Policing cinema : movies and censorship in early-twentieth-century America / Lee Grieveson.
Grieveson examines censorship & regulation of motion pictures in America during the early years of the silent screen. He shows how the public & the authorities responded to scandalous & controversial productions, such as 'Birth of a Nation'.
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Berkeley :
University of California Press,
[2004]
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| Summary: | Grieveson examines censorship & regulation of motion pictures in America during the early years of the silent screen. He shows how the public & the authorities responded to scandalous & controversial productions, such as 'Birth of a Nation'. White 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.--Back cover. |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 348 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-329) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0520239652 9780520239654 0520239660 9780520239661 |