Katherine Mullin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199697564
- eISBN:
- 9780191764745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697564.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 ...
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The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 Act, and the polarized views of MPs on the subject. It also analyses the disagreements and anxieties surrounding the Hicklin Ruling, revealing the conflicts among nineteenth-century legislators, commentators, publishers, and writers on the question of literary censorship.Less
The chapter analyses the creation and definition of obscenity in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the ‘Hicklin Ruling’ of 1868. It considers the parliamentary debates which led up to the 1857 Act, and the polarized views of MPs on the subject. It also analyses the disagreements and anxieties surrounding the Hicklin Ruling, revealing the conflicts among nineteenth-century legislators, commentators, publishers, and writers on the question of literary censorship.
David Bradshaw
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199697564
- eISBN:
- 9780191764745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697564.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, ...
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This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, when the scale and intensity of anti-obscenity proceedings reached a peak for the period covered by this book. It also describes key moments of dispute around the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.Less
This chapter focuses on the period leading up to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. It considers fears of the Americanization of British culture culminating in the purge of 1954, when the scale and intensity of anti-obscenity proceedings reached a peak for the period covered by this book. It also describes key moments of dispute around the publication of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
Christopher Hilliard
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780691197982
- eISBN:
- 9780691226118
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691197982.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the controversies on censorship. During the Thatcher years, critics of obscenity in popular culture and the arts had some victories, but it was not close to the center of ...
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This chapter discusses the controversies on censorship. During the Thatcher years, critics of obscenity in popular culture and the arts had some victories, but it was not close to the center of social change. Labour MP Clare Short made efforts to amend the Obscene Publications Act by itemizing forbidden types of scenes and poses. Moreover, the Campaign against Pornography and Censorship refused to see censorship as the answer to the problem of pornography. The chapter notes the advent of the Internet as another change for the 1990s. Censorship is always significant, but it is no longer a pressing matter similar to Lord Campbell's Act and the Williams Report.Less
This chapter discusses the controversies on censorship. During the Thatcher years, critics of obscenity in popular culture and the arts had some victories, but it was not close to the center of social change. Labour MP Clare Short made efforts to amend the Obscene Publications Act by itemizing forbidden types of scenes and poses. Moreover, the Campaign against Pornography and Censorship refused to see censorship as the answer to the problem of pornography. The chapter notes the advent of the Internet as another change for the 1990s. Censorship is always significant, but it is no longer a pressing matter similar to Lord Campbell's Act and the Williams Report.
Christopher Hilliard
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780691197982
- eISBN:
- 9780691226118
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691197982.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses obscenity, literacy, and the literary franchise. Obscenity law took shape as Britain debated the extension of the literary franchise, while mass literacy changed expectations ...
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This chapter discusses obscenity, literacy, and the literary franchise. Obscenity law took shape as Britain debated the extension of the literary franchise, while mass literacy changed expectations about politics and culture. The twin pillars of English obscenity law were the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the judgment in the R v. Hicklin case a decade later. Judges base decisions about a borderline book's acceptability on matters of price and distribution which is similar to debates surrounding the Second Reform Act (1867). The Second Reform Act enfranchised urban male householders. The chapter tackles library censorship as novelists knew some subjects were off limits.Less
This chapter discusses obscenity, literacy, and the literary franchise. Obscenity law took shape as Britain debated the extension of the literary franchise, while mass literacy changed expectations about politics and culture. The twin pillars of English obscenity law were the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the judgment in the R v. Hicklin case a decade later. Judges base decisions about a borderline book's acceptability on matters of price and distribution which is similar to debates surrounding the Second Reform Act (1867). The Second Reform Act enfranchised urban male householders. The chapter tackles library censorship as novelists knew some subjects were off limits.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. ...
