The Hay's Code: The Motion Pictures Production Code Of 1934

The history of censorship in the Americas is complex and dates back to colonial times in the 1600s. However, the threat of censorship against film didn’t come about until after the 1920s, when silent films were moving into spoken ones and the Great Depression had movie studios grasping at more mature, morally questionable content to encourage theater visits despite viewers’ worsening financial situations. The Hays Code is an example of both self and government-imposed censorship that was brought about by moral and religious concerns following the increase in salacious content in the 1930s.

While Hollywood today can be seen as chock full of violence, sexual content, and profanity, this wasn’t always the case. However, to a lesser degree, in

This rule of the code exemplifies very clearly what the goals of the Hays Code were; that is, to protect younger, more impressionable audiences and the family values at the time, as well as to lessen the perceived immorality of films. Joseph I. Breen, a film censor who helped apply the Hays Code, stated about the film A Woman's Secret (Nicholas Ray, 1949), that “The trouble with this story, [ ... ], is that it is almost completely devoid of anything that suggests reasonable respect–or even recognition–of the common amenities of life, to say nothing of the seriousness, the dignity, or the importance of marriage. [ ... ] One is tempted to suggest that the overall flavor of the picture seems to suggest that these thoroughly reprehensible activities are made to appear commonplace and trite, even if, possibly interesting.” The censors, following several years of films featuring adultery, prostitution, and other likewise unsavory plot lines, strongly enforced that films would preserve and positively reflect the sanctity of marriage, lest they risked being unseen by the public. Before the Hays Code became official, it was the duty of writers and directors themselves to self regulate. However, comments such as Breen’s were much more common once the Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 was officially adopted.

The many rules of the Motion Picture Production Code were in response to situations that had taken place in films that were deemed unacceptable to society in the 1930s. The rule explicitly against blasphemy against Christianity was a direct result of several films, such as The Sign of The Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1932) for example, and as one of the original voices against the increased salacious content in 1930s films and Hollywood’s film industry in general, it’s unsurprising that religion and patriotism, being such a large part of people’s lives and society, were protected from slander with the Hays Code—and prohibited the display of anything that would ridicule or argue against it. While seemingly unrelated, the rule against interracial relationships also makes sense when looking back at the time period. People weren’t as racially accepting at the time, furthermore solidifying the idea that these censorship criteria, while impossible to comprehend in the modern age, were important to society at the time, as was its restricted portrayal. As an explicitly racist ban, plenty of directors used this rule to their advantage, using it as an excuse to not hire non-white