The Seen, The Unseen, and the Obscene: Pre-Code Hollywood
2000; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/rah.2000.0039
ISSN1080-6628
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema History and Criticism
ResumoIn September 1999, in the aftermath of the tragic shootings at Columbine High School, Congressional leaders interested in explaining the seeming proliferation of violence and immorality among American youth fell back on a familiar strategy: blame Hollywood. Insisting that Hollywood, not Washington D.C., was the real center of power, Senator Sam Brownbeck (R-Kansas) blamed the movie industry for fostering criminal behavior and sexual promiscuity among the nation's teenagers. Brownbeck's comments, as former baseball great and one-time movie critic Yogi Berra might say, are like déjà vu all over again. Since the appearance of the first nickelodeons in 1905, political, civic, and religious authorities have repeatedly blamed movies and the industry that produced them for all that is wrong in America. Studio heads, then and now, responded to threats of boycotts and federal censorship by instituting various self-censorship plans. The Production Code Administration (PCA), the most powerful of these, regulated the content and subject matter of American film from 1934 until its abolition in 1968. Under the leadership of former journalist and Catholic layman Joseph I. Breen, the PCA set out to restore morality in Hollywood and the nation by controlling what audiences could and could not see on the screen.
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