Motion Picture Code Essay, Research Paper

The economic downswings of the Great Depression contributed to the county? s captivation

with mobster genres. As Americans lost their occupations or saw their farms foreclosed on by

the one time admired constitution or banking system ; with public indorsement mobsters

descended in spirit from America? s frontier criminals such as the James Gang, and led by

desperate criminals like Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and Machine Gun Kelly & # 8211 ; rose up

to assail the system. Because of Prohibition, the Great Depression and World War II,

mobsters became the modern gunmans and criminals. The mobster saga replaced the

Western as the American myth. It told the narrative of modern America.

Young Americans enjoyed watching mobster movies during the 1930s. Before

President Roosevelt? s New Deal, mobsters were without uncertainty the American film? s

most dramatic heroes. The movie industry? s love matter with members of condemnable packs was

merely natural, they were colourful, violent, and magnetic work forces and adult females whose

law-breaking activities were followed by 1000000s of jurisprudence staying Americans. But when

brought to the screen, mobster movies more than any other Hollywood genre created

jobs non merely for the usual censoring anterooms but besides for Judgess, attorneies, instructors,

police officers, city managers, newspapers, and local councilors. Many respectable citizens believed

that mobster movies based on the lives and activities of Prohibition-era felons, led to an

addition in juvenile delinquency and accused Hollywood of presenting waxy

youth into a calling of offense. The harmful effects of fast-moving and exciting mobster

movies on immature film frequenters therefore became a outstanding concern of those eager to

control and censor this permeant new mass medium.

After a series of sex dirts rocked the American movie industry, in 1922

Hollywood? s Judaic moguls hired a midwestern Presbyterian gentleman and influential

Republican William Harrison Hays, former Postmaster General in President

Warren Harding? s cabinet, as their front adult male to clean up the image of the films. The

industry? s self-monitoring Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc.

( MPPDA ) or Hays office in Los Angeles tried a assortment of ways to modulate movies before

following a formal codification. Written in 1930 by two mid-western Catholics, a Jesuit professor

of play in St. Louis and a ballad publishing house of trade magazines ; the new Motion Picture

Code stipulated partially in reaction to the increasing popularity of mobster movies, that

films stress proper behaviour, regard for authorities, and Christian values. The Hays

Code was made mandatary in 1934, and began with an onslaught on what was seen as a

general tone of anarchy and on picturing specific condemnable methods in recent mobster

films. Condemnable Acts of the Apostless were? ne’er to be presented in such a manner as to throw understanding

with the offense as against jurisprudence and justness or to animate others with a desire for imitation. ?

Murder must be presented in a mode that? will non animate imitation? and? retaliation in

modern times shall non be justified. ? Methods of offense such as larceny, robbery, incendiarism,

safecraking, smuggling, and dynamiting of trains should non be explicitly presented. If

these stenosiss were non met, a movie undertaking would no longer have the codification? s seal of

MPPDA blessing ( Springhall 137-138 ) .

Organized protest against mobster films reached its tallness with the promotion

environing manager Howard Hawks? Scarface ( 1932 ) ; in which the versatile Paul Muni

overacted as Tony Camonte, another disguised Al Capone figure. This violent and fast

paced movie produced by millionaire Howard Hughes and scripted by former Chicago

newspaperman Ben Hecht, reached the screen a twelvemonth after Public Enemy but was really

made at the same clip. The hold of Scarface occurred because in an attempt to pacify

the film censors. A caption? Shame of the Nation? was added to Scarface, along with a

scene in which civic reformists preached ( ? You can stop it. Battle! ? ) straight to the

camera ( McCarty 68 ) . In another new scene, the metropolis? s head of investigators denounces the

glory of mobsters, repeating the very calls of the censors who ordered the alterations.

A different stoping was besides filmed utilizing a two-base hit in which Camonte is brought to test

and sentenced to be hanged by the province, instead than being shot down by the constabulary on the

pavement outside his hideaway ( McCarty 68 ) . New York and Chicago censoring boards

rejected Scarface outright until Warner Brothers agreed to do these alterations but Jason

Joy, who enforce the Hays Code, still had to convert them to demo it cut. Each province in

America had its ain board of censors, so the original stoping could still be seen in some

theatres when the movie was eventually released in the spring of 1932 ( McCarty 69 ) .

Hay? s damage-limitation exercising did small to hush unfavorable judgment of offense or

mobster films and there was grounds of turning province and municipal censoring ; besides

while reformists wanted to travel farther and persuade the federal authorities to establish a

national gesture image censoring office. Rising concern about the harmful effects of

film on vernal American heads had in 1928 led anti-Hollywood candidate the

Rev. William H. Short and his Motion Picture Research Council to committee a series

of surveies financed from the Payne Study and Experiment Fund, an organisation based in

Cleveland and headed by Professor W.W. Charters, who was the manager of educational

research at the Ohio State University. The Payne Fund Studies took four old ages to

complete and was published from 1933 thru 1934. The studies showed that 30 per centum of

the American film audi

ence was made up of kids and striplings ( Jarvis 131 ) .

