This course examines the role of formal and informal censorship in British media since the early 20th century and its role in policing the moral, sexual and political status quo. Through the study of key texts (media artifacts such as film, television, novels and newspapers,) we will chart cultural and political change in Britain and the responses of British audiences. The course adopts a case study approach to important debates raised by this contentious issue. Central questions addressed by the course include: Is censorship a civil necessity or a means of controlling information? Are there vulnerable groups in society who need to be protected from ‘damaging’ information and images? What effects might censorship have on the democratic aspects of national and international life? How do you know you are being censored anyway?
Students will discuss extracts from controversial texts and examine the motives of the institutions that produced and censored them. A strong emphasis is placed on studying the context in which the texts were originally circulated and consumed, and the debates that they provoked. The course provides opportunities to utilize the resources of the British Film Institute library and there will be a range of key readings provided by the professor regarding. Students are encouraged to make every effort to pursue recommended readings and to undertake original research in their academic writings, and must not rely solely on the Internet.
Learning outcomes:
Students will be able to evaluate the issues around formal and informal censorship, using a variety of theories. Knowledge should transfer across national boundaries and technologies giving a wider, more informed understanding of the control of information and its consequences.
Method of presentation:
The course will combine a mixture of lectures, presentations, readings, and selected excerpts from film and television.
Required work and form of assessment:
Participation in class discussion including the preparation of reading and responses to course content (25%), Midterm essay (approx 1,500 words) (25%), Group research project (20%), End of term essay (approx 2,000 words) (30%)
content:
Full screenings of the films from the video library will be organized at a suitable time in the week. Students are encouraged to read and view more widely to extend their knowledge and understanding, and hence may borrow DVD’s and reference works for study on site. Group screenings are required. They are vital to class discussion and to student progress.
Week 1: Censorship in Britain
A general introduction to, and discussion of, the legal, historical, economic and moral constraints placed on cultural producers and audiences in the UK by the formal practices of censorship.
Week 2: The Legal Framework of Film Censorship in Britain
The establishment of the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) in 1913 and its history to date. A review of the changing forms and concerns of regulation and the screening of a range of censored extracts.
Reading: The Birth of Film Censorship in Britain, Chapter 2, Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality 1909 – 1925 Annette Kuhn, Routledge, 1990 & Chapter 4, Councillors and classifiers, Censorship, Beginners’ Guides, Julian Petley, Oneworld Publications, 2009 http://www.screenonline.org.uk/education/id/1159344/index.html
Week 3: Seminar Session with the British Board of Film Classification
An illustrated presentation by the Education Officer of the BBFC of clips from censored films, and a chance to ask questions regarding the work of the BBFC.
Reading: British Film Censorship, Jeffrey Richards, Chapter 16, The British Cinema Book, Robert Murphy, BFI, 1997.
Week 4: Fear of the Working Class
The banning of Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Love on the Dole (1941). These two films, and others, represented a perceived threat to the political status quo during the unstable period of the 1920’s and 1930’s and were not shown to contemporary audiences.
Reading: ‘What a Difference A War Makes!’ Love on the Dole (1941) and British Film Censorship, Chapter 3 British Cinema in Documents, Sarah Street, Routledge 2000
Film Screening: Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Week 5: The Fear of Fear
With the arrival of 1930’s Universal’s Horror films came the introduction of the “H” and the X certificates. We examine the presumed threat to British audiences still posed by horror films such as Freaks, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Exorcist. There will be some discussion of the perceived “harm” done by watching horror films.
Reading: The Monster, chapter 4, Terror and Everyday Life, Singular Moments in the History of the Horror Film, Jonathan Lake Crane, Sage, 1994 & For Sadists Only? The problem of British Horror, Chapter 1, Hammer and Beyond, Peter Hutchings, Manchester University Press 1993: Censored Screams, Tom Johnson, McFarland & Co, 1947
Film Screening: The Exorcist, William Friedkin, 1973
Week 6: World War 2 and the ‘Ministry of Propaganda’
This was the golden age of control over the official British image. We will examine The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1944, Powell and Pressburger) as a case study of the ways in which filmmakers struggled for creative control during the six years of WWII.
Required reading: What A Difference a War Makes: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Chapter 5, Best of British Cinema and Society 1930-1970, Richards and Aldgate, Blackwell, 1983 & British Film Censorship and Propaganda Policy during the Second World War, Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy, Croft, Chapter 9 in British Cinema History, eds Curran and Porter, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1983.
