Monitoring the Movies : : The Fight over Film Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century Urban America / / Jennifer Fronc.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Fronc, Jennifer,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.)

As movies took the country by storm in the early twentieth century, Americans argued fiercely about whether municipal or state authorities should step in to control what people could watch when they went to movie theaters, which seemed to be springing up on every corner. Many who opposed the governmental regulation of film conceded that some entity—boards populated by trusted civic leaders, for example—needed to safeguard the public good. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (NB), a civic group founded in New York City in 1909, emerged as a national cultural chaperon well suited to protect this emerging form of expression from state incursions. Using the National Board’s extensive files, Monitoring the Movies offers the first full-length study of the NB and its campaign against motion-picture censorship. Jennifer Fronc traces the NB’s Progressive-era founding in New York; its evolving set of “standards” for directors, producers, municipal officers, and citizens; its “city plan,” which called on citizens to report screenings of condemned movies to local officials; and the spread of the NB’s influence into the urban South. Ultimately, Monitoring the Movies shows how Americans grappled with the issues that arose alongside the powerful new medium of film: the extent of the right to produce and consume images and the proper scope of government control over what citizens can see and show.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. The Origins of the Anticensorship Movement -- Chapter 1. The Lesser of Two Evils: Debating Motion Picture Censorship, 1907–1912 -- Chapter 2 . “Critical and Constructive”: The National Board’s “Standards” and City Plan for Voluntary Motion Picture Review, 1912–1916 -- Chapter 3. “An Historical Presentation”: The Birth of a Nation and the City Plan, 1909–1917 -- Chapter 4 . “Is Any Girl Safe?” White Slave Traffic Films and the Geography of Censorship, 1914–1917 -- Chapter 5. “Whether You Like Pictures or Not”: The General Federation of Women’s Clubs and State Censorship Legislation, 1916–1920 -- Chapter 6. Southern Enterprises: Building Better Films Committees in the Urban South, 1921–1924 -- Conclusion. Censorship and the Age of Self-Regulation, 1924–1968 -- Appendix. A Partial List of Cities Cooperating with the National Board of Review, 1918 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index