The production code administration: setting the tone for movies in America - Essay Example

The Production Administration: Setting the Tone for Movies in America May 28, 2008 John Olufunke The Production Administration: Setting the Tone for Movies in America Abstract Beginning in 1922, the movie industry came under the scrutiny of the Hays Committee and later the Production Code Administration (PCA). While their early efforts were to police the movie industry against obscenities and brutality, it later grew into an organization that would have vast influence over political thought and the American social order. The PCA was an extremist organization that has had a chilling effect on the movies and all forms of American media that still exist today. Introduction Anyone attending a movie, watching a television show, or playing a video game can easily see the need to monitor and censor certain forms of media. There is certainly a need to protect America's children from drugs, alcohol, firearms, and pornography. In fact, censorship has been with the world since the days that Socrates was incarcerated for "... corrupting the children and offending the Gods" (Riley 4). Still, it has been a controversial subject as it has always been a consideration over who is doing the censoring. It also needs to be evaluated for the motivation behind the elimination of speech, pictures, political views, and sociological viewpoints. Since the advent of modern media in America, censorship has been waged on the battlefield of social conflict with the weapon of free speech. When Edison and others invented the moving picture, they could not have known that they were setting off a century of social controversy. When sound was added to films, they came alive and began to tell a deeper story of the depravity of the human condition. Beginning in 1922 the Hays Committee, under the direction of Will Hays, began to police the language of the newly released talkies. Father Lord, a renowned Jesuit teacher stated at the time, "Silent smut had been bad, vocal smut cried to the censors for vengeance" (qtd. in Espar). The Hays Committee would run until 1945, and was joined in 1934 by Joe Breen. Breen was a strict Catholic adherent and together with Hays started the Production Code Administration (PCA). The movie codes and video ratings, such as PG and G that we have today, were a direct result of Hays' and Breen's early efforts to keep movies safe for decent Americans. However, Hays' early efforts were not to make the movies safe for the public, but rather to keep the government out of the movie business. His attempts would haunt him for years, as the PCA would grow to encompass cultural warfare, social engineering, political propaganda, and influencing foreign policy. Breen, and his Legion of Decency, joined forces with Hays to create an organization with the intent to control society, advance their individual political ideals, and form the future of American society. Discussion It is difficult to look into the minds of men that are no longer alive and able to speak for themselves. We have their rulings, their writings, and their speeches to interpret within the parameters of today's standards. It needs to be noted that the early years of the PCA were the years of the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, bootlegging, and a socialist uprising that was generating an anti-corporate attitude. By measuring what issues were important to the PCA we can reconstruct the thoughts of the men involved. Viewing this information as an integral part of the history of the time with the dismal economic times, racism, sexism, and America's entry into the arena of a world power can give us a measure of the intentions of the PCA. When Joe Breen joined the PCA, he modeled the original codes on the Catholic Movie Code. They were very detailed and specific about moral issues. A portion of the code insisted that a film must never "...lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin"(Heins). However, the measurement for evil and sin were social deviances that were at almost the sole discretion of Joe Breen and his personal viewpoint. These personal viewpoints included nudity, kissing, brutality, divorce, extra-marital affairs, and other violations of the strict interpretation of the Catholic Movie Code. Still, the PCA did not stop there. They dictated that, "Government and organized religion should not be disparaged, nor should ministers be comic characters or villains" (Heins). This interpretation of morality is similar to the controversy that recently arose in the Islamic world when cartoon caricatures of Allah were printed in an almost unknown European newspaper. The movies of the 1930 saw conflicts that pitted mobsters against police, socialists against capitalists, man against woman, and black against white. The movie industry, largely dominated by Jewish influence during this period, was being oppressed by Fascism in Europe and in certain extremist American political circles. Two years before Breen joined the PCA, in 1932, Breen expressed his extremist anti-Semitic views. According to Heins, Breen penned a letter to Father Wilfred Parsons, a colleague that was sympathetic to his moral position at the PCA, and stated, "That Hays was wrong to think 'these lousy Jews out here [in Hollywood] would abide by the Code's provisions. Hays lacked proper knowledge of the breed'. Breen continued, ' ... They are simply a rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the making of money'". As early as 1932 there was a religious war being fought in the movie studios in Hollywood. One of Breen's favorite targets in the cinema was the sexual innuendo of the likes of