Film Screening: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Powell & Pressburger, 1943
Deadline for handing in mid-term paper! N.B. Students will need to organize a time for screening The War
Game before midterm week.
Week 7: Television and the Bomb: The Banning of The War Game
We examine The War Game as a case study of politically sensitive material that upset the British establishment and its policies on nuclear weapons during the Cold War in the 1960’s. We also will examine the response to
different aesthetic forms of representing “reality”.
Required reading: Peter Watkins Discusses His Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game with James Blue and Michael Gill, Film Comment, Autumn 1965, Vol. 3:4; & After the Bomb Dropped: The Cinema half-life of The War Game, Cook and Murphy, Journal of Popular British Cinema, 2, 2000;
Week 8: Sex, Violence and Voyeurism
The film Crash, directed by David Cronenberg, was not given a certificate for many months by the BBFC as it seemed to cross new boundaries in representing sex and voyeurism. We examine this very controversial film and the equally controversial Male Gaze theory that seeks to explain it.
Required reading Extracts from Crash, Iain Sinclair, 1999, BFI Publishing
Week 9: The Violence Debate
A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn by Stanley Kubrick, who owned the rights, after a number of violent
‘copycat’ attacks. We examine the film itself and the ideas that underpin the “effects” theories of audience response to violent film.
Required reading: The Newsom Report: a case study in “common sense”, chapter 1 in Ill Effects- the media/violence debate, Martin Barker & Julian Petley, Routledge, 1997 & Under Siege: 1970-75, Chapter p189
– 215, Censored, ibid.
Week 10: Blasphemy
From the outset, representations of Christ were banned by film censors in the UK. We examine a range of films, television and theatrical productions, principally The Life of Brian by Monty Python, and the ongoing debate about representations of religion and religious icons. In passing we will discuss the impact of the 2005 UK law against religious offence and the rise of the religious right.
Reading: Extracts from Monty Python: the Case Against, Robert Hewison, Eyre Methuen, 1981
Week 11: The Homoerotic and the Homophobic
Gay cinema: speaking the unspoken. This session will include an examination of the way in which British film and television has represented homosexuality, with extracts from a variety of films including Victim (1961), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), and Queer as Folk.
Reading: Victim, pages 155-162, Brief Encounters,: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930-1971, Stephen Bourne, Cassell, 1996.
Film Screening: Victim (1961) Basil Dearden
Further reading: Victim: Hegemonic Project, The Making of Images – Essays in Representation, Richard Dyer, Routledge, 1993
Week 12: Research Projects
Students will present their research projects via Powerpoint presentation and handouts. Deadline for handing in final paper!
Required readings:
Barker, M. & Petley, J, The Newsom Report: a case study in “common sense”, chapter 1 in Ill Effects- the media/violence debate, Routledge, 1997
Blue, J & Gill, M, Peter Watkins Discusses His Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game, Film Comment, Autumn 1965, Vol. 3:4
Bourne, S, Victim, pages 155-162, Brief Encounters: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930-1971, Cassell, 1996.
Cook & Murphy, After the Bomb Dropped: The Cinema half-life of The War Game, Journal of Popular British Cinema, 2, 2000
Crane, J. L., The Monster, chapter 4,Terror and Everyday Life, Singular Moments in the History of the Horror Film, Sage, 1994
Hewison, R., Extracts from Monty Python: the Case Against, Eyre Methuen, 1981
Hutchings, P, For Sadists Only? The problem of British Horror, Chapter 1, Hammer and Beyond, Manchester University Press, 1993
Pronay, N & Croft,J., British Film Censorship and Propaganda Policy during the Second World War, Chapter 9 in British Cinema History, eds. Curran and Porter, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1983
Richards, J., British Film Censorship, Chapter 16, The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy, BFI, 1997
Richards, J. & Aldgate, A., What A Difference a War Makes: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Chapter 5, Best of British Cinema and Society 1930-1970, Blackwell, 1983
Sinclair, I., Extracts from Crash, BFI Publishing, 1999
Street , S., ‘What a Difference A War Makes!’ Love on the Dole (1941) and British Film Censorship, Chapter 3 British Cinema in Documents, Routledge, 2000
Recommended readings:
Aldgate, A., Censorship in Theatre and Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2005
Mathews, Tom Dewe, Censored, Chatto & Windus, 1994
Murphy, R., ed. The British Cinema Book, part 5, What Is British Cinema? Identities and Contexts, BFI 2001
Other Resources:
Journals
Sight and Sound, monthly magazine of the British Film Institute
Close Up: The Electronic Journal of British Cinema
Sight and Sound, BFI monthly journal
Notes:
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Kate Domaille holds an M.A. in Film & Media Studies in Education She has taught in universities for ten years and works with the Media Education Association promoting teacher education in teaching about the media. She has acted as a tutor and advisor to the British Film Institute, written publications about cinema and television and for a brief time in the 1990s worked as a BBFC Examiner.
