On November 1, 1966, the Motion Picture Association of America introduced its new film ratings system. This system assigned a letter - G,M,R, or X - to all movies produced by American studios to indicate the suggested maturity level of the audience based on the content of the film. While this film ratings system has received heaping criticism over the years, it is vastly better than the one it replaced, which relied on censorship and religious moral values to control the artistic output of Hollywood.
While the film rating system we know today is a helpful method for understanding the type of content in a film, and one which you can freely embrace or ignore, it started life as the Motion Picture Production Code, an entirely different beast. This code was outlined by Will Hays, a Presbyterian minister and the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the precursor to the MPAA. The guidelines he created could be distilled down two groups: “don’ts” and “be carefuls.” The “don’ts” were things explicitly banned from appearing in films released by MPPDA members and included (these are direct quotes): “Pointed profanity” including the words “‘God,’ ‘Lord,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ’ (unless they be used reverently…);” “Any inference of sex or perversion;” “White slavery” (Specifically slavery involving whites; other races were seemingly permissible); “Scenes of actual childbirth - in fact or in silhouette;” and the broad “Willful offense to any nation, race or creed.” The “be carefuls,” which were not restricted from use, were meant to remind filmmakers of the power they carried in their medium and to wield their influence cautiously. This list included “the use of the flag;” “the use of firearms;” “Technique of committing murder by whatever method;” “Sedition;” “International Relations;” and “Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron).” It is easy to distill Hays’ opinion of the average American from these lists; someone with a soft mind who was quickly corrupted by sex and violence. For Hays, controlling films was about preserving America’s moral integrity. The interesting question is why the movie studios went along with it.
Sex sells at the box office, as does violence and crime. This is true now, and it was just as true back in the early days of film. And so it seems strange that the allied film studios would come together and hoist stringent restrictions upon themselves against showing these subjects on screen. Their reasoning lies in the pressure placed upon Hollywood as a whole by municipalities and even the federal government. Local governments had set up censorship boards to determine what type of content, and subsequently which films, could be shown in their areas. As each board was locally governed and therefore slightly different, it was essentially impossible for the studios to know how many, and if any, film boards would object to the content of their films. More troublingly for the studios was that one studio based in Ohio had taken the local censorship boards to court, alleging that films were protected under the Bill of Rights as free speech. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, who ruled unanimously, and surprisingly to the modern observer, that movies were not protected as free speech, and empowered local censorship boards to carry on banning the screening of certain films.
This ruling left the movie studios in a precarious situation. They could go on tiptoeing around film boards and hoping that their films wouldn’t face commercial failure due to being banned in too many markets, or they could be proactive. By creating their own censorship board, they were still unable to broach these unseemly topics, but at least they would know what was permissible before they had completed the film. The hefty restrictions of the Production Code, as well as the well known piety and conservatism of the MPPDA’s new icon Will Hays, led the local censorship boards to accept the Code’s rulings on films and stand down with their own reviews. Any film that received the seal of approval from the Production Code board was accepted as appropriate for screenings around the country.
The Motion Picture Production Code was the law of the land for hollywood movies for thirty years, but eventually faded away amid changing tastes, but more importantly, changing laws. By the 1950’s, moviegoers were more comfortable with seeing racy content on the screen. The strict restrictions of the code, especially those governing race relations, sex, and violence on screen, no longer matched with the zeitgeist - at least that of the younger generation now attending movies. Additionally, the Supreme Court heard another case regarding film’s place under the First Amendment. This court completely reversed the stance of the earlier decision and placed films under consideration as free speech. No government board at any level could deny a cinema’s right to show any film, regardless of content. This was the beginning of the end for the Production Code.
Movie studios, now knowing that the only thing to contend with was public perception, started releasing movies that would never gain the seal approval under the Production Code. By the mid-1960’s many films were released without even going before the review process, and the MPAA saw the need to shake things up in order to stay relevant. They brought in Jack Valenti, an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, and the man who would change everything for the association. He proposed a new concept for the group: instead of trying to censor films for general consumption, they would instead assign films grades based on the audience for which they thought the subject matter most appropriate. Thus the creation of the MPAA scale we know today. And while the MPAA’s process for assigning film ratings is suspect and the subject of derision, at least films can be released regardless of content. It could be worse, and for a time, it was.
Appendix:
Find the full list of Don’ts and Be Carefuls here.