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The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. In its statutory role, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) will become a large quango accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is impossible not to see the Bill as part and parcel of a multi-fronted attack on civil liberties in Britain. Sir Bernard Braine has continuously tried to hijack the Bill on its passage through the Committee Stage. The chapter then deals with some of the wider knock-on effects of the Video Recordings Bill, such as its effects on film censorship and on television. It is mentioned that the Video Recordings Bill cannot be divorced from the wider ideological climate.Less
The most obvious reason why the Video Recordings Bill is undesirable is that the so-called ‘video nasties’ have already been deemed illegal under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) and disappeared. In its statutory role, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) will become a large quango accountable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is impossible not to see the Bill as part and parcel of a multi-fronted attack on civil liberties in Britain. Sir Bernard Braine has continuously tried to hijack the Bill on its passage through the Committee Stage. The chapter then deals with some of the wider knock-on effects of the Video Recordings Bill, such as its effects on film censorship and on television. It is mentioned that the Video Recordings Bill cannot be divorced from the wider ideological climate.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher ...
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How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher government — this critical study explains how the censorship of films both in cinemas and on video and DVD has developed in Britain. As well as presenting a detailed analysis of the workings of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), this book casts a gaze well beyond the BBFC to analyse the forces which the Board has to take into account when classifying and censoring. These range from laws such as the Video Recordings Act and Obscene Publications Act, and how these are enforced by the police and Crown Prosecution Service and interpreted by the courts, to government policy on matters such as pornography. In discussing a climate heavily coloured by 30 years of lurid ‘video nasty’ stories propagated by a press that is at once censorious and sensationalist and which has played a key role in bringing about and legitimating one of the strictest systems of film and video/DVD censorship in Europe, this book is notable for the breadth of its contextual analysis, its critical stance and its suggestions for reform of the present system.Less
How does film and video censorship operate in Britain? Why does it exist? And is it too strict? Starting in 1979, the birth of the domestic video industry — and the first year of the Thatcher government — this critical study explains how the censorship of films both in cinemas and on video and DVD has developed in Britain. As well as presenting a detailed analysis of the workings of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), this book casts a gaze well beyond the BBFC to analyse the forces which the Board has to take into account when classifying and censoring. These range from laws such as the Video Recordings Act and Obscene Publications Act, and how these are enforced by the police and Crown Prosecution Service and interpreted by the courts, to government policy on matters such as pornography. In discussing a climate heavily coloured by 30 years of lurid ‘video nasty’ stories propagated by a press that is at once censorious and sensationalist and which has played a key role in bringing about and legitimating one of the strictest systems of film and video/DVD censorship in Europe, this book is notable for the breadth of its contextual analysis, its critical stance and its suggestions for reform of the present system.
Zachary Samalin
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781501756467
- eISBN:
- 9781501756481
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501756467.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter investigates the intersection of the aesthetic prohibition of the disgusting with the development of modern obscenity law and the regulation of sexuality. It turns to the passage of the ...
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This chapter investigates the intersection of the aesthetic prohibition of the disgusting with the development of modern obscenity law and the regulation of sexuality. It turns to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act in order to scrutinize the historical moment when the domain of the law came into contact with and absorbed certain aspects of the aesthetics of disgust. What, the chapter asks, did the law take from the aesthetic domain, and specifically from the aesthetics of disgust, in codifying the obscene as a statutory offense? It also examines how are we to understand the transfer of aesthetic conceptions of judgment and of the relationship of feeling to discourse into what would seem to be an incompatible juridical framework. Ultimately, the chapter analyses how the pollution model of obscenity arose in the context of Henry Vizetelly's trial for the translation and publication of Zola in 1888, as well as in Hardy's writings on iconoclasm in Jude the Obscure.Less
This chapter investigates the intersection of the aesthetic prohibition of the disgusting with the development of modern obscenity law and the regulation of sexuality. It turns to the passage of the Obscene Publications Act in order to scrutinize the historical moment when the domain of the law came into contact with and absorbed certain aspects of the aesthetics of disgust. What, the chapter asks, did the law take from the aesthetic domain, and specifically from the aesthetics of disgust, in codifying the obscene as a statutory offense? It also examines how are we to understand the transfer of aesthetic conceptions of judgment and of the relationship of feeling to discourse into what would seem to be an incompatible juridical framework. Ultimately, the chapter analyses how the pollution model of obscenity arose in the context of Henry Vizetelly's trial for the translation and publication of Zola in 1888, as well as in Hardy's writings on iconoclasm in Jude the Obscure.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home ...