Mae West, Barbara Stanwyk, and WC Fields. Though the PCA would ban any portrayal of sexual content, racism was freely portrayed in the cinema during the period of the 1930s. The 1934 movie Imitation of Life (1934) portrayed a white homemaker and her maid that had a very close relationship. The relationship did not contain any obscene language and only loosely alluded to a possible lesbian relationship. In the movie, Fredi Washington played the very light skinned black maid named Delilah. However, the PCA did not oppose the movie based on a possible homosexual relationship, but rather was opposed due to the portrayal of an interracial relationship. The issue for the PCA revolved around the perception of the maid, Delilah, and what her race was. If she was perceived as an African-American, the movie stood the risk of being banned. According to Courtney, Breen violently opposed the film and stated, "No picturization of miscegenation is permitted". Courtney further stated that the issue for the PCA was, "how boundaries of racial difference should be cinematically constructed to be seen, and believed, on the screen". In 1934, the PCA advocated a sharp division between the races and there would be no inter-racial relationships, either subtle or overt. The extremist racial views of Breen were not the only social views to be expressed and enforced by the PCA. During the 1930s, and the Great Depression, America was witnessing a resurgence of Socialist ideals as unemployment rose and the effectiveness of capitalism came into question. Breen, Hays, and the PCA came to the aid of capitalism and attempted to enforce their own political and social beliefs on the viewing public. The 1934 film The President Vanishes is filled with the demons of corrupt governmental leaders and a corporate world that was insensitive to the needs of the working class. The film concludes with an alleged Socialist airing his views in a speech that criticizes the excesses of capitalist America. Though Breen opposed the film and worked to get it highly edited, he did finally approve it for release. However, Hays was outraged by Breen's approval, and ordered Breen and the PCA to ban the film from production. Hays released a statement that said in part, "The Screen has no right, as a vast popular entertainment medium, [...] to present a distorted picture which condemns the banking industry, the oil industry, the steel industry, and the newspaper industry per se as war mongers, which portrays the Communist Party as the leading protagonist..." (Black 251) The movie's producer, Walter Wagner, immediately filed a lawsuit against the PCA to force them to release the movie based on Breen's original tepid approval. Wagner was willing to go to court to publicly air the issue of censorship for reasons other than sexuality or morality. In fact, "Wagner could prove that the censors were determined to control more than just that" (Black 251). Through a series of hostile meetings and agreements the movie was finally released to an indifferent public. It became a box office failure, but it had become clear where the ideology of the PCA was. Though racism and politics have been outwardly expunged from the modern ratings system, these actions by the PCA would have a deep impression on the direction of film in America for the next several decades. The PCA had the goal of maintaining a cinema that was genderized where women were portrayed as non-aggressive at home and in the workplace. The 1950 film Bedtime for Bonzo, starring All-American Ronald Reagan as Professor Peter Boyd, was one of the least controversial films ever released by Hollywood. Still, it was not above the reproach of Breen and the PCA. When the Professor is dating the Dean's daughter Valerie, she makes the innocent comment that, "Is there any law that says we have to raise a family". Joe Breen objected to the wording and insisted it was a reference to practicing birth control, which would have been strictly against the Catholic Movie Codes and the PCA. Breen stated that the line "seems unduly pointed" (qtd. in Gardner 110). By 1950, and the advent of television, the Catholic Movie Code of Joe Breen was directing the content available to the viewing public. Conclusion In conclusion, the enormous influence that the media has had in America since 1920 has been greatly influenced by the Catholic Movie Code in the hands of a few extremists. Fascism, Anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism all became a part of the American cinema due to the efforts of the PCA. Though the modern movie codes do not overtly object to social or political content, the PCA set the tone that would color the content of movies, and later television, for decades. The PCA was not only controlling the content of the media, but were attempting to define what it meant to be an American. While the modern ratings system may be a blessing to many, the success of America's movie and television industry has come at the price of artistic freedom and in spite of the efforts of the PCA. Works Cited Black, Gregory D. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. 1-336. Courtney, Susan. "Picturizing Race." Genders 27 (1998). 22 July 2006 . Espar, David. "TV Series and Beyond." Hollywood Censored: Movies, Morality, and the Production Code. PBS. 22 July 2006 . Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters From the Hays Office, 1934-1968. 1st ed. New York: Dodds, Mead, 1987. 1-226. Heins, Marjorie. "The Miracle: Film Censorship and the Entanglement of Church and State." The Free Expression Policy Project. 28 Oct. 2002. University of Michigan. 22 July 2006 . Riley, Gail B. Censorship. New York. Facts On File: 1998. 1-202 Read More