France

France is a European country that primarily worships Christianity.

General censorship

• France has been known to criminalize material advancing extreme political positions. Between 1892 and 1994, it was unlawful to promote or advocate anarchy or overthrow of the government. Also in 1994, the government enacted the Gayssot Act, which criminalized material that denied The Holocaust.
• From 1920 to 1991, any advocacy of birth control was banned in France, even though birth control itself was allowed on 1967. This ban was lifted because of the AIDS crisis and the need to communicate about condoms.

Books censorship

• The manga Angel by U-jin, published in France starting in 1995, suffered a process of interdiction which prevented bookshops from displaying it on shelves.
  • From 1939 to 2004, French government could ban any printed document "of foreign provenance" if it was deemed a threat to public order. Most of these were porn, but some interesting things also found themselves banned:
    • Documents from Soviet Union or anti-colonial movements were sometimes banned in The '50s and The '60s.
    • In 1976 French government banned Jean-Paul Alata's Prison d'Afrique, where he told how he and his cellmates were tortured in Boiro Camp, using this law to protect their relations with the government of Guinea to be able to invest in their Bauxite mines. Alata was a French national but was stripped of his citizenship in 1962; when his Guinean citizenship was also stripped in 1970 (after a kangaroo court sentenced him to life for "treason"); although the work was written and printed in France, the French government still considered him "foreign" because he was technically stateless.
    • This law was invoked in 1999 to ban The Turner Diaries.
  • In occupied France during World War II, any book from an author whose name was on the Otto or Bernhardt lists (essentially including Jews, anti-Germans, Marxists, Brits, and Americans) was banned from any bookshops.
  • Since the Youth Publications Act 1949 (Loi du 16 juillet 1949 sur les publications destinées à la jeunesse), France has an official committee tasked with regulating both French and foreign publications in order to protect morality of youth.
    • Two Buck Danny issues were banned since they took place during the The Korean War. It caused future issues from no using real countries.
    • "The Time Trap" from Blake and Mortimer has been banned.
    • "Billy the Kid" from Lucky Luke was banned because Billy was shown sucking a gun.
    • Alix's "La Griffe noire" and "Les Légions perdues" were seen as references to the Algerian War.
    • Nowadays, they only restrict porn (the last bans occuring on 2011), but as late as 2004, Riad Sattouf had to alter "Ma circoncision."

TV censorship

• The manga Kinnikuman was banned in France because it contains a heroic swastika-bearing character. The anime saw a limited release, but only 49 out of the 137 original episodes were shown on television.
• Chojin Sentai Jetman did not had the episodes 17, 18, 19, 27, 29, 30, 36 and 39 onwards dubbed and aired due to these episodes featuring blood and graphic violence.

A 2001 documentary about mothers was banned when one of the mothers became a suspect in the death of her infant child; it remained banned during the trial to prevent it from influencing the proceedings and was lifted when they ended — ten years later.

Movies censorship

• For three decades, no black and white film could be colorized in France, and no existing colorized version could be distributed there, without permission of the copyright holders.
• Paths of Glory (1957) by Stanley Kubrick was banned in France until the death of President Charles de Gaulle in 1970 due to its critical depiction of the French Army during World War I.
• The Battle of Algiers (1966) was banned in France until 1971 for its criticism of France's human rights violations during the Algerian War of Independence.
• Baise-moi, an extremely violent rape and revenge film, was the first film in three decades to be banned in France. It was eventually reclassified as X (generally a rating for porn), then 18 (which has this film to thank for its reintroduction as an official classification).
• Due to a copyright dispute, Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones wasn't released in France until 1981.
• The film Night and Fog, about Nazi concentration camps, was banned from competition in the 1957 Cannes Film Festival on the demand of the West German ambassador, who feared the public might believe All Germans Are Nazis.
• Bloody Mama was banned in France at one point due to the high amount of violence.

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