Description
Book SynopsisThis deeply researched history investigates how Progressive-era activists sought to encourage the creation and consumption of high-quality films while lobbying against state-supervised motion picture censorship.
Trade Review"Not unlike Facebook, the nascent movie industry resisted regulation; it fought back with self-imposed guidelines aided by the rhetoric of civil libertarians. Ranged against the studios were Puritans and Progressives, a coalition of moralizers, women’s groups concerned with the effect of movies on children and culture warriors who linked movies with the medium’s lowlife origins as burlesque sideshow attractions. . . Fronc has written an engaging and balanced account of questions whose debating points remain relevant today." * Shepherd Express *
"Jennifer Fronc provides a needed history of the most far-reaching, and successful, organization to regulate motion pictures in the early 20th century: The National Board of Review...Fronc’s careful historical work reminds us that even among people who shared political sentiments—Progressive reformers, labor organizers, animal rights activists, and clubwomen—there was considerable disagreement about whether and how society should regulate motion pictures." * Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television *
"A comprehensive and meticulously researched study...Fronc's book brings considerable scholarship and insight into the politics of efforts to regulate early American cinema and to their lingering effects on efforts to circumscribe the effects of film on what those prone to regulate viewed as vulnerable audiences." * Journal of American History *
"Fronc has made a well-researched contribution on a fascinating period of tug-of-war over early films. Film and free-speech historians will find
Monitoring the Movies a comprehensive analysis of the censorship debate during the Progressive era and would welcome this impressively detailed book on the shelf." * Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy *
Table of 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
