Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Censorship
‘‘indecency,’’ which have been applied to sexual explicitness,
films charged with being obscene have been viewed
as having ‘‘a tendency to deprave and corrupt’’ and been
liable to prosecution. The art-sex film Ultimo tango a
Parigi (Last Tango in Paris, 1972), with its acts of
sodomy and degradation, is one of the most notorious
films to depict sexual violence. The film was banned by
several UK and US local authorities. The film was also
banned in Portugal (from 1972 to 1973) and in Italy
(from 1972 to 1987), with federal authorities there filing
five separate charges against named participants in the
production, including lead actors Marlon Brando and
Maria Schneider.
An explicit rape is part of the extreme horrors of The
Evil Dead, with a woman assaulted by trees in a possessed
forest. This scene was originally left uncut by the British
censor but later removed: the chief censor, James
Ferman, said ‘‘initially we did not think anybody would
identify with a tree.’’ In Germany the film was originally
banned for having violated the ‘‘dignity of humankind.’’
It was not until 1992 that the decision was overturned,
with the German High Court ruling that the zombies
in the film were not human and therefore their dignity
had not been violated. Key guidelines exist within film
censorship regarding screen violence. In the United
Kingdom the censor is most concerned with what is
known as the process shot, the point at which the weapon
makes contact with the victim’s body. The shots prior to
this, showing the wielding of the weapon, are known as
the ‘‘occasion’’; the shots that follow, depicting the effect
of the action, are known as the ‘‘price.’’ The employment
of ‘‘everyday implements’’ in violence is a concern, with
the slasher film The Burning (1981) first receiving cuts
for its explicit process shots and then later banned on
video for its scenes of mutilation and harm using garden
shears. Censors are also concerned by ‘‘overkill,’’ or the
repeated use of a weapon on a victim, and by its being
tugged or twisted. There is also the issue of ‘‘personalized
violence’’: in a film such as Cliffhanger (1993), attacks on
Sylvester Stallone’s character were subject to more cuts
because of the audience’s assumed empathy with the lead
actor.
SEE ALSO Horror Films; Pornography; Religion;
Sexuality; Spectatorship and Audiences; Violence
FURTHER READING
Bernstein, Matthew, ed. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and
Regulation in the Studio Era. London: Athlone Press, 2000.
Black, Gregory D. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics,
and the Movies. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
Conrich, Ian, and Julian Petley, eds. ‘‘Forbidden British
Cinema.’’ Special issue of Journal of Popular British Cinema 2
(2000).
Couvares, Francis G., ed. Movie Censorship and American
Culture. Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1996.
Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and
Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999.
Lewis, Jon. Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over
Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. New York and
London: New York University Press, 2000.
Lyons, Charles. The New Censors: Movies and the Culture Wars.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.
Mathews, Tom Dewe. Censored. London: Chatto and Windus,
1994.
Petrie, Ruth, ed. Film and Censorship: The Index Reader. London
and Washington, DC: Cassell, 1997.
Robertson, James C. The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship
in Action, 1913–1975. London and New York: Routledge,
1989.
Sova, Dawn B. Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125
Motion Pictures. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001.
Ian Conrich
244 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM