Nothing Censored, Nothing Gained: Obscenity Law and Histories of Queer Distribution and Exhibition

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.