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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Movies provide backdrop to free-speech battles

Jeremy Geltzer

The First Amendment is under siege. Free speech zones at universities threaten to stifle debate and chill discussion. Even in the White House speech police have left their mark. When the president of France uttered a certain phrase, a video feed cut the offending expression.

These developments should concern all Americans. In recent decades free speech has been a cornerstone of American democracy. But it was not always so. Even in Washington state, government regulators held a tight grip on public discourse.

In the 1900s, the first mass media emerged and government regulators focused a sharp eye on motion pictures. Spokane’s police began monitoring nickelodeons as early as 1910 looking for naughty pictures. By 1913, Spokane’s mayor banned a film teaching tango steps, commenting, “I won’t let my daughter do those dances.”

Sexually charged police procedurals have been crowd pleasers for a hundred years. In Seattle, a thriller entitled “Smashing the Vice Trust” (1914) was confiscated from theaters even though the docudrama featured scenes of New York’s district attorney in action issuing warrants. Tacoma’s censors banned titillating titles including “Sapho” (1913) and “Undine” (1916), two films that contained nudity and a prostitution-police drama entitled “Who’s Your Neighbor?” (1917).

Each of these movies was censored based on arbitrary reactions. In 1917, Washington enacted a formal film censorship ordinance. This law granted state authorities the power to pull pictures that were indecent, immoral, obscene, lewd, lascivious or harmful to the public.

Under the ordinance, Howard Hughes’ racy western “The Outlaw” was shut down in 1946. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” was cut in 1948. It wasn’t until Seattle theater owner James Selvidge pushed the envelope at his Ridgemont Theater that censors were challenged. Selvidge programmed spicy European films, bringing Brigitte Bardot’s swinging hips to the screen in “And God Created Women.” As films became more explicit, authorities closed in on the art house.

At first, the state relied on obscenity laws to reign in unacceptable content. But as films were challenged in court, the laws were declared unconstitutional. Shifting strategy, authorities navigated around content to focus on the location of undesirable theaters with zoning laws.

This new strategy failed at first. When Richland censors attempted to shut down a softcore adaptation of Bizet’s opera entitled “Carmen, Baby” the authorities didn’t get far. Judge Frank Little commented, “It seems to me the major crime involved would be petty larceny for charging people admission to see it.” The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and overruled the state statute in Rabe v. Washington.

But zoning turned out to be a winning strategy, not silencing undesirable speech but condemning it to less accessible locations. When theater owners challenged zoning in Renton v. Playtime Theatres, the Supreme Court shifted and sided with the city. The municipal ordinance was seen as a valid method of regulating adult content.

Washington state discovered that suppressing speech might violate the First Amendment, but the strategy of corralling unwanted communications could address the same problem. And this is the issue with Free Speech zones. By labeling certain expression and condemning it to specific areas, authorities may chill undesirable opinions while sidestepping constitutional protections.

Debate can be silenced under our noses if we do not remain vigilant and question the motives of sanctioned zones for certain speech.

Jeremy Geltzer is the author of “Dirty Words & Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment.”