Censorship and Self-Regulation – Richard Maltby

Censorship and Self-Regulation

A blend of ‘governmentally administered systems of control over the expression of political ideas in film’ and ‘systems of self-regulation operated by entertainment cinema industries to ensure that the content of films conforms to the moral, social and ideological mores of their national culture’

Censorship

        • Form of market censorship
        • Power to those in control of production

Self-Regulation

• “The most effective form of market censorship prevents movies from being made rather than  suppressing them after production, but in either guise, censorship is a practice of power, a form of surveillance over the ideas, images, and representations circulating in a particular culture.”
• Hollywood’s dominance due to form of self-regulation

Main Argument

Page 48…

        • In 1915, US Supreme Court:
            • motion pictures ‘a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit’
            • is not ‘part of the press of the country or as organs of public opinion’
            • as a result, not protected by First Amendment
            • Liable to state/municipal censorship
            • Legal definition = implicit censorship

Film Censorship History

• “In practice, the great majority of film censorship, at least in the English-speaking world, has been concerned more with cinema’s representations, particularly of sex and violence, than with its expression of ideas or political sentiments.”

Light Bulb Moment

        • 19th century Europe, Americas, and Australasia:

• Divided public entertainment performances into two categories
• ‘legitimate theatre’ vs ‘spectacles de curiosite’ (marionettes, cafes-concerts, magic shows, panoramas, animal exhibitions
• 1906; theatrical censorship ceased, but cinema (spectacle) controlled by local authorities

Origins Continued

• Proliferation (rapid growth) of local controls led to self-regulation national institutions in US, Britain, and Europe ~ censorship of Europe vs. States
• Conflict between municipal public safety regulations and emerging national distribution industries (circulation of product)
• American National Board of Censorship (NBC) created in 1909

Origins Continued

• Motion Pictures Patents Company (MPPC) created in 1908
• Developed standardized formulas of acceptable content (prohibitions and encouragements)
• Narrative strategy encouraging respect towards moving pictures (order and explanation of dominant ideology, and implicit political censorship of triumph of virtue)
• NBC lost authority after The Birth of a Nation

Origins Continued

• 1915, essential strategy in place; system of containment, overseen by internal regulation more subtly compulsory and pervasive than any legal prior censorship might be
• Outcry today vs. then
• The justification for censorship was invariably paternalistic. Cinema was held to exert a powerful influence over its viewers, particularly over those susceptible groups which comprised the bulk of its audience: children, workers, and those described by colonial rhetoric as ‘subject races’ (or, in the USA, immigrants).”
• Industry censorship/self-regulation lead by fatherly example

Argument Enhancement

• “The aim of censorship was to police exhibition rather than to prohibit it, and both distributors and exhibitors recognized that it was in their economic interest to co-operate with established censorship practices.”
• Self-regulation after code    
• Vigorous pro-censorship not due to explicit sexuality of movies, rather larger social factors:
• Labour
• Post-war depression
• Resulting in middle-class anxieties; disruptive condition of working class
• Protestant groups guiding these protests

Social Factors

• Former Postmaster-General
• President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (MPPDA); established in March 1922
• MPPDA constructed as an instrument to resolve contradictions of efficiently restricting Hollywood’s extravagance
• Hays: movies are to offend as small a proportion of country’s cultural and legislative leadership as possible

Will Hays

• Public relations policy affiliated MPPDA with civic and religious organizations, women’s clubs, and parent-teacher associations
• Hays: quality of pictures (movies) should not need censorship
• Self-regulation as form of industrial self-determination

Will Hays Continued

• “In part he achieved this by conceding that there was no dispute over the need to regulate entrainment or over the standards by which it should be regulated, only over who possessed the appropriate authority to police the apparatus of representation.”