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It is a commonplace observation that the law regards, and is right to regard, prior restraints on speech and writing with particular hostility. One fundamental question is whether the differences between prior restraints and penal sanctions imposed subsequent to publication are sufficiently serious to justify the traditional hostility to the former shown in American jurisprudence and reflected, to some extent, in European legal provisions such as the German Basic Law. A related question is whether all forms of prior restraint should be subject to the same degree of suspicion or hostility. This chapter examines issues related to prior restraints as well as the censorship of plays, films, and video, the use of prior restraints to prohibit the disclosure of official secrets and other confidential information, and the role of these restraints in contempt of court and the allocation of permits to hold public meetings. The chapter concludes by discussing whether the law should be equally critical of private censorship.

Chapter 1 maps out the contours of the Cold War regulatory context in Hong Kong and examines how Hong Kong’s censorship machinery “screened” the colonial government’s responses to the Cold War within local, colonial, and global contexts. The colonial government’s film censorship machinery comprises not only of printed regulations banning objectionable material, but also a set of activities, practices and discourses that reflected the agendas and assumptions of Hong Kong’s colonial government about audience demographics and characteristics. This chapter argues that censorship was part the discursive strategies mobilized by the colonial state and negotiated by filmmakers, film distributors, audience members, and Cold War watchers, all of whom contributed to the postwar Hong Kong community screening process. To demonstrate that censorship was never unidirectional in terms of imposition, surveillance, or discipline, but was constantly being challenged and negotiated by all stakeholders, this chapter ends with an extended discussion of the September 1965 press battle over British Hong Kong’s censorship legislation. Indeed, British Hong Kong had to exercise a policy of accommodation and neutrality, while creating the illusion of an apolitical community in order for its censorship legislations to function during a period of global decolonization.

This chapter discusses the film The Miracle and the unusual circumstances that surrounded it with regards to film censorship. When the film was submitted to the New York City censors, it was considered as godless and Communist propaganda, as opposed to being of great artistic merit. The film was shown in the city anyway, which led to a series of legal cases in the New York and Supreme Courts. But amidst the legal battles and arguments, it was Joseph Burstyn and his good test case that helped extend the boundaries of free speech.

This chapter discusses La Ronde, a saucy, satirical, and cynical treatment of seduction and casual sex. As expected, this film came under fire in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953, after the New York censors claimed that it was immoral. The case surrounding the film has been seen by historians and legal commentators as nothing more than a footnote along the way to the inevitable demise of governmental film censorship.

This chapter discusses the origin of governmental film censorship. Before movies were created, reformers constantly worried about the indecent content popular novels and photographs carried. It was in 1865 that Congress enacted the first antismut law, which authorized the U.S. postmaster to intercept obscene photographs. When movies arrived, however, moralists began to worry about the movie content that they viewed to be “social sewage.” The chapter looks at how movie censorship began, starting from the pressures groups imposed on the government, until the adoption of movie censorship in seven states.

This chapter discusses the grim outlook of the legality of film censorship in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York during the 1950s. The judges in New York, who had staunchly supported their censors for three decades, began to question the statute and its application. As the censors tried to hold on to their role as the protectors of the state's movie theater screens, the courts of their state and the nation were moving toward a more expansive interpretation of First Amendment rights of speech and press.

This chapter discusses the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a French film version of D.H. Lawrence's novel of the same name. This case was presented in the mid-1950s, when tolerance of mature-themed films was slowly evolving and the incipient backlash against censorship restrictions was present. Ephraim London took the case to the New York State Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, all the while arguing that the film was based on the play, and not the novel itself. This case presented the U.S. Supreme Court with the full range of arguments for and against state film censorship, and it would allow the justices to rule decisively about the evils, if any, that the state could still ban from theater screens.

This chapter examines the changing attitudes of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) towards film censorship since the 1990s, focusing on how it dealt with the cinema of the new extremism. By looking at the BBFC's response to Gaspar Noé's Seul contre tous (France, 1998) and Irréversible (France, 2002), the chapter argues that the BBFC eventually distanced itself from the concept of censorship towards a policy based on ‘classification’ and the principle that adults should be free to choose their own viewing (provided it does not contravene British law). It also revisits what happened between the BBFC's cutting of images of explicit sex in Seul contre tous, a film that can be considered part of the ‘first wave of the new extremism’, and its decision to release Irréversible uncut just four years later. The chapter concludes by declaring that the release of Seul contre tous and Irréversible heralded the emergence of a new form of provocative European cinema that coincided with the beginning of an increasingly open, accountable, and liberalised form of film censorship in Britain.

This chapter discusses Ronald Freedman's efforts to fight for the freedom of the screen. Freedman initially wanted to become a crusader for avant-garde films, but due to the interference of censorship, he was incited to become a free speech advocate instead. The case that Freedman was involved with turned out to be the big case in the razing of governmental film censorship.

This chapter discusses the arrival of the First Amendment in the arguments regarding movie censorship. It looks at several major speech-protection breakthroughs in the years following the Second World War, and how these cases stretched the First Amendment to fit new speech circumstances. The discussion shows that although movie producers sought to use the First Amendment as a form of protection against film censorship, this proved to be far beyond their reach.

