Banned in Kansas.

Banned in Kansas

Gerald R. Butters, Jr.

University of Missouri Press

2910 LeMone Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201

9780826217493, $44.95 www.umsystem.edu/upress 1-800-828-1894

Gerald R. Butters, Jr. (Associate Professor of History at Aurora University) presents Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship 1915-1966. In 1915, Kansas was one of a handful of states that established its own film censorship board. From limiting depictions of sexuality to censoring violence in the 1932 classic "Scarface", the Kansas board controlled what the state's population saw on the silver screen for over fifty years. Banned in Kansas explores the political, social, and economic factors that led to the policy of movie censorship in Kansas, the attitudes of ordinary Kansas citizens toward the censorship, and why censorship continued for so many decades. Banned in Kansas also scrutinizes the daily operations of the film censorship board, and the complexities it encountered with regard to shifting definitions of cultural morality, as well as vagaries of political and legal systems. Black-and-white stills from censored movies illustrate this informed and informative contribution to American cinema history.