Movies, Censorship, and the Law, by Ira H. Carmen
Davis, Gilbert R.
The censor's work is never secure, for history deals harshly with yesterday's moral judgments. The road from the 1909 Chicago censor's refusal to license two feckless horse operas ("Tile James...
...The changes in film censorship that have taken place over the past 15 years are astonishing, and Ira H. Carmen's Movies, Censorship, and the Law provides a fascinating and learned view of these changes...
...In the now famous "Miracle" case (Burstyrl vs...
...Up to that time the typical censorship stature specified that movies be of a "moral, educational, or amusing and harmless character...
...The Court's opinion that films contain ideas, thus placing movies within the ambit of the First Amendment, has forced censors to retreat from their vague moral postures, leaving them free only to operate—shears in hand—on the sexually obscene...
...But if past censors have been arbitrary and flinty, Hollywood has also been much to blame...
...After World War I1, the influence of the foreign film market, together with the work of some serious American movie makers, began to force a change in censorship practices...
...The road from the 1909 Chicago censor's refusal to license two feckless horse operas ("Tile James Boys" and "Night Riders") to this year's unstinting praise for the frankness of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...
...His recommendations rely heavily on his belief that the Supreme Court's opinion in Roth (1957) —that for the average adult obscenity appeals to a prurient interest in sex—provides workable judicial standards for determining the censorable...
...For years the film capital, its eye on the dollar, has obligingly tailored its fare to fit the censor's vision, while introducing as much cheesecake as the law would allow...
...Carmen finds that the Detroit License and Censor Bureau (an agency of the Police Department) operates in arbitrary, secre tive, and at times illegal ways...
...The first two chapters review the Supreme Court's _ulings on free speech from 1915-1965...
...Wilson, 1952) , the Supreme Court reversed its earlier position that movies were purely business ventures and therefore outside the protection of the First Amendment...
...against arbitrary motion picture censorship...
...It is not surprising that film makers who see themselves simply as entertainers, not artists, willingly forfeit their claim to First Amendment rights...
...But Carmen's recommendation that prior restraints (pre-censorship) be replaced by prosecution against the offending film, after it has been shown, is one that defenders of the First Amendment should accept...
...The steady growth in film freedom is a direct result of the Court's concern with areas of protected speech...
...As a first important step, this would bring censors face to face with the producer-distributors in a court of law, thereby removing prosecution from the moviehouse operators who are, after all, businessmen, not assigned guardians of the Bill of Rights...
...Though his arguments are at times subtle, Carmen is always clear in his summaries and explanations of judicial decisions...
...The Bureau is under the exclusive management of policemen, keeps no records, and often employs extra-legal methods to limit a film's exposure and/or audience...
...There follow detailed examinations of state and local censorship practices...
...What goes on in a sophisticated metrepolis such as Detroit is hcth illustrative and shocking...
...has been a long and rocky one...
...Perhaps by now this faith has been unsettled by the Court's Ginzburg opinion (1966) which measures titillating advertising and the "commercial exploitation of erotica" in determining the obscene...
...Though Carmen expresses admiration for the judicial opinions of Justices Douglas and Black, he is not an absolutist libertarian...
...in short, there are no "meaningful checks...
...thus began the slow process of liberating films from the smothering effects of the censor...
Vol. 14 • May 1967 • No. 3
