Although this industry had been an effective instrument for advertising and increasing political and social efficiency, the wide screen is being used for different purposes. In contrast with earlier films, which were dominated by guns, money, and status and also promoted authority, individualism, adventure-seeking, and atheism, the last 5 years have seen movies highlight something else: material gain should not be the ultimate purpose, the necessity of unity and cooperation, and life after death. This reflects the severely deteriorated structure of the American family and wondering how it can be restored.

Movies with social themes

Family themes. In The Kid (2000), Bruce Willis plays a workaholic who long ago forgot his past and family and refuses to see his father. Then one day his childhood appears before his eyes in the form of himself as a child. Thanks to this event, he makes peace with his past and gradually regains his lost values. This movie is one of many recent movies depicting weakened family ties: a lack of spousal love, children leaving home at earlier ages and forgetting their families, and elderly parents being left unprotected by their children.

In The Family Man (2000), Nicholas Cage is a passionate businessman desperate to achieve as high a status as possible. He does not know that real pleasure can be found in a lovely wife and children. One day, he wakes up and finds himself married with two children. As fictitious as it is, he cannot realize how his life changed all of a sudden, but later realizes real happiness with his new family. The first thing he does after this so-close-to-real dream is to search for the woman he is going to marry.

American Beauty, which won the Oscar in 1999, made its way through many other big-budget movies. Spousal mistrust and the widening generation gap were the main topic in this movie, and the fact it won The Best Picture award shows the importance given to the concept of family.

Life after death themes. Life after death also has been a popular theme. The Sixth Sense (1990), a nominee for The Best Picture award in 1999, features a child who sees dead people walking around like regular people. They have an explicit message: The universe is more than what we can perceive through our five senses. In Ghost (1990), Patrick Swayze is a dead person whose soul is still in touch with this world and his beloved wife, whom he tries to protect from danger. What Dreams May Come (1998) takes Robin Williams into Heaven and Hell so he can meet his wife and children again. Gladiator (2000), awarded five Oscars including The Best Picture award, is the story of the Maximus, commander-in-chief of the Roman army, who is willing to leave behind status and fame so that he can reunite with his family for happiness. He is an invincible ” but praying ” commander, who teaches his soldiers about what comes after death, and tragically reaches his family at the end.

Angels and the Devil. Angels and the Devil also are frequent topics. City of Angels (1998) is a good example. Meg Ryan is a person who can exercise free will, taste worldly pleasures, and is expected to know God, whereas Nicholas Cage is an angel who lives in a different dimension and has none of these abilities. Likewise, Brad Pitt portrays the angel of death in Meet Joe Black (1998) and shows us a fictional perspective through an angel’s eyes.

In the digitally remastered and remixed version of The Exorcist (2000), a family tries to reclaim their possessed teenage daughter through every possible medical treatment. In the end, however, two priests are called to exorcise the demon. In The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Al Pacino portrays the Devil, who seeks to control people with lust, status, and money. Keanu Reeves portrays a very successful lawyer who has never lost a trial. He finds himself in a struggle between the Devil’s intrigues and his human virtues.

In End of Days (1999), Arnold Schwarzenegger is an ex-cop who believes in the brute power of muscles and weapons. However, he comes to realize that conventional methods of combat do not work on Beelzebub (the Devil), and so has to devise other solutions. Throwing away his machine gun, he kneels at the altar and prays for help.

Destiny. Destiny is another hot topic. Destiny is a significant part of the belief that keeps societies up and strong. Such a belief lets us know that everything comes from God, which gives us the strength to bear life’s difficulties. Almost 100 years ago, speculation that a comet might hit Earth scared many people who did not believe in destiny. Final Destination is about a group of young people who attempt, but fail, to challenge the destiny that is chasing them. The Green Mile and Fight Club are also good examples for movies with metaphysical content that show that life is not all that we can see.

Religion. Christianity is being questioned in Hollywood movies. In Stigmata (1999), during the 1940s some scripts ” supposedly the original New Testament scriptures from Jesus’ time ” written in ancient Aramaic on leather pieces are found rolled in several jars. They are sent to Rome, after which nothing is heard about them. In the meantime, Frankie, a young girl in her twenties, is attacked brutally by an unseen assailant. She consults doctors and psychiatrists, but nobody can help her. The only man who can help is Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne), an investigator sent by the Vatican to stop demons from taking over her life.

