Indecent Detroit – Race, Sex, and Censorship in the Motor City

Ben Strassfeld

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English

Indiana University Press
05 December 2023

Media studies; Ethical issues: censorship; Ethical issues: pornography & obscenity

While Detroit has been a major focus in urban history, little has been written on censorship in the very city that--due to shifting legalities, the urban crisis, and racial tensions--profoundly shaped media suppression in the United States.

By examining censorship in film and literature, Indecent Detroit recounts the evolution of media control from the end of WWII through the 1970s, when the US saw a major change in the legal mechanisms used to censor media due to court rulings that curtailed censorship laws. Ben Strassfeld reveals how Detroit altered its censorial tactics and rhetoric from an obscenity-based system of censorship centered in the Detroit Police Department to a regulatory model based in zoning law that was then expanded nationwide. This shift was connected to broader social and political trends, including the sexual revolution, that led the public to increasingly turn against censorship.

A must-read for film and media scholars, Indecent Detroit highlights how one Midwest city's ordinance was imitated across the country after it was upheld by the US Supreme Court, making this more than a local curiosity but also an influential model for the cultural, political, and moral control of urban space through media regulation.

By: Ben Strassfeld
Imprint: Indiana University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 666g
ISBN: 9780253067845
ISBN 10: 0253067847
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 05 December 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

"Acknowledgments Introduction 1. ""Burn the House to Roast the Pig"": Literary Censorship and Juvenile Delinquency 2. ""We're Not Really Censors"": The (Il-)Legality of Detroit Police Movie Censorship 3. ""The Blight of Indecency"": Anti-Porn Politics and the Urban Crisis in Detroit 4. Topless Detroit: Regulating Industry and Exotic Dance 5. Erogenous Zoning: The Creation and Dispersal of the ""Detroit Model"" Epilogue: The Election of Coleman Young and the Politics of Pornography and Race Bibliography Index"

Ben Strassfeld is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Queens College, City University of New York.

Reviews for Indecent Detroit – Race, Sex, and Censorship in the Motor City

"""This is a book I've long been waiting for, one that moves beyond the rarefied histories of case law and intellectual theorizations of free speech to tell the story from the bottom up. . . . This is a major contribution to multiple scholarly fields, which also speaks to key debates of our own day about freedom of speech and expression.""--Whitney Strub, author of Obscenity Rules"