Warner Bros. Movie World

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Warner_Brother_Studios_from_ The_Petrified_Forest_film_trailer.jpg

The Hays Code was supposed to be a self-control for Hollywood without governmental and political influence. In fact, what it turned out to be in the hands of Republicans and the catholic church, there now was a quiet dominant way of censoring movies, which most studios disliked a lot.

One of the studios that economically suffered from the code was Warner Bros founded in the early 20 century. The studio of the Polish immigrants Harry (born Hirsz), Albert (born Aaron), Sam (born Szmul) and Jack (born Itzhak) had developed its own style by producing controversial narratives, social problem pictures and realistic gangster movies in times of the Great Depression, reflecting the cracked confidence in authority and the country's social traditions.

But the Hay´s code somewhat impeded the release of the Warner Bros. products in their intended way. Especially the crime and gangster films, including Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932), paradoxically this distinctive genre was required to be cleaned up, to display social consciousness and to morally teach. The "classical" gangster film was forced to evolve into other genre variations including: "gangster-as-cop" films and "Cain-and-Abel" sagas such as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

But not only the Gangster-Genre was highly influenced by the Hays Code. Also the classic "Casablanca" got a lot attention from Breen, cutting out explicit references to the characters Rick and Ilsa having slept together in Paris and to Captain Renault extortion of sexual favors from his supplicants. However, both remained strongly implied in the finished version. Ironically Breen made it also inevitable to create a new ending, which turned out to be one of the most popular scenes of the film: Instead of celebrating adolescence love, it comes to Rick's noble renunciation. Though, Warner Bros. is anything but thankful for the impact of the Hays code.

Of course there are a lot of other examples of studios and movies being "terrorized" by censorship. The Wikipedia-article about the production code says:

The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film Tarzan and His Mate, in which brief nude scenes involving a body double for actress Maureen O'Sullivan were edited out of the master negative of the film. Another famous case of enforcement involved the 1943 Western The Outlaw, produced by Howard Hughes. The Outlaw was denied a certificate of approval and kept out of theaters for years, because the film's advertising focused particular attention on Jane Russell's breasts. Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that the breasts did not violate the code and the film could be shown.

Some films produced outside the mainstream studio system during this time did flout the conventions of the code, such as Child Bride (1938), which featured a nude scene involving 12-year-old actress Shirley Mills. Even cartoon sex symbol Betty Boop had to change from being a flapper and began to wear an old-fashioned housewife skirt.

Hays` Hollywood: A motion picture Czar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joan_Blondell_banned_1932_publicity_photo.jpg

When you think about Hollywood, the first associations popping up in your mind might be ENTERTAINMENT, GREAT MOVIES, FABULOUS STARS and SUCCESS. The strong, artificial attributes of Hollywood. But looking at it in a more antiseptic way Hollywood is a big industry with a historical struggle in dominance and power of the studios, politics, economy, creatives and publicity.

It is not surprising that the choice of film material is predominantly guided by demands of the audience to produce successful movies. Talking about history, Hollywood faced difficult times during the great depression in the 1930s and it was more important than ever to allure people with modern, unconventional productions. But there was a problem, more specific a man, standing in its way to do so: Will H. Hays. After being the manager of Warren G. Harding's successful campaign for the U.S. presidential election in 1920 and subsequently being Postmaster General, the Republican resigned to become the President of the "Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America" (MPPDA) shortly after the organization was founded.

The MPPDA was founded in 1922 to establish a new self-regulating system in Hollywood , which seemed inevitable after the image of Hollywood suffered from obnoxious movies and off-set scandals. (e.g. one of America's most popular movie stars, comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, was accused of raping a young actress) Hollywood was considered to be corrupt, and many felt the movie industry had always been morally questionable, beside this there were a growing call by primarily Protestant groups for federal censorship of the movies.