Bless the Child (2000) tells about a child with supernatural powers. Her evil occultist mom and stepfather want to take her back from her aunt who raised her. The girl talks with her stepfather just like Jesus talked with the Devil, as recorded in the Bible. Her aunt tries to save her from a Biblical prophecy, and in the end angels help them out. In Dracula (2000), people realize that they can defeat Dracula’s supernatural powers only by seeking help from God.

Hollywood also has become interested in other religions. Several movies have been made about Buddhist Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Islam, despite its close and popular association with terrorism in the minds of many, has appeared in a few movies with some positive images. For example, Antonio Banderas played a Muslim envoy (Ahmad Ibn Fadlan) from Amawis in the 13th Warrior (1999), who was an educated and refined person. In Robin Hood (1991), during the Fourth Crusade Kevin Costner brought with him back to England a scholarly Muslim who was admired by the English because he could use binoculars and gunpowder.

Conclusion

These movies inspire us with a promising future, as materialism appears to be less popular and people are interested in searching for the soul, the Hereafter, brotherhood and sisterhood, peace, and love. We can only hope that this trend will continue.

References

• www.hollywood.com
• www.movies.go.com

The movie makers probably did not intend to make killing look attractive. But was it the final effect anyways? Do movies depicting indecent acts fail to show the consequences sufficiently? What can society do about this trend? These and similar questions have been asked and debated for decades. Below, we analyze a time in Hollywood when the concentrated efforts of concerned individuals and organizations had a significant positive impact on forcing the movie industry to move toward self-regulation.

The Beginning of the Movie Industry

Movies rose as a new form of entertainment at the turn of twentieth century. By the 1920s, 40 million Americans were watching them each week. After winning the right to vote in 1920, flapper girls were exercising their new-found freedom, Harlem nightclubs flourished with whites with an interest in African American culture, and the number of gangs selling liquor during Prohibition increased. Movie producers displayed these value changes in their films to attract more young people. This started the big fight between America’s moral guardians and the movie makers.

Hollywood scandals in the early 1920s accelerated the demand for movie censorship. In 1921, the famous comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping and murdering a young actress; director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered, and a series of front page stories revealed his drug use and sex life; actor Wallace Reid died of a drug overdose; and America’s “sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, got a quick divorce to marry Douglas Fairbanks.

The motion picture business had become an industry. Film companies seeking to integrate production, distribution, and exhibition had one formula in mind: expansion meant capital, capital meant Wall Street, and Wall Street meant conservative business practices. They could not afford any scandals or federal investigations of Hollywood.

The Pressure for Codes Builds

Leff and Simmons write: “In 1921 alone, solons in thirty-seven states introduced nearly one hundred bills designed to censor motion pictures. Women could not smoke on screen in Kansas but could in Ohio; a pregnant woman could not appear on screen in Pennsylvania but could in New York. Six censorship states, which controlled over thirty percent of the theater seats in America, condemned illegitimacy and sexual deviance.”(1) State censors recut films after the producers, and the outcome was unfavorable. Local exhibitors were tired of the cost of censor cuts and attacks by the public and the media. In January 1922, the movie company presidents formed a trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributers of America (MPPDA). Postmaster General Will Hays, an ex-Republican national chairman with White House connections, was chosen as their head. He was a great success as a spokesperson, but failed as a censor regulator of movie content.

Under Hays, Hollywood instituted a morals clause that, as part of the standard employment contract, regulated performers’ off-screen lives: “The artist agrees to conduct himself with due regard to public conventions and morals and agrees that he will not do or commit any act or thing that will tend to degrade him in society or bring him into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, or that will tend to shock, insult or offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency or prejudice the producer or the motion picture industry in general.”(2) Furious with such self-regulation and restraints, many ignored the contract, and so the scandals continued.

A mainly Protestant anti-movie lobby grew larger and more threatening in the mid-1920s. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the Reverand William H. Short’s Motion Picture Research Council, and Canon William Shaefe Chase’s Federal Motion Picture Council, among others, all lobbied for federal action. Supporters of cencorship bills claimed that movies were immoral, vile, and corrupting young people. With the advent of —talking— films, the moral guardians of America faced a bigger threat: movies were more popular and dialogue challenged public norms. According to Black: —In 1928 the New York State censorship board cut over 4,000 scenes from more than 600 films submitted, and Chicago censors sliced more than 600 scenes.—(3) Martin Quigley, owner and publisher of the industry trade journal Exhibitors Herald-World, initiated in 1929 the first attempt by Catholics to influence the film industry. Believing that government censorship was futile, he began thinking of a code that would include rules, regulations, and philosophy. Father FitzGeorge Dinneen, Chicago censor board advisor, sent him to Father Daniel Lord, a St. Louis University professor who could write the document. The resulting production code had three working principles:

• No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it.

