Forbidden Animation, Karl F. Cohen

I found this book very interesting and insightful, as it delivers a historical and factual account of censorship within the animation industry in a humorous way. Cohen writes the book chronologically, and it begins as early as the silent era, with the first porno-cartoon. I learnt about the censorship guidelines for films in the 1920's, which included depictions of white slavery being banned but rape and child abuse allowed! The reader is given a perspective of audience views towards cartoons at the time, including the first instances of Mickey Mouse's appearances being quite violent and vulgar. Profanities in the time of the pre-code era appear in some animations, such as 'damn' and 'hell,' which were considered controversial and radical at the time. While many animators were experimenting with new animating technologies and themes, others were trying to push the boundaries of sexual and explicit convention, such as the Fleischer Bros with their Betty Boop character.
The arrival of the production code, pushed by the PCA, affected nearly every animation studio. Characters became less risqué (see: Betty Boop), animators had to be careful to avoid offending any of their audience, although surprisingly cartoon violence was not a concern of the code. This was because the censors didn't believe it was as bad as live-action violence. Disney, on the other hand, focused more on pushing technological boundaries with their cartoons, and sought a realism in their works to visually appeal to the audience. For this reason they rarely created censorship problems.
Many American cartoons were censored by foreign boards when they were exported abroad. Examples are given of cartoons being banned in Canada, Britain and Germany. Within the States, the FBI would use the PCA to control the output of production studios. Some ways that animators would work around the censors would be to make their cartoons particularly inappropriate, so that they would cut out  so much that they would end up leaving in the things the cartoonists wanted. They tried to slip in as many innuendos as possible also. Formal censorship ended in the 1960s, when the production code standards were replaced with MPAA film ratings.