Dirty words & filthy pictures
Subtitle: film and the First Amendment
By: Jeremy Geltzer ; foreword by Alex Kozinski
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781477307434; 9781477307403
Subjects: Motion pictures; Freedom of speech; Censorship; Motion picture industry; Law and legislation; History
Other titles: Flm and the First Amendment
Description: From the earliest days of cinema, scandalous films such as The Kiss (1896) attracted audiences eager to see provocative images on screen. With controversial content, motion pictures challenged social norms and prevailing laws at the intersection of art and entertainment. Today, the First Amendment protects a wide range of free speech, but this wasn't always the case. For the first fifty years, movies could be censored and banned by city and state officials charged with protecting the moral fabric of their communities. Once film was embraced under the First Amendment by the Supreme Court's Miracle decision in 1952, new problems pushed notions of acceptable content even further. This book explores movies that changed the law and resulted in greater creative freedom for all. Relying on primary sources that include court decisions, contemporary periodicals, state censorship ordinances, and studio production codes, Jeremy Geltzer offers a comprehensive and fascinating history of cinema and free speech, from the earliest films of Thomas Edison to the impact of pornography and the Internet. With incisive case studies of risqué pictures, subversive foreign films, and banned B-movies, he reveals how the legal battles over film content changed long-held interpretations of the Constitution, expanded personal freedoms, and opened a new era of free speech.--Adapted from back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 358-359) and index.
Table of contents: title: Boxing, porn, and the beginnings of movie censorship; title: The rise of salacious cinema; title: State regulations emerge; title: Mutual and the capacity for evil; title: War, nudity, and birth control; title: Self-regulation reemerges; title: Midnight movies and sanctioned cinema; title: Sound enters the debate; title: Tension increases between free speech and state censorship; title: Threats from abroad and domestic disturbances; title: Outlaws and miracles; title: State censorship statutes on the defense; title: Devil in the details : film and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments; title: Dirty words : profanity and the patently offensive; title: Filthy pictures : obscenity from nudie cuties to fetish films; title: The porno chic : from Danish loops to Deep throat; title: Just not here : content regulation through zoning; title: Is censorship necessary?; title: The politics of profanity.