Film and TV Ratings in the Streaming Age
We've got Netflix, AppleTV, YouTube, and Prime literally in the palms of our hands. Do conventional movie and television rating systems matter to us?
Banning The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 California
The Kern County, CA Board of Supervisors got a lesson in the Streisand Effect back in 1939, when they banned The Grapes of Wrath from their libraries and schools.
Censoring Ulysses
In reviewing the UK Home Office files on James Joyce's Ulysses, a historian found baffled officials afraid to bring more attention to it.
Would You Let Your Servant Read This Book?
How the ban on D. H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover was reversed.
Lydia Maria Child and the American Way of Censorship
Facing ostracism by literary elites and attacks from pro-slavery mobs, an abolitionist blunted her politics.
Parental Advisory: The Story of a Warning Label
Songs weren't always labeled for explicit lyrics. The history of how it all came about includes some unlikely bedfellows.
Censorship Leaves Us in the Dark
Books and other art are often censored for covertly racist reasons.
The End of American Film Censorship
The Hays Code, a censorship system that saw movies as "business, pure and simple," kept Hollywood on a short leash... until a 1952 Supreme Court decision declared it unconstitutional.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Words?
Censorship isn't just redacted text and banned words. What happens when censorship is furtive, flying under the radar as much as possible?
The New Censorship
Americans will rail against the government at First Amendment infringements. But the government isn't the only entity that can censor speech or ideas.