To avoid political-ruled censorship, the studio leaders in Hollywood accepted the compromise of the "unpolitical" formation MPPDA with Hays at its peak, who was backed by the Catholic church and their Catholic Legion of Decency. Hays tried at first to give advice to the studios by creating certain guidelines and "The Don`ts and be Careful´s", but wasn´t quiet successful in changing the production output that still lead to calls for censorship. Again, the Catholic Church intervened, and proposed a censorship Code, that would later become famous as the "Hays code".
The code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" which mostly concerned morality. The second dealt with "particular applications" which was a list of items which should´t be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned, but were assumed to be understood without clearly being transcribed.

And exactly this "Hays code" was facing Hollywood in the time of the great depression, when it was so important to produce movies with attention-seeking, violent and debatable content.
So once again the studios merely ignored the desired censorship because of the economical pressure, but also because the dominant liberal and social positions in Hollywood, judging the code as prudish and backward were reacting with reluctance. The Hays code was even openly mocked by the media: "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory."

But not for a very long time. An amendment to the code in 1934 made it an obligation to obtain a certificate by the production code administration (PCA) before any film could be released. Under Joseph Breen, who was appointed the head of the PCA, the enforcement of the Production Code became rigid and notorious. If a film was unacceptable and denied a "seal of approval", it wouldn´t be placed in theaters, and the studio would be charged 25 000 Dollars. Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors, and Hollywood moguls.

Tim Dirks writes in his article about the 193o´s in Hollywood:

Regulations of the [production] code included censorship of language, references to sex, violence, and morality. The conservative and repressive code required, among other things, no promiscuity, no venereal disease, no excessive violence or brutality, twin beds for married couples, no ridicule of ministers of religion, the prohibition of various words ("sex", "hell", and "damn"), and no clear depictions of rape, seduction, adultery or passionate, illicit sex. There was to be no "excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures." Sinful activity (such as criminality or sex outside marriage) could often exist in a film IF it was punished or if it ended in misery.

As a result, the Hays Code (and similar strictures laid down by the hugely influential Catholic Legion of Decency) directly influenced the content of almost every American film made between 1930 and 1966.

Where was it and where is it going?

Nowadays Hollywood seems to be dominated by Liberals or at least to lean a lot to the left side from the center. But has it always been that way? Looking at the history of Hollywood you can say: Yes!...at least on the shiny side of life..

Jim Larrison writes in his article about the political tendency in Hollywood. Once again he attests the assumption that Hollywood has a left bias:

There are plenty of data points to support the fact that Hollywood leans left (or left-of-center based on research out of Rutgers University), but the biggest is the financial contributions that are given by those in the film industry to political causes and politicians. There is overwhelming evidence that over 80% of the elite in Hollywood support the Democratic party, and that of the top 20 candidates and pacs that received donations from 2000-2007 all 20 were left leaning or liberal in nature. Also if you look at the Presidential election of 2000, where George Bush won to Al Gore, albeit by a very tight margin, less than 8% of Hollywood voted for a Republican candidate.

Larrison also puts some effort in explaining why Hollywood has become this way. According to him there are two main aspects that has to be mentioned to do so. The first aspect is a historical one: In the early days of Hollywood there was a strong Republican support, which lasted until the early 1930's. Under the "laissez faire" approach of the Republicans, studios offered low-paid jobs and binding long-term contracts, that denied the acting stars and other employees to freely market their services to other studios. This unsurprisingly led to an ill-will of the creative people working for Hollywood productions. For this reason, though Louis B. Mayer and a few other studio heads were prominent Republicans during this era, most actors and writers were Democrats, predominantly on the left side.

The other main reason for liberal tendency is according to Larrison simply related to the nature of actors, actresses and creatives as artists. He puts it this way:

...artists may be more sensitive to personal suffering and more personally interested in major social themes and statements than non-artists. They may be more likely to perceive tension between their artistic freedom and the constraints placed on them by the marketplace of consumers. Moreover, civil liberties and censorship issues are very important to artists, and the Democratic Party has generally been less amenable to restrictions on free speech.

Further more, talking about the personal intentions of the artists, you have to take into account that Hollywood is a brand, only working with the attention of a great audience. Hollywood is known for it´s glamour and exclusivity. Thus, it´s important that this exclusivity isn´t associated with elitism and a rich, ignorant class. To make people adore the Stars and Stories in and around Hollywood, they need certain moments of identifying and sympathizing with them. Thus, Liberal opinions are more likely to be expressed and stressed by many individuals in Hollywood. They popularize.

