Censored is a podcast for the filthy minded. Explore banned films, books, magazines, newspapers and cinema like a smut-obsessed censor.
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Censored is a podcast for the filthy minded. Explore banned films, books, magazines, newspapers and cinema like a smut-obsessed censor.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In our last (for now) episode, we chat to John Kelleher who was appointed Irish film censor in 2003. When he left in 2009, the Irish Film Censor's Office had been renamed the Irish Film Classification Office, a reform that reflected how it had become, as John says 'more guide dog than guard dog'.
Until the pod returns, thanks to everyone for listening!
A & LM xx
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Censors have been replaced by classifiers, opaque silence by annual reports. We read recent annual reports from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and the Irish Film Classification Office (IFCO) to see how those offices work in a digital media age, and to see what the (complaining) public thinks of their role.
Films mentioned
Minions: the Rise of Gru
Ghostbusters
Watership Down
Bambi
Star Trek the Motion Picture
Nutcracker (by Matthew Bourne)
The Batman
Batman Returns
A Man Called Otto
The Banshees of Inisherin
Saltburn
Cocaine Bear
Benedetta
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This remarkable neo-noir, directed by Abel Ferrara, has never been certified by the Irish Film Classification Office (the new name for the censor’s office). Aoife and Lloyd Meadhbh are joined by author Rob Doyle to discuss how Abel Ferrara and Zoe Lund, with backgrounds in porno sleaze, made a sincere film about redemption, and forgiveness.
Bad Lieutenant dir. Abel Ferrara, starring Harvey Keitel
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In Sam Peckinpah’s film, standard Western tropes – outlaws, heroes, beautiful landscape – are used to interrogate an exhausted genre. He knows spectacular gunfights are problematic but did the cut version shown in Ireland convey Peckinpah’s intent?
The Wild Bunch, dir Sam Peckinpah, starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine
Support us and Merch!
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One of Martin Scorsese’s favourite films and guess what? We agree, it’s brilliant. Contemporary audiences detested it, preferring to ignore why they derived pleasure from realistic, filmed torture and terror. This film has everything from Freudianism to a Hitchcock doppelganger. Cuts made by censors might be lost forever but it still shocks and gives us a perfect amount of ick.
Peeping Tom (1960) dir. Michael Powell, starring Karlheinz Boehm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer
Psycho (1960) dir. Alfred Hitchcock, starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh.
The Red Shoes (1948) dir. Powell and Pressburger, starring Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer.
And, Merch
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A horror fan (Lloyd Meadhbh) and not-a-horror fan (Aoife) agree that this unexpectedly feminist film did not deserve to be banned twice in Ireland. Caveat: Roman Polanski directed it.
Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski) starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes
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Ties, suits and sex - Paul Schrader's exploration of consumerism and Richard Gere's hotness was pruned of bad language and "sex scenes" by the Irish censor.
American Gigolo (1980, dir. Paul Schrader) starring Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Bill Duke, Hector Elizondo
You Must Remember This on American Gigolo
More on Aoife's Gere-athon for Patreon supporters
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What’s the worst celluloid crime committed in The Evil Dead: excessive violence or Bruce Campbell’s fringe? Lloyd Meadhbh (a fan) tries to persuade Aoife (a sceptic) to embrace this video-nasty classic. Also, listener correspondence on The Rocky Road to Dublin.
The Evil Dead (dir. Sam Rami, 1981) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083907/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_6_tt_8_nm_0_q_evil%2520dead
Evil Dead II (dir. Sam Rami, 1987) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092991/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_7_tt_8_nm_0_q_evil%2520dead%2520
Weird Studies Podcast on ‘Evil Dead II’ https://www.weirdstudies.com/136
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Lloyd Meadhbh rewinds the tape back to the 1980s, when a new film medium caused a new (ish) moral panic.
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How revolutionary was Ireland anyway? Journalist and director Peter Lennon asked how a nation birthed by rebels seemed to be run by Catholic priests. His caustic script allied to Raoul Coutard's captivating cinematography made for a unique documentary. We discuss odd accents, cheeky children and creepy priests.
The Rocky Road to Dublin (1967, re-released by IFI in 2004) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66JpC_T3wFM
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Did you know DIY censorship was practiced by those outside the film censor’s office. Even after official censors vetted publicity material, some film posters showed too much skin, especially male arms and legs.
