I literally stopped after you cited the Hays Code and Comics Code as âmandating that the primary function of publication is teaching people what is right and what is wrong.â Because if thatâs the case, you must think that gay people, interracial marriages, adults drinking alcohol, and married couples sleeping in the same bed are wrong. Letâs be real clear here: the Hays Code was both ridiculous and unconstitutional and the Comics Code was a parody of itself, and both of them made queers invisible unless they were suffering for their queerness. It was literally a rule, because homosexuality was âperverseâ.
Crime (again, including BEING OPENLY GAY) must have consequences shown on-screen. You couldnât be gay without punishment for your gay.Â
The âcorrect standards of lifeâ must be upheld. Guess what? NO OVERT GAY, because that wasnât correct. No interracial marriages. Both of those items were directly and explicitly banned as âperverse.â Anything that didnât fit the sanitized version of life could not be shown. Also, directors shied away from depiction of poverty, or anything that the ruling class didnât think was âcorrect standards of life,â because showing people living in poverty could be construed as not showing people âliving to proper standards.â
No nudity or sexual activity even between consenting adults. The Hays Code is why married adults on sitcoms had separate twin beds. This also included pregnancy and childbirth, as those were the âresultsâ of sex. To prevent love scenes from being considered sexual, a woman had to be shown with one foot on the floor.
Adults could not drink alcohol unless it directly was related to plot.
Religion could never be âdepicted in a mocking manner,â which led to some editorial changes. For example, 1940â˛s Pride and Prejudice? Mr. Collins was a librarian. 1948â˛s Three Musketeers had Prime Minister Richeleu. To avoid being accused of âmockingâ religion, studios removed religion altogether.
And, of course, the sanctity of marriage had to be upheld. You know. Marriage between one cisgender heterosexual man and one cisgender heterosexual woman. That marriage.
The CCA was so ridiculous that it wouldnât approve a comic written by Stan Lee called âGreen Goblin Rebornâ which was explicitly recommended by the US Dept of Health, Education and Welfare, because it depicted a characterâs drug use in an extremely negative light and had an extremely anti-drug message.
The CCA wouldnât approve the comic because it showed drug use at all. Comics couldnât even have positive messages or show characters overcoming or recovering from negative paths they were on because those negative paths couldnât be shown in the first place. And of course they had all the same issues as above.Â
Itâs also worth noting that the United States Supreme Court began neutering the Hays code 14 years after its inception, and in 1965 it ruled that the Hays Code could only approve a film, it could not ban one, because that was an infringement on the First Amendment.Â
This is how we got â wait for it, wait for it! â a ratings system instead of content bans! Jack Valenti was elected to the head of the MPAA in 1966 with the specific promise to move from bans and codes to ratings.Â
So, if your point was âthis already existed and it was good!â actually, uh, those things already existed, and they failed, and it bears repeating that attempts to bar films from being shown without Hays Code approval were explicitly declared unconstitutional, and were replaced by ratings systems and content warnings.Â
I donât give one good goddamn about shipping wars on Tumblr, but for fuckâs sake, at least take three hot seconds to Google the history youâre citing and see if what youâre holding up as some standard that supposedly âestablished blah blah movies should only teach us moralityâ did something other than
lead to a bunch of ridiculous workarounds and euphemisms and Melanie in Gone With The Wind giving birth like sheâs some shadow creature about to stab Renly BaratheonÂ
disproportionately affect LGBTQ/queer people, POC, and other marginalizations
get declared unconstitutional (because, as it turns out, making a big board of people who decide what can get published does in fact violate the First Amendment)
make such a parody of itself that comics companies stopped giving a fuck and released comics without the Comics Code approval.
Like, seriously, this isnât difficult history. You could Google it. Literally the only film critic these days who actually supports the Hays Code is Michael fucking Medved. You know, the guy who says that all non-Orthodox Jews vote primarily based on their hatred of Christianity? The one whoâs super great buds with Daniel Lapin? The one who wrote âSix Inconvenient Truths About The US and Slaveryâ? Thatâs the only film critic still around who thinks that the Hays Code was ever a good idea. Thatâs who youâre aligning yourself with by pointing to the Hays Code and going âsee? The Hays Code! âmandating that the primary function of publication is teaching people what is right and what is wrong.ââ That is literally the only film critic I could find who agrees with you. Someone who thinks that the United States didnât prosper because of slavery and that the concept that slavery is what built the US a lie, who champions himself as a former delusional leftist turned âconservative champion.â
Thatâs your buddy. Thatâs your pal in morality, methods, and rightness. Â
Jesus fuck, read a little history. Iâm so exhausted.Â