One early volume of the Payne Studies offered self-reporting by juveniles in which they

blamed mobster movies for facets of their delinquent societal behaviour ; but the study went

no further than reasoning that films merely indirectly encouraged condemnable activities by

exciting phantasies and day-dreaming. Another volume concluded that the influence of

films on kids was strong but was? specific for a given kid and a given film?

( Jarvis 132 ) . But the Payne Fund? s research was distorted to back up the sort of

statements about the effects of films on immature audiences that moral reformists had been

doing for old ages ( Jarvis 135 ) .

As more Hollywood mobster films were released & # 8211 ; nine in 1930, 26 in 1931, and

28 in 1932, movie cuts associating to misdemeanor of the jurisprudence imposed by province and municipal

censoring boards besides increased. One-half of the censoring stuff ordered by the Chicago

censoring board in 1930-31 pertained to lauding the mobster and screening discourtesy

for jurisprudence enforcement. In New York, province censors slashed over 2,200 offense scenes during

1930-32 ( Springhall 141 ) . But gangster movies were excessively far popular for movie studios to pay

much attending to the Hays Code. Obviously, the 1930 Production Code was non being

enforced and was non lawfully enforceable. So in 1934, the Committee of Catholic Bishops

formed the Legion of Decency. The Legion claimed it was dismayed by the film

industry? s sex and offense movies of the early 1930s, and at a clip of falling box-office

grosss, had organized a run to boycott? vile and unwholesome? gesture images.

Catholics were asked to subscribe a pledge in respect to gangster movies, cursing to? make all that

I can to elicit public sentiment against the portraiture of frailty as a normal status of

personal businesss and against picturing felons of any category as heroes and heroines, showing

their foul doctrine of life as something acceptable to decent work forces and adult females?

( Springhall 144 ) . A boycott run, using other like-minded groups was launched

thorough the media. Lists of condemned movies were circulated and some film theatres

were picked.

Film manufacturers broke rank in the center of 1934, even before the anti-crime movie

propaganda picked up full steam. They agreed non to let go of or administer a movie that did

non hold an MPPDA certification of blessing which were to be issued harmonizing to the

1930 Code and administered by a Hays Office promising to be more earnest about

censoring. This understanding among the movie industry was a measure frontward to take

self-regulation earnestly. A $ 25,000 punishment was to be charged for bring forthing,

distributing, or exhibiting a image without the certification of blessing, but there is no

record of it of all time holding been imposed. In order to coerce Hays and Hollywood to ban

films more smartly, the Legion had besides engineered the assignment of Joseph

Breen, a hardline Catholic as caput of the Production Code Administration. In the hereafter,

mobster movies would hold to be made with more attention for the censors? point of position.

However, Hollywood managed to avoid federal authorities ordinance and even after

1934 continued to besides hedge the Code.

As the decennary continued on, Hollywood studios discovered that the best manner to

work the offense genre? s huge popularity and to fulfill the censors at the same clip

was to turn the mobster character into a jurisprudence enforcement officer. The clip was right for

the reappearance of the mobster icon as a federal authorities adult male drafted into the war

on offense, which was one of the worst effects of the Depression. By the thirtiess,

Warner Brothers started to offer idealised portrayals of police officers and Federal Bureau of

Probe agents, instead than mobsters or felons. This was portrayed in loyal

movies like William Keighley? s G-Men ( 1935 ) and Particular Agent ( 1935 ) , starring James

Cagney and George Brent. The transmutation of the film mobster star into a

police officer or FBI agent was in portion a response to unfavorable judgment from censoring anterooms like

the Legion of Decency. Warner Brothers was besides doing a part to propaganda

for a strong New Deal disposal by establishing this new rhythm of movies. For illustration,

G-man used the resources of a popular movie signifier and one of it? s star names to recommend

the armament of the FBI because? federal power depends finally on firepower?

( McCarty 97 ) . Breen, Hays, and the Legion of Decency virtually controlled the content of

all Hollywood movies. The Hays Code itself remained in force until 1967 when it was

replaced by a system of certificated classs of the Motion Picture Association of

America.

Today, mobster genre remains really much alive because of the barrios, ghettos,

and council chambers of America? s metropoliss to the drug fastnesss of Miami, New York, and

Los Angeles. The genre continues and the audiences? love matter with rabble films will

continue on. The subjects, characters, landscapes, and mythologies of the mobster film

has proven resilient plenty to be updated, reshaped, and expanded upon to go on

linking with adolescents, and immature grownups for whom films these yearss are made.

539

Jarvis, Arthur R. , Jr. ? The Payne Fund Reports: A Discussion of their Content, Public

Chemical reaction, and Affect on the Motion Picture Industry, 1930-1940. ? Journal of

Popular Culture 19.3 ( 1991 ) : 127-140

McCarty, John. Hollywood Gangland: The Movies? Love Affair with the Mob. New

York: St. Martin? s Press, 1993.

Springhall, John. ? Baning Hollywood: Young person, Moral Panic and Crime/Gangster

Movies of the 1930s? Journal of Popular Culture 32.3 ( 1998 ) : 135-154