Liam O’Leary collected this material
Kevin Rockett Irish Film Censorship: a cultural journey from silent cinema to internet pornography (2004)
Doctored film posters can be seen here
Original, undoctored film posters:
The Virgin Soldiers (1969) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065182/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
The Hustler (1961) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054997/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_8_nm_0_q_the%2520hust
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066016/
From Here to Eternity (1953) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_from%2520here
The Chastity Belt/On My Way To The Crusades I Met A Girl Who (1967) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0064167/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2_tt_4_nm_4_q_chastity%2520belt
A Cold Wind in August (1961) https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0054755/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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Ken Russell's The Devils is definitely a film for us. Satanism, orgies, exorcisms - what's not to love? And it's a complicated censorship story of different cuts for different censors.
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Banned, appealed, cut eleven times: The Graduate (1967) had a torrid time in Ireland. What narrative were Irish audiences allowed to see? And, Mrs Robinson, we stan.
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A film beloved by our hosts that proved too much for the Irish censor. Was it Liza Minnelli's (as Sally Bowles) legs or men fancying other men? The answer is quite surprising. But then, so is writing a musical about genocide.
Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972)
Help keep the show on the road (Over 18s only because 'smut' is censored)
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Lloyd Meadhbh explains Northern Ireland’s special censorship sauce to Aoife. There’s cross-border agreement, even more censors than usual and a bit of flogging.
Films:
Ulster the Garden of Eden (1930), tourist authority of NI
Frankenstein (1931, dir James Whale)
Ourselves Alone (1936, dir Brian Desmond Hurst, Walter Summers) Released in the US as Rivers of Unrest https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028071/
The Informer (1935, dir John Ford)
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War brings propaganda, and that means censorship. What happens if war is denied in favour of an 'Emergency'?
We unpick why Betty Grable's legs were withdrawn from Irish cinema screens in 1941.
A Yank in the RAF (1941, dir. Henry King) starring Betting Grable, Tyrone Power and John Sutton
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Aoife's working title was 'Wildcard' – we went on a journey through vice-ridden streets (and garages) of Dublin city in 1954.
Films:
Smart Alec (1951) US 'stag' film starring Candy Barr
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How did the Irish censor feel about Biblical epics? And how could a convent have ‘a sex atmosphere’?
Where we discuss Mary Magdalene’s gold bikini and dangerously smouldering Englishmen. But also, Elvis.
Films:
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We investigate ‘It’, a type of sex appeal that raised the temperatures of cinema goers and censors in the 1930s. ‘It’ was personified in the screen personas of Clara Bow and Mae West but did you know that tigers and Derry also have ‘It’?
‘It’ (1927) directed by Clarence G Badger and Josef von Sternberg, starring Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno
‘She Done Him Wrong’ (1933) dir. Lowell Sherman, starring Mae West and Cary Grant.
‘I’m No Angel’ (1933) dir. Wesley Ruggless, starring Mae West and Cary Grant.
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Film censorship in Ireland is a hundred years old today. What were Irish cinema goers watching in 1923, and what would the Censor keep them from watching in the future? Find out in this bumper birthday episode.
· Discover which elderly TD was the most avid cinema goer in parliament.
· Find out why soft carpets were an issue for one Deputy Film Censor.
· Learn how the Mothers’ Union compared cinema to demonic possession.
· Welcome our new ‘Censorship Bingo’ card: the ‘Don’ts’ and ‘Be Carefuls’ list.
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Why would Irish censors object to a satire of the English upper-classes? They probably wouldn’t but Arlen wrote something far creepier. With Dr Laura Ludtke.
Laura's previous turn on this pod
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There’s lots of indecency in this memoir – vile racism, horrific violence – but readers shouldn’t be protected from Wright’s rage and bitterness.
Supreme Court case featuring 'Black Boy'
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What do you do when you’ve read a lot of smutty books? Watch dirty films, of course. This season is about films that annoyed the censors. And, to double your fun, there are now two hosts: Aoife Bhreatnach and Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston. Here’s a taste of what to expect from us.
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When Patrick Mulloy, author of Jackets Green, heard his book was banned he did something unusual – he sued for libel. But why was this censorship trial held in London? This is a true crime special, but with banned books instead of dead bodies.