• Law, natural or divine, must not belittled, ridiculed, nor must a sentiment be created against it.

• As far as possible, life should not be misrepresented, at least not in such a way as to place in the mind of youth false values of life.(4)

The production code termed movies entertainment, and those who made them were obligated to produce —correct entertainment— for mass audiences. Movies had a profound impact on the —bodies and souls of human beings,— and could —affect spiritual and moral progress.— Hays saw the code in early 1930. He later wrote: —My eyes nearly popped out when I read it. This was the very thing I had been looking for.—(5) The code announced specific limitations on language and behavior. Lots of offensive words and phrases were banned, and the ridicule of religion, nudity, evocative dances, depiction of illegal drug use, and scenes of childbirth were prohibited. The code was explicit when it came to on-screen crime and sex:

I. Crimes against the Law

These shall never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation.

1. Murder

1. The technique of murder must be presented in a way that will not inspire imitation
2.  Brutal killings are not to be presented in detail c. Revenge in modern times shall not be justified

2. Methods of crime should not be explicitly presented

1. Theft, robbery, safe cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc., should not be detailed in method
2. Arson must be subject to the same safeguards
3. The use of firearms should be restricted to essentials d. Methods of smuggling should not be presented

3. Illegal drug traffic must never be presented a. The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot or for proper characterization, will not be shown.

II. Sex

The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not interfere that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing. 1. Adultery, sometimes necessary plot material, must not be explicitly treated, or justified, or presented attractively. 2. Scenes of Passion a. They should not be introduced when not essential to the plot. b. Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown. c. In general passion should so be treated that these scenes do not simulate the lower and baser element.(6) Interestingly, the above principles set forth by a Catholic scholar were in perfect accord with the moral codes of Islam, another Abrahamic religion that prohibits the vivid depiction of actions not approved by God.(7) By the beginning of the Depression, film studios turned increasingly to themes of sex and violence to attract audiences. Finally, Hays used the resulting public reaction to persuade the studios that enforcing the code would be the most secure and economical answer to their troubles. If the movie industry regulated itself, it could prevent likely government intervention. The film companies were in debt, having spent a lot of money to introduce sound, and many had lost money in the stock market crash of 1929. Desperate to cut costs, they decided to avoid paying to revise the film after the censorship boards made their edits, by following the code before making their movies. The code was adopted in 1930.

Joe Breen Gets Involved

During 1930-34, movie producers ignored and openly mocked the code. The pressure continued from the Catholic Church with the support from Jewish and Protestant leaders. In 1934 Joe Breen, a strict Catholic moralist working as a public relations man for the production code in Hay’s office, was hired to run Hollywood’s Production Code Administration (PCA). Breen brought new standards: —The PCA had the authority to review all movies and demand script changes. Any theater that ran a film without the PCA seal of approval would be fined $25,000.—(8) Finally the Code had some power. Studios accepted it and produced films that met Breen’s standards. Largely because of his efforts to get the code implemented, it has become known as Breen’s Code. It lasted for more than two decades, being officially abandoned only in 1968. Breen’s Code is a perfect example of people affecting the behavior of institutions whose motives may not match the best interests of the people they serve. By expressing their dissatisfaction and organizing to pressure the motion picture industry, Americans managed to change the nature of the movie industry’s products toward higher moral standards held in common by most monotheistic religions. As we go into the twenty-first century, there are many areas in which people of faith can work together to make a positive change in their societies and the world

Footnotes

1. Six states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, New York, Maryland, Kansas, and Virginia. Leonard J. Leff, and Jerold L. Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 4.
2. Ibid., 5.
3. Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Censored (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 34.
4. Leff and Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono, 284-85.
5. Black, Hollywood Censored, 40.
6. Leff and Simmons, The Dame in the Kimono, 284-85.
7. Bukhari, —The Prophets,— No. 8.
8. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/beyond/hollywood.html.

Additional References

• O’Connor, John E. and Jackson, Martin A. (eds.). American History/American Film.
• New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1979. Walsh, Frank. Sin and Censorship. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.