Judge — June 19, 1920 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This *Judge* magazine cover from June 19, 1920 satirizes proposed prohibition of motion pictures—the "87th Amendment" referenced in the headline. The illustration shows a young farm girl riding horses homeward, captioned "The Ploughgirl Homeward Plods Her Weary Way." The satire equates movie prohibition with outdated rural labor: just as this ploughgirl represents pre-industrial drudgery, banning movies would return America to joyless, exhausting existence. The image contrasts innocent farm work with modern entertainment, suggesting that prohibiting films would eliminate one of the era's few accessible pleasures for ordinary people. This reflects 1920s debates over film censorship, when moral reformers sought to restrict cinema content or distribution, particularly regarding depictions of vice and sexuality.