Read about the violent 1920s here https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/ireland-1922/
Síobhra Aiken, Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War (2022)
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Mae West is remembered for her cracking one-liners but she was a helluva writer too. Guest: Dr Muireann O’Cinnéide.
Muireann’s previous censored appearance
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A prolific novelist and memoirist, Ethel Mannin cleverly smuggled lots of controversial ideas into this best-selling autobiography.
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Written by a woman (and her ghost writer) hiding in an Italian villa to escape the paparazzi, this is a short, sometimes shocking memoir.
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Let Box-Car Bertha show you the American underworld, where the homeless and rootless struggle to survive. An uncensored story that, unsurprisingly, was censored.
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One of many books about the First World War on the censor’s blacklist, this one claims to offer a new, fresh perspective about the British army. But how much truth can a memoir written by ‘anonymous’ tell? With Dr Andrew Frayn.
Andrew Frayn & Fiona Houston, The War Books Boom in Britain
‘WAAC: the Woman’s Story of the War’ (1930)
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Written by an old man reflecting on his life in sex, this notorious memoir was banned almost everywhere.
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Frank Harris, ‘My Life and Loves, Volume One’ (1922)
Previous episodes mentioned here:
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What happens when an Irishman whose dramas offended audiences writes an autobiography? The state censors ban it.
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A deep dive into the wonderful world of classified advertisements. You could buy nearly anything through Exchange and Mart: dogs, chickens, clothing. But if you look very closely, you can see why the censors decided it was ‘habitually and frequently indecent’.
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Isadora Duncan was an artist who lived (and died) in an extraordinary manner. Her autobiography tells how she conceived a radical dance manifesto while partying across Europe.
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Why did a children’s picture book provoke new form of censorship in Britain?
Queer Ephemera:
A Different Country (RTÉ, 11 June 2021) https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/a-different-country/207293480017
Pages from the book here:
https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/06/1983-book-jenny-lives-with-eric-and-martin/
https://corklgbtarchive.com/
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For the first time on the podcast, it’s a publication that’s still banned in Ireland! According to Register of Prohibited Publications, Health and Efficiency is ‘unwholesome literature’. Naturally, we want to know precisely how this magazine is corrupting and degrading its readers. With Prof Annebella Pollen.
Here’s today's 'blacklist'
Annebella Pollen, Nudism in a Cold Climate: the Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th Century Britain (2021)
Annebella’s article in Health and Efficiency
Throughout the thirties in Britain, when Nudism was becoming more acceptable and even fashionable, there was a boom in nudist magazines and Health and Efficiency was one of the most popular. Annebella Pollen
This magazine was being sold to people who were enjoying looking at other people's bodies rather than rejoicing in the perfection of their own. Aoife Bhreatnach
You've given me an ambition to go to the British Library and sit in the naughty section. Aoife Bhreatnach
In Health and Efficiency magazine and other kind of naturist publications from the 1920s through to about 1970, they had really restrictive laws in Britain about what body parts could be shown and how. Annebella Pollen
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A train that could whisk its passengers across borders and into each other’s arms was definitely too dangerous for the censors. With Juliette Breton.
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When Walter Macken dedicated his first novel to his Mammy, Agnes, he did not expect the censors to declare it ‘obscene’. How does a social-problem novel by a good Catholic offend the official arbiters of taste?
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Hailed as ‘Dirty Book of the Month’ by Time in 1966, this novel was an instant bestseller. But not in Ireland, where it was illegal to sell it between 1967 and 1979. What does this classic of women’s fiction have to say about feminism, sex and medicine? With Dr Cara Rodway.
Films adaptations of the novel:
Valley of the Dolls (1967, dir. Mark Robson)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, dir. Russ Meyer)
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This is the first banned book I’ve read that features both a foot fetish and communism. Gibbons writes satire so entrancing it’s can be hard to spot the filth but if the censors could do it, so could we. Or maybe the bewitching Englishness of the novel was too dangerous? With Dr Laura Ludtke.
Dr Laura Ludtke’s LitSci podcast
Previous Censored episodes that link to this novel: Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Powys, 'Mr Weston's Good Wine' (1927)
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Hundreds of magazine titles were banned by the Irish censor. This true-crime periodical, full of murder and gangsterism, couldn’t avoid being banned for discussing crime. But advertising ‘daring’ and ‘frank’ books didn’t help either.
