Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century AmericaWhite slave films, dramas documenting sex scandals, filmed prize fights featuring the controversial African-American boxer Jack Johnson, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation—all became objects of public concern after 1906, when the proliferation of nickelodeons brought moving pictures to a broad mass public. Lee Grieveson draws on extensive original research to examine the controversies over these films and over cinema more generally. He situates these contestations in the context of regulatory concerns about populations and governance in an early-twentieth-century America grappling with the powerful forces of modernity, in particular, immigration, class formation and conflict, and changing gender roles. Tracing the discourses and practices of cultural and political elites and the responses of the nascent film industry, Grieveson reveals how these interactions had profound effects on the shaping of film content, form, and, more fundamentally, the proposed social function of cinema: how cinema should function in society, the uses to which it might be put, and thus what it could or would be. Policing Cinema develops new perspectives for the understanding of censorship and regulation and the complex relations between governance and culture. In this work, Grieveson offers a compelling analysis of the forces that shaped American cinema and its role in society. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 POLICING CINEMA | 11 |
2 SCANDALOUS CINEMA 19061907 | 37 |
3 REFORMING CINEMA 19071909 | 78 |
4 FILM FIGHTS 19101912 | 121 |
5 JUDGING CINEMA 19131914 | 151 |
Other editions - View all
Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America Lee Grieveson Limited preview - 2004 |
Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America Lee Grieveson Limited preview - 2004 |
Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America Lee Grieveson Limited preview - 2004 |
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American amusement argued audiences banned Board of Censorship British Film Institute broader Cambridge central Chicago classical Hollywood cinema commercial Committee context cultural D. W. Griffith debates December discourses early educational effects emerged entertainment entrepreneurs Evelyn Nesbit exhibition exhibitors federal fiction fight films film industry Foucault function of cinema Gender girl governance History Hollywood Ibid immigrant immoral Institute Jack Johnson Johnson Journal linked London mainstream cinema Mann Act melodrama Michel Foucault middle-class moral Motion Picture Movies Moving Picture World narrative National Board nickel theaters nickelodeons obscene Patents Company photoplay play police political produced prostitution quoted reform regulatory concerns representation rhetoric Richard Maltby saloon scandal Screen sexuality shift Sims Act slavery social functioning space Stanford White strategies suggested Thaw tion Traffic in Souls ture University Press Unwritten Law vaudeville white slave films White Slave Traffic women York City
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Page xiii - The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.