The Ten Commandments as our code: Media censorship in 20th century Ireland

This paper discusses how following the establishment of the Irish Free State, successive governments tried to create a society that was distinctly 'Irish'. As Catholicism was identified as an important dimension of Irish identity, successive governments throughout the 20th Century sought to preserve and strengthen Catholic moral teaching. In this essay, I use film censorship as a lens through which we can identify how an attempt was made to influence a distinct social reality by the governments of the new Irish Free State. This social reality was a distinct vision of what Irish culture was meant to be but I conclude that culture is not something that can be created or moulded by a government but is a social process.