hardcore litterbug (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dethtoll) wrote,@ 2004-02-18 12:56:00 |
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censorship report
PLAYBOY: Did you want to be rich?
GROUCHO: I always wanted to be rich. I still want to be rich. Why, years ago, I came to Los Angeles without a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket. Unfortunately, the nickel today isn't worth what it used to be. Do you know what this country needs? A seven-cent nickel. We've been using the five-cent nickel since 1492. So why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. And so on.
PLAYBOY: You should have been an economist.
GROUCHO: Then I wouldn't have been rich.
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report (unfinished)
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If This Were a French Film I Could Do It!
The height of violence and language in films was probably during the mid-80s. Scores of violent films were released during that period, replete with all manner of lurid, gory, or just profane scenes. These days such material has been toned down, and while there may be a decapitation or two you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual dismembering; the same applies to language. The original Die Hard used a dirty word a minute, but by the time Die Hard 3 was released the language was toned down considerably. But what of the early days of film? Surely there was censorship early on, and most certainly during the Golden Age that we call the 1950s.
There was much clamoring for censorship in the early days of film, which mostly pandered to “lower morals” (I say this objectively, for I have no morals) By the early 20s, with stars getting into trouble (among them Fatty Arbuckle’s conviction for murdering a model), the various studios appointed the former Postmaster General, William Hays, as the head of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America organization (MPPDA), in the hopes of adequately self-censoring before the government intervened. Of course, it didn’t really work out well because there was no real means of enforcing the Production Codes put out by the organization. But censorship still managed to put its hand in front of the projector, so to speak, and it’s been trying to ever since 1903 when a viewing audience ran for the door after seeing a gun aimed right at them from the screen at the end of The Great Train Robbery.
PLAYBOY: Did you want to be rich?
GROUCHO: I always wanted to be rich. I still want to be rich. Why, years ago, I came to Los Angeles without a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket. Unfortunately, the nickel today isn't worth what it used to be. Do you know what this country needs? A seven-cent nickel. We've been using the five-cent nickel since 1492. So why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. And so on.
PLAYBOY: You should have been an economist.
GROUCHO: Then I wouldn't have been rich.
------------------
report (unfinished)
------------------
If This Were a French Film I Could Do It!
The height of violence and language in films was probably during the mid-80s. Scores of violent films were released during that period, replete with all manner of lurid, gory, or just profane scenes. These days such material has been toned down, and while there may be a decapitation or two you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual dismembering; the same applies to language. The original Die Hard used a dirty word a minute, but by the time Die Hard 3 was released the language was toned down considerably. But what of the early days of film? Surely there was censorship early on, and most certainly during the Golden Age that we call the 1950s.
There was much clamoring for censorship in the early days of film, which mostly pandered to “lower morals” (I say this objectively, for I have no morals) By the early 20s, with stars getting into trouble (among them Fatty Arbuckle’s conviction for murdering a model), the various studios appointed the former Postmaster General, William Hays, as the head of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America organization (MPPDA), in the hopes of adequately self-censoring before the government intervened. Of course, it didn’t really work out well because there was no real means of enforcing the Production Codes put out by the organization. But censorship still managed to put its hand in front of the projector, so to speak, and it’s been trying to ever since 1903 when a viewing audience ran for the door after seeing a gun aimed right at them from the screen at the end of The Great Train Robbery.
