How Effective Is Censorship On The General Public

Superior Essays
William Rice
Mrs. Garrett
English 12-3
3 February 2016
Censorship in Entertainment
How effective is censorship on the general public? Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts. It also helps parents keep track of what their children watch or play. It is proven that it is better to have censorship on music, games, and movies because what most kids see they want to try.
In 1907, Chicago, the second biggest film market at the time, gave the chief of police the power to issue and deny permits for movie exhibition based on the moral grounds – making it one of the first municipalities to begin exercising censorship over movie content ("Censorship in Movies."). Mayor George B McClellan
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Movies were being hit where it hurt – in the box office. Something had to be done. The People’s Institute, one of the few reform groups that didn’t see the movies as “evil” offered up a solution – They brought together ten other reform groups including the Federation of Churches, the Women’s Municipal League, and the Society for the Prevention of Crime to create a new organization called the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship in 1909("Censorship in Movies.").

Censorship is important! Over the media, Pop and Rock music are one of the most heard genres of music. Songs about sex, drugs and partying has become a lot more common, so the lyrics have become more offensive to the listeners ear. There are many ways to censor music, such as beeping, disc scratching, skipping, distorting and many more. But these techniques are
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The entertainment industry is an area where censorship is present in the most visible form. Theater and film affect the common interest of the public and are hence subject to certain types of governmental regulation. But attempts to regulate or censor films often interfere with the free speech rights of playwrights, screenwriters, filmmakers, performers, and distributors ("Censorship."). In Ginsberg v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is lawful to censor obscene entertainment to safeguard children from pornography and to protect adults from unknowingly or involuntarily viewing indecent materials. Although it was laid down in Stanley v. Georgia by the Supreme Court that individuals are permitted to view obscenity in the privacy of their homes, in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton it was held that theaters and movie houses are public places and are therefore subject to regulation. However the difficulty with such censorship is in determining the boundary line between “obscene” and “non-obscene” ("Censorship."). An attempt at defining what constitutes an obscene matter was undertaken by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California. The Supreme Court in the case concluded that a work is obscene and can be regulated if it appeals to a

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