Article ID: CBB439203153

Darwin on the Cutting-Room Floor: Evolution, Religion, and Film Censorship (2019)

unapi

In the mid-twentieth century, film studios sent their screenplays to the Hays Office, Hollywood’s official censorship body, and to the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency for approval and recommendations for revision. This essay examines how filmmakers crafted stories involving evolutionary biology and how religiously motivated movie censorship groups modified these cinematic narratives in order to depict what they considered to be more appropriate visions of humanity’s origins. I find that censorship groups were concerned about the perceived impact of science fiction cinema on the public’s belief systems and on the wider cultural meanings of evolution. By controlling the stories told about evolution in science fiction cinema, censorship organizations believed that they could regulate the broader cultural meanings of evolution itself. But this is not a straightforward story of “science” versus “religion.” There were significant differences among these groups as to how to censor evolution, as well as changes in their attitudes toward evolutionary content over time. As a result, I show how censorship groups adopted diverse perspectives, depending on their perception of what constituted a morally appropriate science fiction story about evolution.

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Article Amanda Rees; Iwan Rhys Morus (2019) Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 1-15). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB439203153/

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Authors & Contributors
Enza Del Tedesco
Stuart Joy
Terence McSweeney
Wimsatt, William C.
Wiesenfeldt, Gerhard
Sharp, Patrick B.
Concepts
Science and culture
Motion pictures; cinema; movies
Science fiction
Evolution
Science and religion
Biology
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
18th century
Republic of Venice (697–1797)
Places
United States
Italy
Great Britain
Venice (Italy)
Germany
France
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