Censorship Class: Film and the Hays Code
After an examination of obscenity law and the obsession with sex last week, this week we turned to a favorite of censorship studies: The Hays Code and film censorship. Film is fun in part simply because all students are familiar with the medium today. They have been raised in an environment where visual entertainment is ubiquitous. So they bring that to the material but also get to try and grasp what is a bizarre world of early film technology. I gave them some clips, such as The Kiss (1896), to get a sense of the early nature and then key bits like the SCOTUS decision in Mutual Film (1915) declaring that film is not speech because it is entertainment produced for profit. We took a look at controversy and censorship attempts targeting The Birth of a Nation (1915) and some examples of late 1910s conflict that often allowed a surprising amount of nudity in film but targeted films for political censorship in fascinating ways. But all of that is prelude to the real fun: The Hays Code itself.
““It cannot be put out of view that the exhibition of moving pictures is a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded … as part of the press … or as organs of public opinion”
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I’ll admit, I spent the summer intending to dig into pre-Code films (1930-34). I’ve long know the commentary around this era and discussion of risqué content but I have minimal experience with the films. I just never got around to it. Luckily modern tech can be wonderful and there are great clip collections on YouTube that provide a lovely overview. I showed them one that looked at objections from the Catholic film censorship group The Legion of Decency paired with relevant clips. I also found a good clip from Fritz Lang’s classic M (1931) because it pushed the crime thriller genre much further in its depiction of the hunt for a serial killer of children.
After looking at this scandalous content, we turned to the text of the Code itself. Hollywood declared its own product was entertainment pure and simple, not art or commentary meant to educate. As entertainment sold for profit, the industry stressed its “responsibility to the public” and provided a core set of central principles:
No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
These general principles frame the rest of the document. It includes a lot of concern for crime both in terms of narrow execution - don’t show how arson or safe cracking is actually done - but more interestingly it always circles back to the key rule: criminals bad, cops good. The entire industry mandated copaganda (and this would be a fun thing to explore since it still often engages in it today without the industry censorship). The list of swear words is delightful in depicting how goofy such attempts to police language are. As nudity was prohibited, the code spent most of its attention around the body focused on forbidding films from costumes, dancing, or other behavior on screen that suggested people (lets face it, really just women) had naughty bits under their clothing. Even titles of film were controlled to prevent them from being suggestive. I asked students to think about how this would apply to modern films and we had trouble coming up with many modern movies that could ever survive this system.
The Production Code Administration seal that Joseph Breen controlled.
While discussing the Code alone is fun, its application gives a more interesting example of censorship in action. Jospeh Breen was appointed head of the Production Code Authority and he controlled the seal that became necessary under the Code. Because Hollywood studios basically controlled all significant theaters, it could blacklist films that lacked the seal. Thus, Breen had near unlimited control over the financial success of Hollywood films. Studios submitted scripts for feedback and then the film itself. A studio might negotiate and lobby Breen’s office in the process but ultimately he had functional authority over their product and refusal to accept his cuts meant no seal. I gave them a bit from Thomas Doherty’s wonderful Hollywood’s Censor (2007) to illustrate the internal workings of his office and the common demand themes. The key takeaways, unsurprisingly, were centered on a specific vision of morality: “wrong must always be characterized as wrong, and not something else.” In specifics this meant that only right conduct, in Breen’s narrow vision, could be allowed. Unsurprisingly, this included things like centering marriage in all things so that the Code must “jealously guard marriage and firmly ward off from it [the] strongest standing threats against its stability.” He was obsessive that no sympathy ever run to criminals, and God forbid a police officer be depicted as anything other than a noble hero. But my favorite part of this short reading was Breen’s obsession with “toilet humor.” He frequently demanded removal of references to bathrooms and what we do there as well as jokes that suggest references to such bodily functions. Now I’m not the biggest fan of fart jokes but it is difficult to find the prohibition on them within the Code. This element illustrates the natural reality that all censorship regimes ultimately come down to the idiosyncrasies of the censor. It is always the eye of the beholder.
One of the fascinating elements in our coverage of the Code and film censorship was whether we should care about this in censorship studies. This turns on whether our concern about censorship is purely “legal” or includes “social” forms of censorship. In the modern understanding of the First Amendment, censorship of film is only a problem when government does it. The Code, however, was purely an internal industry system. This kind of self censorship is presumed to be uninteresting from a legal only framework. But my students generally pushed against this, which made me happy. Partly this is because the idea of “law” being some kind of totally separate sphere from “social” or “political” is artificial and often absurd. The Code was designed to blunt calls for more government censorship and was defended within the industry as to avoid further legal controversies. Additionally, this kind of censorship established a powerful set of generational myths and represented the visions of (some) powerful cultural and political elites that still influence us today. If anything, we are more open to this concern due to experience with social media censorship discussions.
Next week we turn to the post-World War II comic book panic. As today comic book culture has permeated society so heavily, I’m hoping for a fun discussion.