This course examines the role of formal and informal censorship in British media since the early 20th century and its role in policing the moral, sexual and political status quo. Through the study of key texts (media artifacts such as film, television, novels and newspapers,) we will chart cultural and political change in Britain and the responses of British audiences. The course adopts a case study approach to important debates raised by this contentious issue. Central questions addressed by the course include: Is censorship a civil necessity or a means of controlling information? Are there vulnerable groups in society who need to be protected from ‘damaging’ information and images? What effects might censorship have on the democratic aspects of national and international life? How do you know you are being censored anyway?
Students will discuss extracts from controversial texts and examine the motives of the institutions that produced and censored them. A strong emphasis is placed on studying the context in which the texts were originally circulated and consumed, and the debates that they provoked. The course provides opportunities to utilize the resources of the British Film Institute library and there will be a range of key readings provided by the professor regarding. Students are encouraged to make every effort to pursue recommended readings and to undertake original research in their academic writings, and must not rely solely on the Internet.
Students will be able to evaluate the issues around formal and informal censorship, using a variety of theories. Knowledge should transfer across national boundaries and technologies giving a wider, more informed understanding of the control of information and its consequences.
The course will combine a mixture of lectures, presentations, readings, and selected excerpts from film and television.
Participation in class discussion including the preparation of reading and responses to course content (25%), Midterm essay (approx 1,500 words) (25%), Group research project (20%), End of term essay (approx 2,000 words) (30%)
Full screenings of the films from the video library will be organized at a suitable time in the week. Students are encouraged to read and view more widely to extend their knowledge and understanding, and hence may borrow DVD’s and reference works for study on site. Group screenings are required. They are vital to class discussion and to student progress.
Week 1: Censorship in Britain
A general introduction to, and discussion of, the legal, historical, economic and moral constraints placed on cultural producers and audiences in the UK by the formal practices of censorship.
Reading: Living Within the State, Chapter 2 of Censored, Tom Dewe Mathews, Chatto & Windus, 1994
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/downloads/pub/Guidelines/BBFC%20Classification%20G...
Week 2: The Legal Framework of Film Censorship in Britain
The establishment of the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) in 1913 and its history to date. A review of the changing forms and concerns of regulation and the screening of a range of censored extracts.
Reading: The Birth of Film Censorship in Britain, Chapter 2, Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality 1909 – 1925 Annette Kuhn, Routledge, 1990 & Chapter 4, Councillors and classifiers, Censorship, Beginners’ Guides, Julian Petley, Oneworld Publications, 2009
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/education/id/1159344/index.html
Week 3: Seminar Session with the British Board of Film Classification
An illustrated presentation by the Education Officer of the BBFC of clips from censored films, and a chance to ask questions regarding the work of the BBFC.
Reading: British Film Censorship, Jeffrey Richards, Chapter 16, The British Cinema Book, Robert Murphy, BFI, 1997.
Week 4: Fear of the Working Class
The banning of Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Love on the Dole (1941). These two films, and others, represented a perceived threat to the political status quo during the unstable period of the 1920’s and 1930’s and were not shown to contemporary audiences.
Reading: ‘What a Difference A War Makes!’ Love on the Dole (1941) and British Film Censorship, Chapter 3 British Cinema in Documents, Sarah Street, Routledge 2000
Film Screening: Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Week 5: The Fear of Fear
With the arrival of 1930’s Universal’s Horror films came the introduction of the “H” and the X certificates. We examine the presumed threat to British audiences still posed by horror films such as Freaks, Dracula, Frankenstein and The Exorcist. There will be some discussion of the perceived “harm” done by watching horror films.
Reading: The Monster, chapter 4, Terror and Everyday Life, Singular Moments in the History of the Horror Film, Jonathan Lake Crane, Sage, 1994 & For Sadists Only? The problem of British Horror, Chapter 1, Hammer and Beyond, Peter Hutchings, Manchester University Press 1993: Censored Screams, Tom Johnson, McFarland & Co, 1947
Film Screening: The Exorcist, William Friedkin, 1973
Week 6: World War 2 and the ‘Ministry of Propaganda’
This was the golden age of control over the official British image. We will examine The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1944, Powell and Pressburger) as a case study of the ways in which filmmakers struggled for creative control during the six years of WWII.
