Censorship in Theatre and Cinema (review)

This study of censorship in England's Lord Chamberlain's Office and the British Board of Film Classification traces the use of "decency" as a qualifying factor in approving or banning plays and films. The authors' study closely analyzes almost thirty works that became both films and plays, ranging from the more popularly known Alfie and Look Back in Anger to lesser-known works whose merits, in their own time, were heatedly debated. Using correspondence from the Lord Chamberlain's Office (LCO) released in the 1990s and archival materials from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), Aldgate and Robertson have carefully reconstructed the process that each work, as a play and as a film, went through as it negotiated the terrain of censorship.

The introduction outlines legal precedents dictating the purview of the LCO and BBFC, beginning with the 1737 statute decreeing the Lord Chamberlain's power in approving or rejecting every play to be seen on English public stages, and continuing with clarifying recommendations made by Parliament in 1909 to watch for a myriad of specific offenses, including plays that were "considered indecent," "violated religious reverence," or "encouraged crime or vice" (1). Aldgate and Robertson's study parses through how the LCO and the later BBFC—created to serve as the film industry's own internal censorship mechanism—interpreted these standards throughout the first half of the twentieth century, primarily from the second through the sixth decades.

Subsequent chapters are organized by theme, each focusing on censorship of a different nature. After the introductory chapter, the second, "Sex Matters," details the suppression of explicit sexuality as evidenced through depictions of sexually transmitted diseases, prostitution, and other details deemed too salacious for their respective times. The third chapter "Foreign Affairs" discusses plays and films censored due to British foreign relations contemporary to the production of the work. Although the relevance of current events to the censorship of plays and films is made apparent throughout the book, this chapter in particular points out the importance of a nation's political mood to the censorship of its art. Highlighted in this chapter are case studies of a 1919 film and 1920 play called Auction of Souls; both sought to criticize the Turkish government and its treatment of Armenians during a time of serious tension between the British and Turkish governments. Here, as with the other case study from the chapter—a film and play both titled Dawn, depicting the factually based story of a British nurse executed by Germans in 1915—the British Foreign Office involved itself in the censorship process to ensure that changes were made to protect tenuous foreign relations.

Chapters 4–6 take up "the quest for quality" in representations of women, juvenile delinquency, and homosexuality, respectively. Through these three chapters, case studies examine why the film versions of works discussed received a British "X" rating, limiting them to adult viewers only, similar to the contemporary "R" rating in the United States. Here, the authors demonstrate the ways in which accusations of "indecency" and "encouragement of crime and vice" were used to award this most restrictive film rating and make further demands for the excision of everything from single words to entire scenes and, in some cases, major plot points. Of particular importance to these chapters were efforts made by parties on both sides of the negotiations to keep discussions of censorship out of the public eye, as the larger public, represented in the book through mainstream reviews of featured plays and films, was adverse to the machinations of the LCO and BBFC.

Another important focal point of the book is the way in which, without changing the language of the law, the standards of acceptability changed over time. Chapter 7, titled "From the 'Angry' Fifties to the 'Swinging' Sixties," looks at the ways this shift occurred over a span of two decades, given the social changes of the time. Of special interest is the authors' use of LCO and BBFC...