Culture Shock: Hollywood Censored--Movies, Morality and the Hollywood Production Code

"Can you see through this?" asks Jean Harlow of a rather transparent dress, and when answered in the affirmative, she quips, "good, I'll wear it." The line hails from the 1932 Anita Loos-penned Red Headed Woman, in which Harlow not only uses her sexuality to make her way in the world, but--hold on to your knickers--isn't punished for it! Two years later, Joseph Breen (summed up as "an altar boy with brass knuckles") proclaimed that "the vulgar, the cheap and the tawdry are out," and with the help of Catholic boycotts and untimely Hollywood scandals, succeeded in putting some real teeth into the heretofore largely ignored 1930 Production Code with its (today) rather absurd restraints on the motion picture studios, covering everything from acceptable subject matter to the way people kissed onscreen. The change brought an artificial sweetness and light into the 1930s as Shirley Temple replaced Mae West, and gangster films gave way to Busby Berkeley musicals. In this episode of the four tape series Culture Shock (the other titles are The Shock of the Nude: Manet's Olympia, The Devil's Music: 1920s Jazz and Born to Trouble: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; series price: $200), meant to spark discussion on controversy in the arts, interviews with film scholars and critics such as Thomas Doherty and David Denby, as well as representatives of conservative organizations such as Morality in Media, are combined with a history of the pros and cons of the now defunct Production Code. Unfortunately, the program, ably narrated by Ellen Barkin, includes clips containing graphic violence, language and simulated sex, pretty much limiting its use in the classroom (although these are montages that could be easily fast-forwarded). Also, while the intent is to stir debate, the film actually works better as history than an introduction to a contemporary issue. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)