Hollywood's Production Code Administration example essay topic

Examine the formation and achievement of PCA and discuss that role in the development of cinema production and / or consumption practices. This essay will be examining the implementation and the achievements of the Production Code Administration. It will be arguing that PCA had a big impact on the production and consumption practices and played the key role in shaping the culture of America. The essay will highlight the operation of PCA as a mechanism for the maintenance of a necessarily predictability in the subject matter of movies in much the same way that the formula of genre pictures. 'Production Code Administration moral, social, and political conservatism interfered with the artistic potential and social responsibilities of the American film by claiming that it was protecting the industry and its workers as a community because it prevented them damaging their own public esteem' (Maltby, 1983, p. 108). Its rigid standards were necessary because l PCA and Catholic Church threatened economic sanctions if they were not adhered to.

Because the industry was particularly vulnerable, it had to take particular care. The essay will examine PCA as the industry's mechanism for establishing the restrictions and conventions on filmmakers and movie industry. In that context, it will highlight the code's cultural impact on American society. Its limitations on narrative development imposed by the system of compensating moral values prevented the forceful articulation of explicit social criticism. In that sense the cinema should ensure that its mass entertainment was harmless. The second part of the essay will focus on specifies restrictions such as miscegenation and racial prejudice.

It will examine the cinematic representation of World War II and its impact on American public and culture. By the 1920's the motion picture industry flourished. Movie makers wanting to attract young people made films that were the reflection of their times. In that era, there was not any concern for freedom of expression or censorship. During that time, comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of the rape and murder of a young actress, actor Wallace Reid died of a drug overdose and Mary Pickford divorced her husband. One may argue that it was a 'hash of Hollywood scandals in the early twenties that helped intensify the ire of local censors and forced the film industry leaders to address the industry's image problem.

' (Espar, 2000, p. 7). Studio leaders hired Will Hays to change the negative image of the industry by convincing the nation that the movie industry will censor itself. Hays spend eight years attempting to enforce a moral authority over Hollywood films, but it was during the Great Depression that the Hay's Office gained a large influence over Hollywood. Heins Marjorie wrote that 'the Production code was created for two basic reasons: first as a marketing device to persuade the public especially powerful church groups, that the industry was not a promoter of immorality; and second, to standardize censorship so that movies would not be faced with a bewildering array of different standards imposed by different government licensing boards. ' (Heins, 1998, p. 41) In other words, if the movie industry policed itself, it could ward off the high probability of government intervention. After loosing money in the stock market crash of 1929 and paying big bills for introducing sound to the movies, the studios were also deep in debt and desperate to cut costs.

'Instead of paying to revise the film after the censorship boards made their edits, the studios could simply follow the Code before making their movies. ' (Espar, 2000, p. 9). In 1934, the Catholic Church formed The Legion of Decency. A Pledge was formed that all 'Catholics would promise to refrain from viewing all objectionable movies or attending any theatre that showed that movies' (De Grazia & Newman, 1993, p. 42). The full implementation of the Production code was in 1934 resulting in the creation of the Production Code Administration.

Joe Breen, a strict Catholic moralist was hired to run Hollywood's Production Code Administration. The PCA broke away from its founders, the MP PDA and began to cooperate with the Legion of Decency, developing a monopoly of censoring of movies. Under Breen's conservative view the enforcement of the Production Code became rigid. PCA 'made membership for the organization a requirement for the movie production companies.

It also developed a 25 000 dollar fine to any member company that released a film without a PCA certificate and seal of approval. ' Written by father Daniel Lord, a Jesuit priest and Martin Quigley, a prominent roman catholic, the code reflected a strong religious connotation. The Code spelled out specific restrictions on language and behavior, particular sex and crime. It prohibited nudity, the ridicule of religion, the depiction of illegal drug use, venereal disease, childbirth and miscegenation' (Martin, 1937, p. 178). The Production Code Administration had a big influence on the production practices. Not only would treatments and scripts have to be passed by the censors before production started, but 'industry censors would monitor costumes, sets and other production elements while the camera rolled, and upon competition, the entire movie would undergo a review with the censors authorized to demand that cuts or changes be made' (Moley, 1945, 92-3).

Needles to say, PCA imposed the creative limitations on movie producers and they were forced to make countless artistic compromises to appease the administration. For example, criminal activity could not be depicted on film in a way that led viewers to sympathize with the criminals. Adultery and illicit sex were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option. 'While sex virtually disappeared from screen in 1934 it was replaced by the romantic comedy' (Paquin, 2001, p. 4). It was easier for the producers to make screwball and romantic comedies, historical epics, musical or sophisticated movies. Sophisticated movies are those based on works of literature such as Ana Karenina, The Ten Commandments etc.

Vasey notices that 'restrictions resulted in conventions such as: the mythical kingdom setting, religious representation and the use of white actors to play ethnic roles in a global kind of blackface' (1997, p. 65). The notion of ethical representation will be analyzed in relation to the cultural politics of PCA. The limitation of artistic expression and consumer orientated production led filmmakers to more standarized modes of production. David Bordwell claims that 'Hollywood cinema has been made strenght ely uniformed by its dependence upon a specific economic mode of film production and consumption' (1985, p. 6). The most common argument against PCA is that censorship causes this standardization which often implies that norms have become recipes, routinely repeating and stereotyped product' (Bordwell, 1985, p. 7). In addition, Thomas Schaltz propose that 'it was a good business to standarized and therefore economise the process of filmmaking.

