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2016 Wis. L. Rev. Forward 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/wlron4 and id is 1 raw text is: FORBIDDEN FILMS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT JEREMY GELTZER* The story of film and the First Amendment charts a steady course toward creative freedom. Within one hundred years, motion pictures developed from a fairground attraction into an art form, and from a revolutionary technology into an industrially produced mass media. More accessible to large audiences and more powerful in delivering a message than any previous medium, the movies quickly transcended their origins as a penny-parlor amusement to become an important cultural influencer. During the first decade of the twentieth century a web of local and regional film censors crisscrossed the country. These regulators intended to protect the morals of their communities, but the effects of their activism created a patchwork of inconsistent standards. Harry Aitken, President of the Mutual Film Corporation, was one of the first film producers to challenge the state's authority to censor and delay his pictures. But Aitken was less of a First Amendment warrior than a practical businessman. As he saw it, regional censorship was holding up his company's time-sensitive newsreels. He questioned the state's authority to regulate motion picture content. By 1915 Aitken had an answer, but it wasn't the result he had hoped for. In Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio' the Supreme Court unanimously held that motion pictures did not qualify for First Amendment protections.2 The Court's reasoning hinged on * Adapted from chapter 18, Is Censorship Necessary?, of Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment by Jeremy Geltzer, published by the University of Texas Press (January 2016), http://www.utexaspress.com/index.php/ books/geltzer-dirty-words-and-filthy-pictures. The author can be contacted at mrgeltzer@gmail.com. 1. 236 U.S. 230 (1915). 2. Id. at 244-45.

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