Christian Author Pines For Days When Religious Leaders Got To Boss Hollywood Around

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/christian-author-pines-for-days-when-religious-leaders-got-to-boss-hollywood-around/

Christian Author Pines For Days When Religious Leaders Got To Boss Hollywood Around
June 23, 2017 by Robyn Pennacchia

Christian author Jerry Newcombe is not happy with Hollywood these days, specifically with how it’s ignoring flyover country. He longs for the “good old days” when the Motion Picture Production Code (usually referred to as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) allowed church leaders to have more of a say in what ought to be allowed in movies.

(snip)

For the unhep, the Hays Code was a set of guidelines “voluntarily” (i.e.: Not enforced by the government) adopted by the motion picture industry in order to avoid pictures getting banned in various states with strict “moral decency” laws, and, yes, in response to groups like American Roman Catholics harping on about immorality in films.

It didn’t just ban swearing. It didn’t just ban sex. It banned gay people (“any inference of sex perversion”), it banned mocking the clergy and Betty Boop’s flapper outfit. It banned sympathy for criminals or justification of crimes or people getting away with crimes. It was also incredibly racist! The code literally banned interracial romances — likely for the same reasons Bob Jones University banned interracial dating until 2000. The first “loosening” of that part of the code was the 1949 movie Pinky in which a white actress playing a black woman who was “passing” as white had a relationship with a white man.

[SCantiGOP]

1. "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

Was considered extremely risque when it closed out Gone With the Wind in the 30s. It was only because of the scope of the movie and the director and producer that it was allowed.

[trotsky]

2. LOL

And these same people will rant about Sharia Law, which oddly enough would mesh quite happily with their censorship requirements.

[Warpy]

3. A lot of movies during the Hays Office Reign of Error were damned good

since it took truly great screenwriters to talk around some of the sillier restrictions, like the twin beds for actors who were not married to each other but were playing married characters who still liked each other.

If religious bullies were focused on egregious violence instead of normal sexuality, I might be all for it, violent movies wherein the characters communicate with screams and grunts bore the shit out of me. Unfortunately, all they care about is pretending that sex between consenting adults doesn't really exist and if any is found, it should be punished.

While I'd love to see something jar Hollywood out of its comic book obsession, religious sexual prudery is unlikely to do it. I do wish something would get through to conspicuous Christians that freedom of religion is not the same as freedom to bully everyone around them. I don't want to go back to the doublethink that said it was fine to simulate chopping a woman up and flushing the parts down a toilet but calling it a toilet was banned.

Yes, it was just that silly.