The author states that hollywood studios gradually standarized virtually every phase of film production... this standarization was itself closely attained to Hollywood's audience. ' (1984, p. 21). In other words, the implementation of PCA and the commercial requirement of the movies to express a consensual ideology reflected the existance of a simplified linear narrative which includes 'conventions of form, technique and genre' (Schaltz, 1984, p. 8). For example, the popular genre of the 1930's was the romantic comedy.

In relation to the Production Code Administration which insisted on the sanctity of marriage, the romantic comedies reflected conservatism in terms of gender politics. The genre usually emphasises the importance of marriage as a conclusion of the film. On the other hand, because of the depression and rapidly changing society that was the kind of security the audience craved for. We can conclude that the Hollywood Movie Industry tried to satisfy mass audience and to comply with the Production Code. The industry shaped the content of films to make them so lable in as many markets as posible. In the process the movies created a homogenized picture of the world.

That was an escapist picture which was also glamorous and exotic. Ruth Vasey noted that 'at the most basic level, the size of the audience led to the economies of scale that underpinned the industry's output of more than four hund ert movies a year in the 1930's. Production of this scale meant that the movies could not be understood as wholly distinct from each other either at the level of manufacturer or at the level of consumption. ' (1997, p. 98) Production Code Administration with the Legion of Decency emerged as a cultural force in the 1930's. However, Catholics had been interested over a long period of time in the impact of film on American religious sensibilities. The argument was that the movies are teaching the people to think about and ultimately lead them to engage in crime, alchohol and drug consumptation and other forms of inappropriate behaviour that was presented on the screen.

The PCA with he moral emphasis enforced the creation of harmless a and escapist entertainment. The specification of the Production Code against giving offense to any group, race or religion resulted in the cinema which offer the audience a vision of a perfect America, in which 'the assumption of its fundamental political doctrines were enacted, while social problems were skirted by invariably couching them in individual terms' (Maltby. 1984, p. 106). The vision of world reflected a unified society devoted to 'the pursuit of spiritual peace through material acquisition and good neighborliness' (Maltby, 1984, p. 107). Therefore, the cultural role of PCA is seen in the fact that movies usually portrayed populist culture and social values, which were based on healthy attitudes towards life, optimism, and moral correctness.

In other words, with PCA Hollywood cinema fulfills the cultural function in America by affirming and maintaining the conventions of fashion, moral behavior, and social constructions of identity such as economic class, gender, and racial roles. For example, the interpretation of the miscegenation rule held that relations between whites and blacks and whites and yellows were forbidden. In the film Show Boat the theme of miscegenation is essential to the story, and although it was constantly played down in the film. The relationship between Julie Laverne and Steve Baker was kept in but Lena Horne, a black performer could not play the role of Julie because the code banned on-screen interracial relationship, even though that was supposed to be the purpose of the story. This example reflects the cultural and political correctness of the code and the irony of it.

As it was argued earlier, the notion of racial prejudice was very important in the Code. According to Brian Neve, 'after World War II the affect of bigotry showed by the Nazis encouraged Americans to look at the problem up close. More film begun to be made about the dangers of anti-Semitism and prejudice against minorities' (1992, p. 33). However, the PCA did not agree to with any picture that agreed with social equities between Whites and Negros.

Therefore, censorship was a key instigator of racial prejudice in the United States, when it could have been a protection of equal rights. One of the subjects found in the initial composition of the PCA was 'to avoid picturizing in an unfavorable light another country's religion, history, institutions, prominent people, or citizenry' (Vasey, 1997, p. 216). This resulted in a large portion of on-screen villains to be of American heritage. All characters were all American, since any form of ethnicity was too risky. This changed with the raising in popularity of anti-Nazi films around World War II. By this time, PCA decided that 'nations that were the enemies of America could be represented in film in a negative point of view.

(De Grazia & Newton, 1997, p. 71). The poor representation of the Germans in film caused patriotism in America that put the public behind the United States 100 per cent. However, many times the views of Nazi Germany in these films gave American public a misinterpretation of the truth. We can conclude that before World War II ethnicity was not portrayed at all in film and then represented during World War II in a distorted picture. The American society was ignorant about much of what happened outside of the United States due to the PCA and censorship of movies.

In conclusion, censorship imposed restrictions on the depiction of socially and politically sensitive subjects. The PCA proscribed the presentation of crime, nudity, sex, profanity and vulgarity. This lead to the creation of generic conventions, simplified linear narrative and standarization. The codes and conventions can be understood as responses to what the industry believed the audience wanted. By 1939 the cinema was easily the most important form of mass entertainment. It was also a most important factor in the education of all classes of the community in and in the spread of American popular culture.

It is easy to look upon The PCA as a conservative system that stiffed creativity and forced Hollywood Cinema into mold where good guys always win and profanity is non existant. However, the code clearly helped the film industry to a certain extant, as it consolidated the objections of thousand of local censorship boards into a more streamlined system that allowed producers to meet one set of standards and be assured that a film would be viewable without objections. Dealing with the censors also seems to have brought out the cleverness in screenwriters of the time, as they were forced to suggest what they could not show outright, making their movies much more rich and complex. The fact remain that a great deal of films that are considered among the best in cinematic history were made under the watch of the Production Code.