The edition read for this episode is June 1930 https://archive.org/details/TrueDetectiveJune1930/mode/2up?view=theater
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When Maura Laverty gently pointed out that Irish villages simmered with perverted lust, her novel was immediately censored. Or maybe it was her pointed criticism of the state that offended the censors.
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The pro-censorship lobby produced a rich and often hilarious polemic. Dr Lloyd (Maedhbh) Houston joins me to talk effluent, tainted minds and ‘race suicide’. We also debate whether censorship was more of a moral panic than a conspiracy theory.
Browse censorship debates online https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/?debateType=dail
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The most memorable scandals in Irish life feature a fulminating bishop and this is no exception. This brief controversy is infamous but why do we find it so compelling? Dr Morgan Wait joins me to talk about television and titillation in 1960s Ireland.
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Theatre riots might capture the imagination but audiences, critics and authority figures shape theatre in other less dramatic ways. Guest Dr Barry Houlihan talks about his new book Theatre and archival memory: Irish drama and marginalised histories 1951-77 (2022)
· Reading a banned book is a private thing while theatre-going is a public political act.
· Theatre is a way of dismantling the mechanics of the state and church.
· Theatres are institutions in their own way – they can have set audiences that they cater for and don’t want to lose.
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When tax payers pay for libraries, librarians have a duty to ‘the public’. Defining that public isn’t easy, especially when priests, pressure groups and politicians get involved.
· Being an arbiter of taste and decency was a tough job and nobody appreciated it.
· The censorship mentality was still deeply embedded in a prudish and hypocritical society
· He proceeded to tear up the books, pile them on the floor, take out a bottle of paraffin and a box of matches from his pocket.
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Moving pictures (de filums) were heavily censored but the state didn’t officially scrutinise other visual art forms. Censure by covert means was the preferred method to control subversive art. Guest: Dr Róisín Kennedy author of Art and the nation state: the reception of modern art in Ireland (2021)
· Part of the emotional response comes from a sense that modern art is conning us, hoodwinking us. Dr Róisín Kennedy
· Censorship culture made access to visual art elitist. Dr Róisín Kennedy
· The production of art in Ireland was directly affected by censorship in that artists produced landscapes as opposed to nudes. Dr Róisín Kennedy
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Harry Clarke ‘Geneva Window’ https://artsandculture.google.com/story/harry-clarke%E2%80%99s-geneva-window-and-the-irish-free-state-the-wolfsonian-florida-international-university/QgXRl5iSZDgXIQ?hl=en
George Rouault ‘Christ and the Soldier’ (1930)
https://www.facebook.com/thehughlane/photos/a.142685499153995/4103076829781489/?type=3
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Everyone wanted a piece of Roger Casement but which piece? Carefully extracting his skeleton from heavy London mud in 1965 didn’t end the controversy over his life and lusts.
· The treatment of Casement’s dead body was exceptionally cruel, even by the standards of executed prisoners.
· Why are all our significant national events in March? Is there some penitential impulse forcing us to suffer for our patriotism?
· After the burial of the great man in 1965, there little hope of anyone in Ireland reading his raunchy diaries, whether published or not.
· The Roger Casement in the diaries is having great fun and that, more than anything, upsets people.
Some Reading:
Lucy McDiarmid ‘The Afterlife of Roger Casement’ in The Irish Art of Controversy (2005)
Jeffrey Dudgeon, Roger Casement: The Black Diaries (3rd edition, 2019)
‘Notes on the Exhumation of Roger Casement’s Remains’ in Documents on Irish Foreign Policy 1961-65 vol 12
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The scandal over Roger Casement’s diaries is huge. People have spent millions of hours of obsessing over whether diaries allegedly found in his personal papers were forgeries or not. It’s past time I read the smut and examined the censure of the man and his writings.
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Liam O’Flaherty was the angriest Irish author of his generation who raged against ‘soutaned witch-doctors’ (Catholic priests). He believed his outspokenness provoked social censure so severe that his work could not be found anywhere in Ireland. Guest: Teresa Dunne
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Although The Bell published fiction and factual pieces on topics the censors hated, such as single motherhood or gay desire, it was never banned. Unfortunately, only a determined few read a magazine that was not on open sale in every newsagent. Guest: Phyllis Boumans Phyllis.boumans@kuleuven.be
· The Bell tried to challenge the Catholic monomania by giving space to voices from different denominations.
