHIP LAWS IN INDIA AND ABROAD

With the current outrage at the arbitrary method of censorship applied by the board of film certification in India, it was pertinent to understand and take a closer look at the methods and principles which guide the method of censorship in India, this is also an attempt to understand why censorship is a vital tool to ensure peace and unity in India. The paper also looks at the past and present of censorship, in the form of how it came to be, why it came to be and also what role it plays in society today. In order to get a bigger picture of censorship an attempt has been made to understand censorship in the United States of America, which is a champion of democracy and also in the People’s Republic of China which uses censorship to shepherd its populace in the other direction. The effects both schools have on censorship have been explored in this paper. India being a mixture of both influences has the right to expression subject to certain instances and therefore must understand that even though the right of free speech is indeed a requirement in these times and places, but why censorship as a necessary evil as well in India.

Film Censorship in America: A State by State HistoryJeremyGeltzer. McFarland, 2017.

Film Censorship in America: A State by State HistoryJeremyGeltzer. McFarland, 2017.

Double Censorship: The Reception of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in SPAIN, 1946–77

The reception of American cinema in Spain after the Spanish Civil War was largely conditioned by the activity of censorship boards. American films were very popular in Spain in the decades following World War II. Yet they frequently reached the audience with mutilations, or with changes to the script. In fact, some directors who had already experienced problems with censorship in the United States suffered a ‘double censorship’ when their movies reached Spain. This article explores governmental responses to the cinematic production of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in Francoist Spain, between 1946, when Kazan’s and Dmytryk’s films were first released in Spain, until 1977, when censorship was abolished. Using the censorship files available at the Spanish General Administration Archive, we discuss how the censors’ moral, political and religious views affected the reception of Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk in this period. From a comparative perspective, it is interesting to see that, while American and Spanish censors basically agreed on moral issues, they had different views on the threat that racial and political matters entailed for the spectators.

Atoning for an Indiscretion: The Impact of Reception, Publicity, and Censorship on the Re-editing of Stazione Termini

ABSTRACTThis essay evaluates how negative publicity, mixed reception, and censorship regulations impacted the re-editing of Stazione Termini (1953) and its re-release in the United States in April of 1954 as the newly titled, and much shorter, Indiscretion of an American Wife. The primary archival documents used include correspondences to and from producer David O. Selznick, surveys of negative audience reactions during test screenings in Berkeley and Palo Alto in late 1953, and mixed reviews of both versions from various press outlets. Particular attention is paid to the translations and reporting of the reception of Italian audiences, who did not seem to be able to reconcile the film’s neorealist expressions with the melodramatic plot of the end of a love affair. Overall, this essay argues that Selznick’s editing should be contextualized with the perceived mixed reception of Stazione Termini in Italy, the poor reception from test audiences, the foundational flaws in the story, the negative publicity surrounding the American release, and American censorship standards that conflicted with – though they did not completely curb – some of the sexual content.

HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen

Reviewed by: HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen Richard Ashby Wilson (bio) Nadine Strossen, HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018), ISBN: 9780190859121, 232 pages. Hate is trending. The sitting president of the United States regularly mobilizes his political constituency by vilifying Mexican immigrants as “criminals and rapists” who “infest” America, and by promoting a “zero tolerance” policy at the border that punitively separates children from their parents, including persons applying for asylum. There has been a resurgence in white nationalist ideology globally both in mainstream electoral politics and in ugly scenes on the streets of Charlottesville, Dresden, and Warsaw. In the United Kingdom, hate crimes spiked after the Brexit referendum and in the USA, there has been a steady rise in hate crimes against African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants and members of the LGBT community. Given this current paroxysm of populism, isn’t it high time we re-evaluated our commitment to freedom of expression and start contemplating new legislation to regulate discriminatory speech that targets vulnerable minorities? In HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship, Nadine Strossen, former national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), offers a resounding defense of free speech and rejects attempts to suppress or ban speech that is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. Free speech is the lifeblood of democratic deliberation, argues Strossen, and much hate speech in the United States, while offensive, is protected speech and should remain so. Current US law only suppresses speech that intentionally advocates imminent lawless action that is likely to occur, and even then, the regulation of speech must occur in a way that is consistent with the viewpoint (or content) neutrality principle which inhibits the state from disfavoring some opinions simply because they are disagreeable. Strossen starts with the observation that there is no clear and consistent definition of “hate speech,” which she puts in scare quotations throughout the book. Hate speech is not a term of legal art and it is simply wrong to assert, as some liberal politicians have, that “hate speech is not free speech.” In Strossen’s view, “the terms ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes’ are simply deployed to demonize views people find offensive and to call for punishing a broad swathe of expression, including political discourse that is integral to our democracy.”1 Reviewing hate speech laws in the US and globally, Strossen concludes that it is simply not possible to draft hate speech laws that are not unduly vague, overbroad and counter-productive.2 Germany, France, and other European countries convict hundreds of defendants a year for offences as capacious as “incitement to hatred,” and Strossen documents a number of cases that seem disproportionately chilling of political [End Page 213] speech. They include the 2014 arrest of a British politician for publicly reading a Winston Churchill quote from 1899 that denounced the treatment of women in Muslim countries, and the conviction of a Danish man in 2016 who criticized “the ideology of Islam” on Facebook, and posted the statement, “Islam wants to abuse democracy in order to get rid of democracy.”3 She reminds us also of the long and repressive history of government censorship in the United States, including how, in the 1830s, Southern states banned abolitionist speech on the grounds that it had the potential to incite violence and rebellion. She observes that the Republican National Committee and some state legislatures have included the Black Lives Matter movement in resolutions condemning hate speech. HATE addresses the lively and fairly acrimonious campus hate speech debate currently taking place in the United States, and Strossen counsels faculty and students to confront provocative speakers at universities with “counterspeech” and vigorous opposing arguments, rather than to silence them with heckling and censorious campus hate speech codes.4 She points out that all the campus speech codes challenged in the courts by the ACLU have been struck down on First Amendment grounds and recommends that universities permit all speech that the government does not itself censor.5 Strossen does not countenance the view that merely being exposed to denigrating speech is in...