Pop culture, true opinions, revolution, economical success. All those factors influence the Hollyticosphere and it´s creative outcome, that most of us love to enjoy: movies made in Hollywood!

(If everybody is showing the true face is another question, but common`, we here deal with a class of very good actors :)

Read the whole article of Jim Larrison: Does Hollywood have a political bias in general?

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media

//Noah Shachtman about the blogosphere as useful promotion tool//

Breitbart is criticizing Hollywood for using mass media to distribute their liberal point-of-view. But of course their is another side of the medal. Critic Noah Shachtman writes in his article „How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media“ on wired.com:

When he isn’t on TV or drinking with rich guys, Andrew Breitbart spends most days combing through the thousands of tips he receives via email, instant message, and Twitter. He passes on the choicest of those to the editors of his three group blogs: Big Hollywood, which focuses on liberals’ hold on pop culture; Big Journalism, which calls out the press for lefty bias; and Big Government, which — take a guess.

Only looking at the two positions of Breitbart and Shachtman, there are a lot of hints that Breitbarts efforts are not arbitrary; liberal tendency seem to be striking in the mass media, which have, more or less, an effect on Hollywood productions. But Breitbart himself discovered a mass-medium- the blogosphere- as powerful tool to work against common structures in Hollywood. Shachtman writes:

For someone who claims to hate the “Democrat-media complex,” Breitbart sure knows how to work it. Few people are better at packaging information for maximum distribution and impact. He is, depending on whom you ask, either the “leading figure in this right-wing creation of a parallel universe of lies and idiotic conspiracy theories” (that was liberal critic Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America) or “the most dangerous man on the right today” (from Michael Goldfarb, Republican consultant and former campaign aide to John McCain). Breitbart is, in short, expert in making the journalism industry his bitch. “The market has forced me to come up with techniques to be noticed,” Breitbart says. “And now that I have them, I’m like, wow, this is actually great. This is fun.”

Obviously both guys and both political sites nowadays know how to use internet and mass media, blogosphere and politicosphere. In some way they are accusing each other for the very same thing.

Find the whole article How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media by Noah Shachtman on wired.com//

Noah Shachtman is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and the editor of its national security blog, "Danger Room," He's reported from Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the Pentagon, Los Alamos, and from military bases around the country.

Hollywood´s Big Party

To define who is Hollywood, it might be useful to start with, who it´s not.

Obviously Hollywood is not only one person, nor is it a homogenous group of people. Hollywood more likely works like a brand name. And different people, diverse in positions and opinions, are working for this brand. When we talk about Hollywood, of course, we think of the people who produce and sell mass media and those, being part of the big Hollywood wheel, like directors, actors and actresses, who are standing in the center of America´s attention. As we talk about the political perspective, all these participants inhibit a specific political point of view or at least a political tendency, that becomes evident in their expressions, ways of life and works. The question evolving is, if this political wheel is moving to the left or to the right. Is Hollywood a Republican or a Liberal? As I already mentioned Hollywood can never be a homogenous political group, but assuming the function as brand name, their has to be a certain (official) direction. And there is. Thus, the widespread answer to the question of political tendency is surprisingly clear: Hollywood nowadays promotes liberal, democratic approaches.

Andrew Breitbart, who is considered `one of the ten most important people of the media, who nobody has ever met` is a leading conservative and therefore the exception in the shark tank. In an interview with Peter Robinson from the Hoover Institution he states that 99,9 % of Hollywood is left from the center. He talks about a democrat-media-complex. Of mainstream movies that all affirm the left value system. Breitbart himself helped Ariana Huffington to develop her very successful liberal Blog „The Huffington Post“, but of course doesn´t agree with its political intention. When the Huffington Post launched, he launched his very own blog „Big Hollywood“ and than several more, in order to change the political environment in Hollywood. He claims that the conservatives have to gain more creative power to get the chance to affirm their point-of-view in movies. Categorizing Breitbart a media expert, his critics towards hollywood might be realistic: Hollywood is a Liberal!