· It really was a magazine by, for and about men.
· It tried to advocate for frank and honest treatment of taboo topics such as illegitimacy.
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In this episode we meet the Angelic Warfare Association, whose newspaper burning caused a stir in 1926 and 1927. Emulating protest burnings of previous decades, these young men targeted a British Sunday newspaper, the News of the World.
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Like many authors Brinsley McNamara wrote about the people of his homeplace. When his satirical vision shocked and offended his neighbours, they instigated a long boycott of the author’s family. A grim story of social censure in rural Ireland.
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After debating the play in part 1, myself and Dr Lloyd (Maedhbh) Houston move onto the riots. It’s a wild ride, from the grumblings on opening night to the full-throated disorder of the following week. We pay special attention to Mr Overcoat, whose drunken antics injected absurdity to a rambunctious protest.
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The Playboy Riots were a notoriously rowdy series of audience protests in the Abbey Theatre. The patrons were so offended by The Playboy of the Western World their loud singing and heckling drowned out the actors. Why did this play, at this time, provoke such a reaction? Part 1 of a deep-dive with Dr Lloyd (Maedhbh) Houston into an infamous moment in Irish cultural history.
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It is no mystery why this novel was banned: the previous two novels in The Country Girls trilogy were also blacklisted. But in this short, punchy novel, O’Brien attacked many sacred cows.
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How did a desert romance saturated with sex escape the censor’s attention? The novel, and later the film, were cultural phenomena: more than one cocktail recipe paid homage to The Sheik.
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Nothing got past the beady-eyes of the censors, who decided a book about literary celebrity was indecent. The vigilantes who policed the bookshops were equally sharp, initiating a prosecution when ‘Cakes and Ale’ was on sale openly.
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Scrutinised by two censorship boards, this novel is a moving exploration of lonely spinsterhood under patriarchal Catholicism.
I’ve always been fascinated by boarding houses because they are such marginal spaces in our residential landscape. Aoife Bhreatnach
Fr Quigley is one of Moore’s many critical representations of Catholic clergy. Sinéad Moynihan
It’s a really bleak novel, but it’s also an interesting portrayal of Belfast before the Troubles. Sinéad Moynihan
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‘Oh, James’ is a catchphrase from the Bond films, said by hot girls in breathy, sexy voices. When the love interest says it in ‘Diamonds are Forever’, she is disappointed. A bit like me, reading this book.
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This novel is the further adventures of Caithleen and her sidekick Baba in the big city, as they search for fun, love and a free meal. A sequel to ‘The Country Girls’ (1960) it was automatically banned by a board who hated its author.
· There was no such thing as a safe book. The Caithleens of Ireland – young women – were especially susceptible to notions.
· Caithleen’s independent life outside her father’s control can be snuffed out at his whim.
· The humour in the novel is really something, it’s magnificent.
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Information about contraception or ‘family planning’ was illegal under the censorship act but weirdly, the censors banned this booklet for being ‘indecent or obscene’. What followed was a lengthy legal battle and a dent in the authority of the mighty censor. With guest, Dr Laura Kelly.
‘The IFPA felt there was a huge need for this booklet in Ireland.’
‘What’s distinctly Irish about this is there’s no mention of things like abortion or sexual pleasure. You get those in British and American publications of the same time.’
‘It’s lovely to think that this little booklet changed so much.’
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What could be indecent in a novel about God as a travelling wine salesman? Apart from the blasphemy, there are dirty deeds done under the oak tree in Folly Down village.
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This ‘novel’ is an odd entry on the blacklist: why would censors in 1989 ban a publication from 1899? This antique erotica reveals a lot about 19th century kinks as well as the marketing strategies of smut merchants. Pity about the nauseating amounts of racism.
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Part 1 of a deep dive into the early work of Edna O’Brien, whose work has infuriated people since 1960. How did The Country Girls become one of the most notorious Irish novels of the 20th century? Blacklisting made this coming-of-age novel and it’s young author wildly famous. So many myths surround The Country Girls that it’s past time to read the novel for filth and rate its rudeness. With Dr Maureen O'Connor.
