[lit-ideas] Re: The Hays Hollywood Morality Code
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:55:38 -0330
Quoting Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>:
snip
Thank God I have a dick to tell me what I want.
> Mike Geary
> Musing in Memphis
So did Kant.
Walter O.
>
>
>
> 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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