Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
Nothing Censored, Nothing Gained
Obscenity Law and Histories of Queer Distribution and Exhibition
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
Nothing Censored, Nothing Gained tracks how women and gay male entrepreneurs were central to the production, distribution and exhibition of adult media in and adjacent to Los Angeles County, and how these key players used industrial tactics to introduce new and more explicit forms of cultural production.
The book develops a queer media industry studies approach to analyse how these creative entrepreneurs ventured into the nascent commercial adult film industry by maneuvering around and sometimes colliding with cultural regulatory mechanisms of censorship. Moving beyond representational approaches to censorship, this book’s novel examination of production, distribution and exhibition provides insights into the industrial and cultural interworkings of historical adult media industries and how content is related to business developments and constraints.
Through this investigation, the book assesses manifold modes of censorship ranging from bureaucratic restrictions on market availability to law enforcement’s stringent policing of exhibition spaces under legal regimes including obscenity.
About the Author:
Farrah Freibert is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University. With research that spans media history and industry studies, global media circulations and LGBTQ+ history, she has published widely in peer-reviewed scholarly venues such as Film Criticism, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, Monstrum, Porn Studies, the Journal of Homosexuality, Spectator, Synoptique, and Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture. Dr. Freibert is coeditor with Alicia Kozma of Refocus: The Films of Doris Wishman (2021).
Press Reviews:
In Nothing Censored, Nothing Gained, Farrah Freibert offers a fresh perspective on how queer visibility and experience were shaped by infrastructures rather than content or identity. By foregrounding distribution and exhibition, the book introduces new critical frameworks for understanding how obscenity law, sexual politics, and media industries intersect. Its emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s - marked by legal flux and emerging queer publics - challenges dominant narratives around deviance, visibility, and the regulation of sexual culture. It’s a timely and necessary intervention that will be valuable to scholars across film and media studies, queer history, and cultural studies more broadly. ― Clarissa Smith
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> On a related topic:
Sick and Dirty (2025)
Hollywood's Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness
Queer Horror Film and Television (2022)
Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins
Back