Chapter 7 addresses film censorship in the South, and places this history in the larger context of the American film industry as a whole. From early boxing films such as the Johnson-Jeffries fight of 1910, which led southern politicians to ban interracial boxing films (and, in some cases, all boxing films) to the prodigious work of individual southern censors including Lloyd T. Binford of Memphis and Evan R. Chesterman of the State of Virginia, this history reveals the embeddedness of Jim Crow ideology within all sorts of film institutions. In the years after World War II, when film censorship practices came under greater scrutiny and legal threat, the work of southern film censors largely petered out, anticipating some of the coming confrontations of the Civil Rights Movement.

This chapter takes the theme of the archivatisation/ big data, secrecy/transparency/technics of recall introduced in the previous chapter and recontextualises it specifically in relation to the impact of media technological change on forms of censorship and censorial powers and institutions. It examines the case of the centenary/ disestablishment of the Swedish Board of Film Censorship (in 2011) and its archives’ ‘reindexing’ through the work of the media artist Markus Ohrn. It then uses this example to explore how ethical subjectivity can be seen to be a function of a cultural nexus of media technics and technicized forms of recall and the institutional preservation of media ‘material’. It draws centrally on Derrida's remarks about archivisation and the necessary violence associated with that. It explores the link between technology, control and the powers of representation and recall in order to theorise the ethco-political significance of the archive in the context of the contemporary shift towards ubiquitous user-generated and user-distributed media content.

“Beyond X” exposes the root of historical misunderstandings of fuseji by tracking the postwar myths about the marks. Replacing the timeline of chapter 6 with a more nuanced archeology of the marks, “Beyond X” transcends the pitfalls of crass historicization with a look at the postwar nostalgia for the marks that taints our contemporary understanding of history. In order to reverse the myth fostered by nostalgia for imperial censorship, this chapter follows up on a critical imperative to find silent deletion during the imperial regime and marked deletion during the occupation. Broadening the typology presented in chapter 7, this chapter also argues for a wider genealogy of redaction, extending beyond the typographic deletion marker to such markers of deletion as the common image of the covered kiss.

This chapter investigates the montage practice done to the film, Mintu the Murderer, consequently illustrating the ineffective policing of the Bangladesh Film Censor Board. The film had been initially cut and spliced by the editing team of Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (FDC). In the editing room of the FDC, editors cut out the marked portions of the reels, then splice these trimmed shots back together with sellotape. This montage practice emphasized action and dialogue through the oscillating visibility of cut-pieces. These pieces of pornographic sequences were cut out of the film during its run-through and submission to the Censor Board, but were still shown to the public later on. Censorship in the film industry is a question of time and space, rather than of metaphor, narrative resolution, or outright repression.

This chapter discusses the role of the courts in preventing the removal of film censorship and the individuals who challenged this early on. It was in Chicago when the movie censorship law was first challenged in court. Despite arguing that the types of obscenity banned by the courts were not clearly stated, it was effectively countered by Chief Justice James H. Cartwright's judicial philosophy, which stated that the definitions and standards of obscenity were not necessary. This statement prevailed in the courts for 44 years.

The chapter details the success of the Hammer Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) in late-1950s and early-1960s Italy, and explains why, where, by whom and with which commercial results a series of vampire films were made by Italian companies from 1959 to 1975, with the cooperation of European co-production partners and/or American investors. While revealing the imported and derivative nature of 1956-1975 Italian vampire cinema, the industrial analysis conducted in the chapter shows how local factors such as distribution-fed production, time- and cost-saving shooting practices, state censorship and state aids made the Italian vampire rip-offs into variations on the theme mixing foreign models with distinctively national traits rather than into slavish plagiarisms.

This chapter reviews Ninotchka's three different lives during the early years of the Cold War. It also emphasises the American film industry's ability to combine profits and politics almost from day one of the conflict. The introduction of new film censorship rules strengthened the industry's conservative outlook. MGM's Ninotchka was not designed for political purposes, but rather to entertain and make money. This film displays the unacceptable face of capitalism in the shape of the aristocratic Swana, who is vain, greedy and does not work. It also strikes a blow for American meritocracy, which creates a fairer society. Silk Stockings follows the plot of Ninotchka fairly closely. It probably speculated and reinforced many cinema-goers' appreciation of the basic differences between the East and the West. Ninotchka is an early example of the degree to which the celluloid Cold War was fought independent of official propagandists.

This chapter explores the topics of silent film, censorship, and the development of cinematic technology. The roots of all the major film censorship systems lie in the silent era. As such, it helps one to understand the peculiarities of the British system by explaining how the system emerged, and in particular the odd role of local authorities, which produces idiosyncratic exceptions to this day. Equally, the US Hays Code, while its enforcement really dates from the sound era, was formed and moulded in the silent days. Many of the motifs and generic elements of film music also go back to silent roots. The chapter then examines the widespread variety and diversity of silent world cinema. It also considers the return to classical Hollywood for film plots and narratives in contemporary Hollywood.

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.