1 - The Road to Classification

Summary

Few mass media have been subject to such consistently fervent regulation as has cinema. The history of film censorship shows its modes and practices varying radically over time but remaining remarkably steadfast. From the inception of the medium, film was perceived by many as posing a potential threat to the moral well-being of its audiences, linked first and foremost to its primarily visual means of communication. As Thomas Doherty observes, motion picture morality had been monitored by guardians of civic virtue since the chaste peck between middle-aged lovebirds in Edison Studio's The Kiss (1896): “For progressive reformers and cultural conservatives who beheld the embryonic medium the potential for social damage and moral blight, the products of the motion picture industry warranted regulation and prohibition as a public health measure” (“Code” 6).

The first broad-scale organized attempt to implement social control of motion pictures took place in Ontario, Canada, in the form of the Ontario Theatres and Cinematographs Act of 1911. Enacted in March of that year, it led to the formation of the Ontario Censorship Board on June 27, predating both the formation of short-lived State Censor Boards in America later that year and the establishment of the British Board of Film Classification in 1912. Under the chairmanship of George G. Armstrong, the exceedingly broad evaluative criteria provided to the Ontario Board noted, “No picture of an immoral or obscene nature or depicting a crime or reproducing a prize fight shall be exhibited” (qtd. in Report 484). Given that it took until 2005 for the Ontario government to begin legislatively limiting the extent to which it would prohibit “mainstream” films from entering the public market, Ontario can be seen as serving Western cinematic censorship practices both as incubator and hospice. The explicit prohibition of “prize fight” reproductions in the Ontario Theatres and Cinematographs Act exemplifies the sometimes-peculiar subjects of focus in these earliest attempts at organized censorship (in the following year, Australia would issue a ban on any film involving “bushrangers”—escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia—a prohibition which lasted for thirty years [McKenzie 54]).