Motion Picture Production Code

Motion Picture Production Code of 1930

In the 1920s and early 1930s, American cinema attracted people by showing movies that were considered "immoral" by church officials. These movies showed nudity, violence, illegal drugs, cigarette smoking (by men and women), and other behaviors that were deemed immoral during the 1920s. Church leaders and politicians began to believe that viewing the movies would make Americans immoral.

The 1920s were the era of Prohibition, which means that alcohol was illegal. Many of these movies depicted men and women drinking! Characters committed crimes, shot at each other, and did drugs.

Crime rates in America had risen, and the government wanted to blame movies for influencing people. It was more likely that crime rates were high because alcohol was illegal, which gave rise to the American mobster and speakeasies. In 1920, the rate of murders in America was just over six percent. Only a decade later, that number had risen to almost nine percent!

Not only were illegal activities rampant in the film industry, but so were sex and scandals! An example of how the film industry was gaining an immoral reputation is the scandal that surrounded the death of Virginia Rappe.

Motion Picture Production Code: Purpose

Lawmakers began to push censorship regulated by individual states, whose laws could change quickly. One movie might regularly be switched from approved to banned between states.

Fig. 2 - Will Hays created the Motion Picture Code in 1930 so that Hollywood would censor itself and ensure the success of its movies.

Hollywood realized that if its movies were going to do well, it had to censor itself before the government could intervene. Will H. Hays, a Presbyterian, became the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1922. During the series of scandals and censorship, Hays had written the Motion Picture Production Code in 1930, but no one took it seriously and many films were released without the Code being enforced. With the appointment of Joseph Breen in 1934, the Hays Code was enforced widely, changing the nature of Hollywood films until its abolishment in 1968.

Motion Picture Production Code: Rules

The Hays Code has many rules about what film could and could not do. Some of these rules are expected, but others are extreme. Let's begin with the reasonable rules and make our way to the extreme ones. The picture below was designed to show directors what can't be in movies.

• The law had to win.
• There could be no illegal activities like drinking, gambling, the pointing of guns, drugs, dead bodies, or Tommy guns
• Women's thighs or chests could be shown, nor could they wear lingerie

Fig. 3 - What Not to Put in Movies.

These rules were reasonable by the standards of the 1930s. They may seem extreme to us today, but these are the easiest to digest. Criminals always had to be the bad guys and punished for their crimes.

Gender

There could be no hints of sex. There could be no nudity, sex, women's cleavage, or silhouettes of naked bodies. Men and women could not share a bed even if they were married! Women's cleavage could not be shown either, popular characters like Betty Boop had to have modest makeovers so that they passed the code.

Fig. 4 - The progression of Betty Boop after the MPPC.

Another example of the MPPC in action is with the re-editing of the 1932 film, Babyface.

Race

Under the MPPC, interracial couples were banned; they could not kiss or have any other sort of intimate scene. White people could never be depicted as enslaved people, though depicting black people could be. Early we saw that there could be no nudity, this did not apply to indigenous women who the code permitted to be shown naked.

When indigenous women's bare chests were depicted it was fine because it was for "educational purposes", but by that standard all nudity would have been fine. The racial disparity demonstrates that the exception to nudity in certain circumstances was to reinforce racist ideas.

Sexuality

There could be no "sexual perversions", which was Hays' way of saying that queer depictions were banned. Directors could imply characters were gay and often did so. This was called queer coding, gay people watching would understand what was going on, but straight people often did not.

However, queer coding didn't protect characters from being punished. They would often die or were severely punished by the end of the film. Queer characters couldn't have a happily ever after because the Hays Code and its censor board reinforced homophobic agendas.

Restricted: Motion Picture Production Code

Directors were not pleased with the Hays Code. It restricted the art that they were trying to make. Supporters of the Hays Code would say that it was self-censoring and completely voluntary. If directors disliked it so much, then they didn't have to follow it. This was not completely true. While directors could ignore the code, if they did not follow it, their movies would not be supported by the MPPDA or be played in theaters.

To make matters worse, foreign movies could not be censored by the MPPDA. In 1948, an Italian movie called L'amore debuted in New York. In the second half of the movie, a woman prays to Saint Joseph and is miraculously pregnant, like the Virgin Mary. This movie was called blasphemous and banned until a 1952 Supreme Court case ruled that movies are protected by the Fifth Amendment: freedom of speech.

An example of how directors pushed back against the Hays Code can be seen with Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959).

Motion Picture Production Code: Administration

The MPPDA could not restrict television or foreign films and Americans were tired of the MPPDA trying to. They felt that the MPPDA was attempting to decide for the public what was and was not good. In 1968, the Hays Code was abandoned and the MPPDA rebranded as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Instead of policing movies, the MPAA would rate them after they were released.

The Motion Picture Production Code was meant to censor movies and encourage Americans to behave in a specific manner. Directors and film creators felt that their art form was being stifled, but to go against it meant that their movies wouldn't show in theaters. Theaters are the place where most movies made profits, so film studios wouldn't risk investing in movies that didn't pass censorship.

After enough pushback by some directors, and the uncensored foreign films, the Hays Code was eventually made obsolete and allowed much greater freedoms for the film industry. This change to films throughout the 20^th century parallels the general cultural shift seen in America following the Great Depression and the move away from conservatism in the following decades.