ESCAROLES

There are two things that are kind of necessary if you want to go through this, and they are: 

Sexy Discretion Shot (x)

I'm not going to try to explain this, because it's pretty simple and the link provides you with a quick explanation. There is a great list of movies that do that, beware of spoilers. BUT WHY PEOPLE WOULD NEED TO CODE THIS? (And I'm not even going to go into being gay, because the kiss between two men is happening next week so) 

The Hayes Code

For this to make perfect sense, we'll take a little trip to the past, when Hollywood had something known as the Hays Code. If you want a deeper knowledge in this, there is a pretty decent wikipedia article about it. I am not a Hays Code expert, but cinema school is not just watching movies. I had a whole semester where this concept was pretty well explained. Here we go. Feel free to correct me in anything that has been said in this post.

There was a time in Hollywood where the Hays Code, a guide book, was law. I don't want to bother you with details, but it was a list of stuff you couldn't do in movies. It only fell through because of the popularity of European movies and the take of European directors that made Modern cinema and, there is a lot of world history and movie history, so I'll let you all do your research if you want to. During the Hays Code time, there was stuff you COULDN'T do, stuff you SHOULDN'T do. If someone wants to correct me about this, please do.

There are multiple versions of this, because it was around for like, 37 years, so I'll put here the interesting points that would be relevant for this post.

So, here we go:

General Principles

1.  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, wrong-doing, evil or sin.

2.  Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3.  Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

So, let's go to topic number 2: Sex!

The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing. Adultery and illicit sex, sometimes necessary plot material, must not be explicitly treated or justified, or presented attractively.

I'll just give you a quick summary of this whole fucking thing: There are a FUCKLOAD of movies with married couples sleeping in twin beds. And I'm not even considering that is gay for this point. Because if I did, this would be 300 pages. But being queer was considered a perverse topic, so if you had a character that could be interpreted as queer, they had to be punished in some way. They couldn't be redeemed as characters in anyway.

So, movies created codes. The characters might kiss... (Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures are not to be shown) might dance... (Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passion are forbidden.) they had to deal with what was available. So, a lot of codes were created and lost, others were created after. Some of them will stand for a long time, we learnt to watch movies that way, this was the golden years of Hollywood.