[lit-ideas] Re: The Hays Hollywood Morality Code
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:17:46 -0600
When I was young lad and as innocent as the lamb, the Cathoic Church
whetted my appetite for prurience by reading from the pulpit every Sunday a
list of all the films then showing in local theaters that were on the
Condemned List of the Catholic Legion of Decency. It was a mortal sin to
knowingly see a Condemned movie and thereby putting oneself in the occasion
of sin . God frowns on doings. As I got older I wondered why God would
frown on his creation. Why, then, did he do it? Still haven't figured
that one out.
Anway, when I was still a young lad but not as innocent as before, I was a
paperboy and I would tear out movie-ad photos of Jane Russell, Betty Hutton
and MM (no, not Minnie Mouse) and drool over them at my leisure. But one
day I forgot and left a photo of luscious legged Cyd Cherise in my jeans
pocket and my mother found me out. That only made it all the more
exciting. Ever since, I've been a fan of prurience. That's why I oppose
pornography. Sure porno is fun the first ten thousand fucks, but Jesus, it
do get boring watching after a while. But prurience -- ah, the tease --
that's another matter. Mammaries are not nearly as exciting as
decolletaged bosoms.
Cutting to the chase (the chase is the thing, after all -- the problems
start when one catches the other). Chasing is fun, especially naked
chasing, and the kinkier the better. Assuming the onset of puberty at
about 12 or 13 (at least in my case), I have to admit that in the
intervening 56 years I've not yet come to understand femalehoodness -- like
Freud, I'm left wondering what the hell do "they" want?
Just to cuddle, it sometimes seems. At other times I think "they" want to
be worshipped, at other times it seems that all "they" really want is
a maintenance man around the house, sometimes "they" want a hero -- all
muscle-bound and ready to face any danger, but still sensitive to "their"
needs. Women! Thank God I have a dick to tell me what I want.
Mike Geary
Musing in Memphis
On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I recently wrote Maureen Sullivan instead of Maureen Dowd in referring
> to the NYT. Sorry about that. It was just dumb, but it did remind me that
> I had long had this vague idea that Maureen O'Sullivan was somehow
> connected to the advent of the Hollywood dress code, in that this alleged
> dress code was put in at least in part to address the scanty dress of films
> of the 30's, in which Maureen O'Sullivan had played a scantily clad Jane
> alongside Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan of the 30's. Well, I read up a
> little bit, and it turns out that you never know how deep a puddle is until
> you step into it. It turns out that it was much more than a dress code.**
> ****
> ** **
> We all know that all new technology is co-opted by the baser instincts.
> When the Gutenberg press first began printing, a major press output in
> addition to bibles was pornography. Likewise it didn't take long for
> movies to get violent and, to use a judgmental word, rather depraved soon
> into their invention. So the Motion Picture Production Code, or the Hays
> Code, was promoted in an effort to improve humanity, or at least not to
> debase it further. However, good intentions, as was seen with Prohibition,
> don't always work as intended. By mandating that bad guys always get their
> due in the end, in 90 minutes even, and all's well in the end, one has to
> wonder if it didn't lull people into a sense of complacency. Around that
> time Edward Bernays showed corporations how to manipulate desire, and
> planned obsolescence was on its way to being institutionalized as a
> mechanism to improve the Depression-era economy, going on to become the
> disposable way of life we know today. The threshold for titillation is a
> moving target, traveling ever upward. People do bad things because they
> can, so a lid does need to be put on things, but Prohibition proved that
> laws often cause problems. A lot of art has always been didactic, and has
> always failed. I wonder if in subtle but powerful ways the blurring
> between reality and fiction doesn't influence a lot of daily behavior.
> Below is a link from Wikipedia on movies before the code. It's a look at
> America of the 30's through films.
> ****
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood)****
> ****
> ** Andy**
>
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