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This fine collection of stories about the Berlin’s bohemian underclass in Berlin probably annoyed the censors. If they had read it closely, the rent boys and loose women would have given them a collective coronary. Guest: Dr Jonathan Kemp
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Seán O’Faoláin’s love letter to his homeplace, Cork city, was singled out for censorship in 1936. Being blacklisted provoked his career-long critiques of the Irish state. Was this atmospheric, sometimes nostalgic novel banned because of its author or its content? Guest: Dr Paul Delaney.
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Doris Lessing's radical politics scared the government of more than one country. This semi-autobiographical novel features an angry, impatient teenager growing up amidst the racial conflict in Africa.
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This little book was so dangerous that the French, British and South African governments joined the Irish censors in banning it. The blunt honesty about sex and drugs caused a global moral panic about childhood and innocence.
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When it was published in America, this popular anthropology book made its author famous. The censors ignored it for nearly 20 years, until they banned it in 1944. Maybe they finally noticed that Mead praised horny teenage girls.
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With unparliamentary sex and a tug-of-love legal battle, 'Laura' was a bestseller in 1989. So why on earth was it before the censors in 2013? It seemed very silly then but it appears more sinister now.
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Errol Flynn embodied swashbuckling masculinity in Hollywood of the 1930s yet his dissipation killed him at 50. His memoir was marketed as salacious but how rude could it really be?
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Baum was a bestselling author of the 1930s who attracted the ire of the Irish censors. Helene is a romance about a struggling university student with a serious feminist message.
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How could this delicious literary parody be described as indecent? Only the Irish censors saw something nasty in a comic take on DH Lawrence and Jane Austen.
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James Joyce went way beyond smut when he wrote Ulysses, an epic modernist masterpiece. The censorship history of Ulysses is as mind boggling as the author’s bloody-minded determination to offend. In a bizarre twist, this filthy book was never banned in Ireland.
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The scrutiny of the censor was confined to the English language. But work in Irish, the other language of the state, were also censored by editors, bureaucrats and catholic reactionaries. No language was allowed to explore scandalous ‘sex feelings’.
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Outrage over banned books was rare but this scandal had it all: a persecuted artist, overbearing clerics and legal reform. The Dark (1965) was a powerful book that helped change the censorship system.
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When The Dark was banned in 1965, John McGahern became the focus of a censorship controversy. But what about this coming-of-age novel irked the censors?
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Hall's queer text was at the centre of an English moral panic and censorship show trial. Why did the Irish censor prohibit a book that was effectively banned in Ireland anyway?
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A censor called this book ‘unwholesome’ in parliament because it mentioned ‘sodomy’. But maybe O’Brien’s pointed criticism of nationalism was the real reason it was banned.
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An entertaining and elegant look at singledom in London that challenged censor's ideas on sex and conception.
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Wheatley was a successful popular-fiction writer who was censored five times in Ireland. This spy thriller with a dash of Satanism is stuffed with reactionary xenophobic nonsense.
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Only a truly paranoid censor would ban book this innocuous. But even barely there smut can give readers ideas...
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Why on earth was antique erotica, with its hilarious genital metaphors, censored in Ireland? This titillating text was officially 'obscene' for more than one hundred years.
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With nudity, leather and simulated sex of all varieties, Madonna tried to 'de-sin' sexual expression. This photographic book provoked over-reactions in Ireland, Britain, France and America.
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An uncensored book that was full of sex, violence and subterfuge. How did Broderick get away with writing about gay, republican freedom-fighters? I don't know for sure, but I'm going to speculate.
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O'Brien was that rare thing: an Irish writer who was never banned in Ireland. A book that was less a plot and more a conspiracy distracted the filthy-minded censors.
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JoS was a bestselling sex guide that captured the spirit of the 70s sexual revolution. Although banned in Ireland, it was openly on sale. This is a complicated story of prohibited publications and outraged readers.
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Why did the Irish censors ignore this spectacularly rude book? And why is this story of a sex-obsessed Jewish man so important in the history of censorship in Australia?
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What happens when a child meets a horned man in a dark forest? A book that explores the nature of evil and decides that sex isn’t the problem.
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A candid, haunting novel about the coming-of-age of a teenage girl. Full of decadent sexuality that would have given the censors a fit of the vapours.
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How did this subtle, refined war novel earn a ban? Perhaps faeces or war crimes were more offensive than barely-there sex.
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The Stud is more silly than sexy and it's not the finest example of a bonkbuster. Why on earth would such a trashy, ridiculous book be banned when the censor ignored serious literary sex?