Required reading: What A Difference a War Makes: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Chapter 5, Best of British Cinema and Society 1930-1970, Richards and Aldgate, Blackwell, 1983 & British Film Censorship and Propaganda Policy during the Second World War, Nicholas Pronay and Jeremy, Croft, Chapter 9 in British Cinema History, eds Curran and Porter, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson, 1983.
Film Screening: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Powell & Pressburger, 1943
Deadline for handing in mid-term paper! N.B. Students will need to organize a time for screening The War
Game before midterm week.
Week 7: Television and the Bomb: The Banning of The War Game
We examine The War Game as a case study of politically sensitive material that upset the British establishment and its policies on nuclear weapons during the Cold War in the 1960’s. We also will examine the response to
different aesthetic forms of representing “reality”.
Required reading: Peter Watkins Discusses His Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game with James Blue and Michael Gill, Film Comment, Autumn 1965, Vol. 3:4; & After the Bomb Dropped: The Cinema half-life of The War Game, Cook and Murphy, Journal of Popular British Cinema, 2, 2000;
Film Screening: The War Game, Peter Watkins, 1965.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/438638/index.html
Week 8: Sex, Violence and Voyeurism
The film Crash, directed by David Cronenberg, was not given a certificate for many months by the BBFC as it seemed to cross new boundaries in representing sex and voyeurism. We examine this very controversial film and the equally controversial Male Gaze theory that seeks to explain it.
Required reading Extracts from Crash, Iain Sinclair, 1999, BFI Publishing
Film Screening: Crash, David Cronenberg, 1996
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey, Screen Autumn 1975, found on:
http://www.jahsonic.com/VPNC.html; http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/566978/
Week 9: The Violence Debate
A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn by Stanley Kubrick, who owned the rights, after a number of violent
‘copycat’ attacks. We examine the film itself and the ideas that underpin the “effects” theories of audience response to violent film.
Required reading: The Newsom Report: a case study in “common sense”, chapter 1 in Ill Effects- the media/violence debate, Martin Barker & Julian Petley, Routledge, 1997 & Under Siege: 1970-75, Chapter p189
– 215, Censored, ibid.
Film Screening: A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, 1971
For a detailed report on video games and violence log on to http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/documents/BBFCVideoGamesReport.pdf
How Young Children Interpret Screen Violence http://www.sbbfc.co.uk/documents/howchild.pdf
Week 10: Blasphemy
From the outset, representations of Christ were banned by film censors in the UK. We examine a range of films, television and theatrical productions, principally The Life of Brian by Monty Python, and the ongoing debate about representations of religion and religious icons. In passing we will discuss the impact of the 2005 UK law against religious offence and the rise of the religious right.
Reading: Extracts from Monty Python: the Case Against, Robert Hewison, Eyre Methuen, 1981
Film Screening: The Life of Brian, Terry Jones, 1979
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1377417/index.html?utm_source=20091...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/mar/28/artsfeatures1
Blasphemy in Modern Britain: 1789 to the Present, David Nash
London, Ashgate, 1999
Week 11: The Homoerotic and the Homophobic
Gay cinema: speaking the unspoken. This session will include an examination of the way in which British film and television has represented homosexuality, with extracts from a variety of films including Victim (1961), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), and Queer as Folk.
Reading: Victim, pages 155-162, Brief Encounters,: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema 1930-1971, Stephen Bourne, Cassell, 1996.
Film Screening: Victim (1961) Basil Dearden
Further reading: Victim: Hegemonic Project, The Making of Images – Essays in Representation, Richard Dyer, Routledge, 1993
Week 12: Research Projects
Students will present their research projects via Powerpoint presentation and handouts. Deadline for handing in final paper!
Journals
Sight and Sound, monthly magazine of the British Film Institute
Close Up: The Electronic Journal of British Cinema
Sight and Sound, BFI monthly journal
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.
Kate Domaille holds an M.A. in Film & Media Studies in Education She has taught in universities for ten years and works with the Media Education Association promoting teacher education in teaching about the media. She has acted as a tutor and advisor to the British Film Institute, written publications about cinema and television and for a brief time in the 1990s worked as a BBFC Examiner.