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Better Left Unsaid is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife—the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film—this book reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art. As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a \"censored\" commodity—thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.

Narrative was, in other words, used as a marketing tool, too. [...]while the goal of most of the films' narrative choices was to market Astaire in conventionally heteronormative ways, such goals did not always match up with results. [...]because I consider the Astaire films that do privilege \"narrativity\" over a \"continuous deployment of spectacle,\" to use Cohan's terminology, I am more interested than he is in the multifarious sexualizing narrative elements that do not stem from or relate to spectacality. Historical Backdrop: The \"In Spite Of\" Star By the time Fred Astaire arrived in Hollywood in 1933, he had already achieved a certain degree of stardom. Since the age of six, he had worked to build up a luminous stage career with his sister Adele, beginning on the vaudeville circuit and winding up as the toast of Broadway and London's West End. Since Astaire got married two days before flying to Los Angeles to begin his film career-and stayed happily married until his wife's death twenty-one years later-his agents and publicists could not exploit or concoct titillating tales of his romantic adventures to enhance his sexual reputation.