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Holden Caulfield's swearing and sex talk has offended many since 1951. Now a modern classic, what explains the enduring appeal of this poor little rich kid story?
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Hoult was banned more often than any other Irish woman writer. Only a censor's beady eye can find filth in a novel about loneliness and dementia
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A love letter to Harlem and its music, this book offended all kinds of people. McKay's honesty about sex was brave and inflammatory
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A little book of folklore that became infamous. It was debated in parliament where nationalists denounced the elderly couple who were the subject of the book. But was the bull/cow story really that rude?
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I need to rant about Mary, one of many wronged women in 'The Ginger Man'. A confident woman with her own coalshed brought down by an abusive man.
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Even if the censors didn’t understand Beckett’s high-class smut, the lewd title was enough to get it banned. This short-story collection is stuffed with shit puns and blasphemy.
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The censor hated Keene’s pulp noir, banning his work many times. This taut thriller was full of violence but it was also a morality tale.
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Is it a book about a promiscuous wife, a pilgrimage or queer life in 1960s Ireland? Banned for indecency and blasphemy, Broderick's short novel is a multi-layered text.
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Endore combined violence and blasphemy in this classic of the werewolf genre. It’s hard to know whether the radical politics or freaky sex most offended the censor.
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America was horrified when the Kinsey report proved that women were sexually transgressive. Wallace’s book trashed Kinsey but it still too sexy for the Irish censor.
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Is it a subversive lesbian romance or a psychological thriller? The hetronormative censor saw a dangerous text with a 'general tendency to deprave'.
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Marie Stopes' sex manual was banned for 50 years. Her promotion of contraception was radical in 1918 but it remained too controversial for the Irish state until 1980.
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Was it literature or porn? With sex on nearly every page, it wasn’t surprising this Irish novel was banned for decades.
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A novel that explores gendered notions of sex and love with some dodgy sex metaphors.
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A Big House novel where ordered tennis parties are subverted by fucking in the fields and bondage in the basement.
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From great Irish writers to sex manuals, Aoife Bhreatnach will search for smut in ten more banned books. Season two will include dodgy sex metaphors and werewolves.
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Why is so hard to find sex in a book saturated with sexual tension? Trigger-happy censors overestimated the filth in this rich and inventive novel.
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One of the first books banned by the censor, this modernist classic is full of indecent and obscene ideas about sex.
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With a saucy cover showing lots of flesh, Hitt’s book was never going to be sold in Ireland. But did the text deliver on the smutty promise of the cover art?
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Why would a censor in 1964 worry about a book published more than a century earlier? Perhaps a Gothic horror story featuring fornicating nuns and priests was just too much.
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This classic American novel critiques marriage, gender roles and masculinity. Was it sex or reproductive choices that attracted the ire of the censor?
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Censored in America and Ireland, Catch-22 is a controversial modern classic. Does the shagging and violence titillate or make a point?
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Forever Amber is the original bonkbuster, whose commercial success led to Peyton Place (1956) and Riders (1985). Banned in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Massachusetts as indecent, it sold millions of copies in the 1940s. Restoration England was the perfect backdrop for a lush, romantic romp but does the book deliver smut galore?
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Was Jack Kerouac a pilgrim or self-obsessed misogynist? Featuring an indecent orgy in the name of religion, this book was censored in 1963.
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A story of three single girls navigating the dating scene in New York was censorship-worthy literature in 1958. This 52-year-old book was rediscovered after it featured in ‘Mad Men’. It's a classic, but is it smutty?
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What shenanigans did Brendan Behan get up to in prison and borstal between 1939 and 1941? He enjoyed baiting the Brits, warm cocoa, snuggly blankets and … other things. In this episode, I’ll tell you about the rude bits in a book whose banning in Ireland and Australia provoked derision.
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Filthy-minded historian and avid reader, Aoife Bhreatnach, searches censored books for smut, swearing and shagging. The Irish censor was infamous, banning 12,491 books and magazines between 1929 and 1998. Alongside the greats like Doris Lessing and Samuel Beckett were thousands of books, now mostly forgotten. Mediocre novels, sex manuals, true crime stories, pulp fiction, racy memoirs and queer literature: the Irish censor banned them all. Join Aoife as she reads like a smut-obsessed censor, looking for the rude bits in all kinds of books.
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