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Censorship in Movies

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Author: Terry

You can get a heated discussion going anytime you mention movie censorship around those who are involved in the movie industry.

Just about the time the first movies were screened, there were those who considered the moral aspects of the new medium and determined that "guidelines" needed to be established to prevent these new-fangled motion pictures from corrupting America.

The Hays Code was created in 1926. It wasn't formally adopted until 1934 by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The Hays Code, of course, forbade nudity and profanity, but it went further than that.

The Hays Code set up "principles" by which the movie industry was to be governed. The Hays Code supplied the guiding principles of what movie makers could and could not show on the silver screen and the words that actors and actresses could utter.

The Hays Code was replaced in 1966 by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating system. Censorship was abandoned and replaced with a rating system that was intended to guide movie goes as to content of a movie.

You can get arguments on both sides of the issue and you'd better believe that the issue is not dead and buried. There are those who see movie content censorship as a violation of "free speech," and then there are those that see movie content censorship as the very reason that great movies of the past were great. Producers and directors, say these proponents of censorship, had to be more creative in the ways that sex and violence was portrayed on the screen.

The House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States recently passed legislation that greatly increases fines and penalties for violation of what is considered "indecent" material on television. They've got the movie industry in their cross-hairs!









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