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This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. The story of the ‘R18’ began in 1982. The differences between Section 2 and Section 3 proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) are explained. Bernard Williams' unwillingness to recommend that sex shops should be licensed had by 1987 been amply justified. The combined efforts of Customs and the Home Secretary brought to an end the trial liberalisation period. The Makin' Whoopee! was passed by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). It ‘may offend or disgust but it is unlikely to deprave or corrupt that proportion of the public who are likely to view it’. Straw ultimately failed to bend the BBFC to his will makes the existence of those powers no less disturbing.Less
This chapter illustrates the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) trying repeatedly to liberalise its guidelines relating to ‘R18’ videos, and being prevented from doing so by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. The story of the ‘R18’ began in 1982. The differences between Section 2 and Section 3 proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) are explained. Bernard Williams' unwillingness to recommend that sex shops should be licensed had by 1987 been amply justified. The combined efforts of Customs and the Home Secretary brought to an end the trial liberalisation period. The Makin' Whoopee! was passed by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). It ‘may offend or disgust but it is unlikely to deprave or corrupt that proportion of the public who are likely to view it’. Straw ultimately failed to bend the BBFC to his will makes the existence of those powers no less disturbing.
Chris Forster
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190840860
- eISBN:
- 9780190840907
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190840860.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter surveys the history of obscenity in English jurisprudence, from the invention of obscene libel as a crime in the eighteenth century through the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its 1959 ...
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This chapter surveys the history of obscenity in English jurisprudence, from the invention of obscene libel as a crime in the eighteenth century through the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its 1959 reform. It draws on Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler to argue that the invention of obscenity, and its subsequent definitions and redefinitions, reflect changes in media ecology and technology. It begins by examining the 1960 trial of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, before surveying the history of obscenity, and concluding with readings of the way the technologically mediated character of obscenity is reflected in both James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.Less
This chapter surveys the history of obscenity in English jurisprudence, from the invention of obscene libel as a crime in the eighteenth century through the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its 1959 reform. It draws on Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler to argue that the invention of obscenity, and its subsequent definitions and redefinitions, reflect changes in media ecology and technology. It begins by examining the 1960 trial of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, before surveying the history of obscenity, and concluding with readings of the way the technologically mediated character of obscenity is reflected in both James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man and Ian McEwan’s Atonement.
Julian Petley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625383
- eISBN:
- 9780748670871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625383.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores why the Video Recordings Act (VRA) looks set to be a permanent feature on the statute book. A draft Video Recordings Bill was notified to the EC on 10 September 2009. The ...
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This chapter explores why the Video Recordings Act (VRA) looks set to be a permanent feature on the statute book. A draft Video Recordings Bill was notified to the EC on 10 September 2009. The British Video Association urged its members to continue submitting DVDs as normal to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport played the role of ‘intervener’ with the result that the Obscene Publications Act is abolished. ‘Harm’ is defined in the context of media legislation. It is argued in this chapter that the VRA should simply be abolished hook, line and sinker. As far as film and video censorship in contemporary Britain is concerned, the message from the political class continues to ring out loud and clear: there is no alternative.Less
This chapter explores why the Video Recordings Act (VRA) looks set to be a permanent feature on the statute book. A draft Video Recordings Bill was notified to the EC on 10 September 2009. The British Video Association urged its members to continue submitting DVDs as normal to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport played the role of ‘intervener’ with the result that the Obscene Publications Act is abolished. ‘Harm’ is defined in the context of media legislation. It is argued in this chapter that the VRA should simply be abolished hook, line and sinker. As far as film and video censorship in contemporary Britain is concerned, the message from the political class continues to ring out loud and clear: there is no alternative.