1. Censorship Part 2: The Production Code and wartime propaganda

2. Assignment 4 brief: mise-en- scene essay (15%) Due Date: Sunday, end of Week 6 (22 Feb), by midnight In this assignment you are asked to produce a short mise- en-scène (incl. performance) analysis of one sequence (of not more than 5 minutes) taken from one of the films screened on the course that you have not yet written about. Your analysis should indicate how the mise-en- scène in this sequence helps to shape the representation of – select one of the following: gender, race, or social class–in your chosen film as a whole. The word limit for this assignment is 1,000 words.

3. –your ability to produce a good close reading –Your ability to focus on one or two aspects of mise-en-scene in detail but show your awareness of all the different elements –your competence with essay writing technique and scholarly referencing (note guidelines in student handbook). –most importantly, your ability to use mise-en-scene analysis to answer/address a particularly question: how does film X represent race/class/gender? Designed to test

4. Student-led seminars Seminar groups and topics allocated in either last week’s seminar or today. Don’t have a group yet? Arrangements must be finalized by the end of today’s seminar.

5. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between‘Good and Bad,‘Friend and Foe.’ The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one’s own ends. The rule of unanimity: presenting one’s viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by ‘psychological contagion.’ The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations.’ (Norman Davies, Europe-A History, London: Pimlico,1997, p. 500). What is propaganda?

7. What is the Production Code? 1930 – self-regulatory Code for film production. 1934 – Code strictly enforced by the Production Code Administration (PCA). 1952 – demise of the Code (due to TV, court cases, changing audiences). In 1956, the Code is revised. 1968 – Code is officially abandoned; replaced by a ratings system. Code underpinned by the idea of the social function of entertainment. Why is the Code important? An articulation of the ethical and cultural values deemed central to a ‘healthy society.’ The Code is a useful indicator of the role Hollywood movies played in maintaining consensus during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

8. Precursors to the Hays Code: the rowdy and degenerate cinema space

9. 1905-6. Nickelodeons, ‘make schools of crime where murders, robberies and hold-ups are illustrated… [They] manufacture criminals to the city streets.’ (The Silent Cinema Reader, p.136). 1909: the MPPC set up the National Board of Censorship (from the 1920, the National board of Review)—a key precursor to the Production Code.

10. Why was the Code introduced? 1920s Movie scandals  Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) formed in 1922 to “clean up” Hollywood, the “Sin City.” MPDDA headed by Will H. Hays. 1927: “Don’ts & Be carefuls” don’t quite work…. With the introduction of sound in 1927, a written code was deemed necessary. Production Code adopted on March 31 st, 1930.

11. The Code (see handout) Divided into two parts, a set of ‘general principles’ (the moral vision) and ‘particular applications’ (precise listing of forbidden material). Catholic in tone and outlook, the animating rationale for the Code held that ‘art can be morally evil in its effects,’ that both ‘as a product [of a mind] and the cause of definite effects, it has a deep moral significance and an unmistakable moral quality’ (Thomas Doherty, p.7, emphasis added).

12. Classical Hollywood and the Production Code Periodization: when does ‘classical Hollywood’ begin? Bordwell & Thompson… 1917. Thomas Doherty… 1930: To think of classical Hollywood cinema is to think not solely of film style and means of production, silent or sound, but to conjure a moral universe with known visual and ethical outlines. (5) What makes Hollywood’s classic age ‘classical’ is not just the film style or the studio system but the moral stakes. (5)

13. The Pre-code Era, 1930-1934 Historians argue that many Hollywood films made before the strict enforcement of the Code from 1930- 1934, were morally, socially (inc. racially), and politically provocative and diverse. Sexuality (promiscuity, homosexuality) Illegal drug use Revolutionary left-wing content Social provocateurs: tough women, gangsters, other social “undesirables.” Some examples…

14. For four years, the Code commandments were violated with impunity and inventiveness in a series of wildly eccentric films. More unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, they look like Hollywood cinema but the moral terrain is so off-kilter they seem imported from a parallel universe.--Doherty

19. Enter Joseph Breen and the PCA 1934: The PCA (Production Code Administration) headed by Breen took over film regulation. The National Legion of Decency (1933) The Motion Pictures Research Council’s study on “Our Movie-Made Children.” Studios opposed individual state intervention/censorship. Opposing federal intervention into working conditions and practices in the industry: FDR and the New Deal. The Code was designed to stop the federal government from interfering. The Code was partly a way of maintaining Hollywood’s control over its product and asserting its cultural significance.

20. The Production Code era, 1934-1968 The Code was successful for these reasons: : It saved Hollywood large sums of money on editing and distribution prints. Family picture in place of “sex, immorality, and insurrection” Economic recovery of the studios after the Depression, partly attributed to the Code.

21. Playing the Code… “in the hidden recesses of cinematic subtext under the surface of avowed morality and happy endings, Hollywood under the Code is fraught with defiance of Code authority” (Doherty, 3).

23. The searchlight scene in Casablanca: did they, or didn’t they?

24. Legacies of the code Damage or loss of pre-Code films. Survival of censored versions of 1920s-30s films (e.g. Animal Crackers, 1930, Love Me Tonight, 1932). TV in the 1950s persisted to use cut versions of pre- Code films. With the advent of cable, like TCM, pre- Code films/scenes were made visible again (see Tarzan and His Mate, 1934).

25. “Hollywood’s vaunted ‘golden age’ began with the Code and ended with its demise. An artistic flowering of incalculable cultural impact, Hollywood under the Code bequeathed the great generative legacy for screens large and small, the visual storehouse that still propels waves of images washing across a channel-surfing planet.”—Doherty A positive legacy?

26. Tarzan and his Mate (1934)

27. Propaganda Is the American cinema a propagandist cinema?

28. Casablanca & propaganda “Conversion narrative” (Thomas Schatz). Moving characters—and audience— from selfish neutrality to selfless sacrifice. Mitigating American individualism in a time of war. Coinciding the needs of the Code with those of early 1940s propaganda.

29. http://www.fepproject.org/

30. Some questions (for the seminars) With some movement around sexuality, violence, and racial mixing, the code is still the set of governing principles shaping wholesome entertainment in Hollywood cinema. Why did some filmmakers, such as the Dogme 95 group (Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, etc.) voluntary adopt restrictive working practices? (To engender, not hinder, creativity). Is a filmmaker ever free? (Think of how commercial imperatives have effectively become a less obvious system of censorship, ruling out any forms of expression that do not “repeat the party line” of neoliberal ideology).