Carmen Dauset Moreno, primera musa del cine estadounidense

This article aims to analyze the relevance of the Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno for film History. Known in vaudeville circles as Carmencita, she was the first woman to appear on two brief films for the kinetoscope made in Edison's studio in march 1894. In this sense, the article tries to put in context the appearance of the Spanish artist in these films and poses questions on the meaning of them in the development of the initial stages of cinematic representation and their link to the origins of cinema censorship in the United States of America.

‘Sexual Transgression on the American Stage: Clyde Fitch, Sapho and the “American Girl” ’

AbstractClyde Fitch's play, Sapho (1900), is significant in the history of theatre censorship in America as a result of the arrests of the leading actress, Olga Nethersole, and several of her entourage. Critical analyses have focussed explicitly on the role of Nethersole in the censorship of the production. But the play as a dramatic production and the role of the playwright have been obscured by the media frenzy that led to the arrests and the subsequent furore. This article looks to expand the critical landscape of the censorship of Sapho, exploring the critical reputation of the writer, the public reception and the media reaction that led to its closure and the arrests, in the wider context of the show′s performance. This article argues that Sapho became a moral crusade because Fitch′s drama staged the critical intersection between the erotics of sexual transgression and the cult of the ‘American girl’. Further, Clyde Fitch's version of Sapho recognised the critical link between discourses of sexuality/purity and discourses of ‘nervousness’ that pervaded America at the turn of the century. To survive as the epitome of ‘civilisation’, America required the repeated and continuous modelling of the asexual body of the pure ‘American girl’; Sapho exposed the model and the structuring impulses that participated in its formation.

Renegade: Henry Miller and the making of Tropic of Cancer

Though branded as pornography for its graphic language and explicit sexuality, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is far more than a work that tested American censorship laws. In this riveting book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Tropic of Cancer's initial U.S. release, Frederick Turner investigates Miller's unconventional novel, its tumultuous publishing history, and its unique place in American letters. Written in the slums of a foreign city by a man who was an utter literary failure in his homeland, Tropic of Cancer was published in 1934 by a pornographer in Paris, but soon banned in the United States. Not until 1961, when Grove Press triumphed over the censors, did Miller's book appear in American bookstores. Turner argues that Tropic of Cancer is lawless, violent, colorful, misogynistic, anarchical, bigoted, and shaped by the same forces that shaped the nation. Further, the novel draws on more than two centuries of New World history, folklore, and popular culture in ways never attempted before. How Henry Miller, outcast and renegade, came to understand what literary dynamite he had within him, how he learned to sound his war whoop over the roofs of the world, is the subject of Turner's revelatory study.

Sex and violence: the Hollywood censorship wars

Sex and Violence examines the history and social dynamics of film censorship in the United States. It examines censorship controversies throughout film history, from the beginning of cinema in the 1890s to the present. The book focuses both on formal censorship systems, including state and local censorship boards and industry self-regulation efforts, to unofficial censorship rendered by pressure groups and powerful social movements. It probes beneath the official rhetoric and explanations, revealing sensitive, festering controversies. The book critically examines dozens of Hollywood's most controversial (and interesting) movies, focusing on recurring issues and censorship themes. The book reveals the social and political processes of vetting films and their effect on film form and content. In addition, it examines the use of sexuality and violence in movies and the effects of movie censorship on those issues. Finally, it analyzes and makes recommendations for dramatic changes in motion picture ratings.

Obscenity, Free Speech, and “Sporting News” in 1870s America

The interventions of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock into 1870s popular illustrations created some surprising – and largely unintended – consequences. Not only did the man who defined modern American censorship goad into existence the radical free speech movement, but his manipulations of 1870s visual culture also heightened racial stereotyping in public print. His behind-the-scenes negotiations led illustrated newspaper editors to erase white sexuality, which they replaced with stories of interracial rape of white women by black men. In fostering both the rise of the free press movement and the selective racialization of visual culture, Comstock left an indelible mark on modern representation.