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Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The press swings at every pitch, we donā€™t have to.

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I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Hey Washington Post, ā€œDemocracy Dies in Darknessā€ was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

ā€¦ gradually, and then suddenly.

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Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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Petty moves from a petty man.

I really should read my own blog.

Letā€™s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day canā€™t get worse.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Movies / Saturday Night At the Movies Open Thread: The ‘Magical Mirror’ of the Hays Code

Saturday Night At the Movies Open Thread: The ‘Magical Mirror’ of the Hays Code

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Saturday Movies Open Thread

As I understand it, there’s a subset of young people on line who, having grown up between the market-pornification of everything and the explosion of #MeToo moments showing the ever-present risk of exploitation, would just as soon never see anything remotely sexual in their public media, ever. (Some of the examples online are pretty bizarre, but that’s the nature of Very Online discourse.) And because every twitch in the zeitgeist can be twisted for profit, the individual quoted in the above tweet calling for a return to the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, aka the Hays Code, has a glossy expensive website and print magazine funded by… well-known moral arbiter Peter ‘I suck blood from young men to preserve my own youth, but in a sterile and strictly medical fashion’ Thiel.

This is absolutely one of the weirder timelines. On the other hand, Katherine Coldiron’s discussion is quite interesting, IMO:

pre-Code movies demonstrate that life and people in America really have not changed much; we’re motivated by sex and money, we make bad decisions, we like to laugh, we work equal parts bc we have to and for the satisfaction of working 2/

in pre-Code movies, women work and have sex, people are cruel and weak, and things don’t always work out okay at the end of the story. Sometimes they do. The stories make you think, and feel kinship with these long-dead actors, bc their struggles are not different 3/

In brief, the Code set back the liberation of American thought for three decades at least. The point was to make movies acceptable to *everybody* – and the floor was naive housewives in the Midwest. by which I mean – the current floor for acceptability goes as low as 5/

the linoleum that covers pornography and snuff, so the *most* sophisticated viewers. the Code made the floor for acceptability the *least* sophisticated viewers. 6/

People who’d never seen a Black person in real life, for example. Or people who could not have explained the anatomy of the opposite sex. These are the viewers the Code was invented for – to keep them safe from anything on screen that would make them uncomfortable & 7/

keep them from going to the movies.

The homogenization of the movies over the next 30 years was a deliberate conservative/reactionary move; it was not a simulation of how life was really lived in America during those years. It was a fantasy. 8/

The ppl who invented & enforced the Hays Code either didn’t think or didn’t care about the mirror effect of cinema: what we see in the movies influences how we live our lives. That means American culture began to try & live the fantasy. 9/

Movies portrayed a repressed version of real life, and real life consequently aped that repression. That’s (part of) why the 50s were so deeply repressed: 15 years of conditioning by the movies about The Way Life Should Be. 10/…

If you want only sanitized media, it’s possible to live your life that way. But the full context of the Code is not about style or wholesomeness; it’s about repression, for the *entire* audience, to the detriment of almost everyone, including the innocents. 12/

Just because distasteful things (and perfectly normal things [like suicide or divorce or, I dunno, interracial relationships]) were not allowed on screen under the Code doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. They did. And life was fucking difficult for the people who 13/

went through them, because there was no visible corollary in American media to make them feel less alone. The lack of diversity in film that persisted through the 1990s is a legacy of the Hays Code, as is widespread bigotry against LBGTQ+ people. 14/

I’m not exaggerating. The 30 years that the Hays Code was in place kept us, as a society, from recognizing that being gay was a normal, existing thing, that a percentage of society was gonna be gay no matter how we tried to pretend they didn’t exist. 15/

Representation matters, as we all know (now), and the fact that representation of nearly anything but a fantasy of repressed straight white American life didn’t appear on the screen for 30 damn years explains, somewhat, why we’re only untangling basic human rights now. 17/

Apply that analysis to other elements the Code boxed in: people of color, independent women, “proper” morality…we ended up devaluing all but a narrow band of life. For decades.

Cinema is a mirror, not a window. Distort the mirror & you wind up with a distorted society. 18/

So yeah. I’m disgusted by anyone hankering for a return to the Hays Code. For a fantasy of “wholesome” life, you can watch Code movies, anytime. But don’t hold that mirror up to me; I won’t see myself in it. /end

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    would just as soon never see anything remotely sexual in their public media,Ā ever

    Isn’t that why they devised that rating system? Kind of like a trigger warning.

  4. 4.

    Another Scott

    This is the Mnemosyne Signal, isn’t it?

    E.g. Mnemosyne:

    27. Mnemosyne
    MAY 7, 2014 AT 12:43 AM

    @NotMax:

    More that he had a tendency to run out of money ā€” Fuller was one of the very few independent producers of the 1950s and never worked for a studio, so he was always scrambling for financing and distribution. But working outside the studio system also allowed him to work outside the Production Code, so he was able to make films with plotlines like an interracial romance where one of the actors was actually Asian, not a white dude in yellowface.

    And donā€™t forget the old adage: Films are never completed, only abandoned. Thereā€™s no director on Earth who ever felt their film was finished before it was released.

    (See the original for embedded links.)

    I hope she’s doing well, wherever she is.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  5. 5.

    satby

    @Baud: I was just thinking this is like a bat signal for her!

    I love pre-code movies because they were a much more realistic slice of life. Not just after the roaring twenties and while the Depression was on, but people behaving the way we all know how people behave.

  7. 7.

    C Stars

    Just wikied Hays Code. Interesting that the fifth item on the list of “dont’s” is “white slavery.”

    White slavery

  9. 9.

    satby

    Great Twitter thread discovery Anne Laurie! We often dismiss the way frivolous things like movies had a strong role in setting social mores.

  11. 11.

    satby

    @Baud: And African ones.

    We call it human trafficking now, historically it was used to refer only to trafficking for sexual purposes.*

    *and if you weren’t a white female, it didn’t count.

  14. 14.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Baud: 

    Isnā€™t that why they devised that rating system?

    I thought it was to let me know which movies were worth watching.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @C Stars: I think (could be wrong) it was more about what we would call “sex trafficking” these days.

    [eta:] Again too slow!Ā  Satby got there first.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    delphinium

    @Baud:Ā Isnā€™t that why they devised that rating system? Kind of like a trigger warning.

    Yeah, people can check the rating systems to see what might potentially offend. One guy I used to work with refused to let his kid watch anything with potential nudity but horrific violence was a-okay.

    Nudity doesn’t bother me personally and is much preferable to graphic violence. One odd thing that does bother me in films/tv is when people swallow pills without water.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @C Stars: Just wikied Hays Code. Interesting that the fifth item on the list of ā€œdontā€™sā€ is ā€œwhite slavery.ā€

    That was the contemporary code term, of course, for ‘prostitution’.

    The Hays Code still allowed ‘fallen women‘ and ‘bad girls‘… but not sex workers, especially if those sex workers were presented as part of an organized labor market.Ā  Tragic / evil individuals preying on good middle-class christian men, yes; a systemic bias towards men (pimps *and* johns) exploiting women with no other options, never!

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: It seems crankier than it used to be for me now, too (like it doesn’t seem to like quotes now).

    Searching for:

    balloon-juice.com hays code mnemosyn

    got me the link.Ā  The incomplete spelling of her ‘nym seems important.
    ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ
    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    satby

    @delphinium: I wouldn’t allow my kids to watch R rated movies until they were in their teens, well after their friends could. People would tell me “it’s ok, there’s not any (nudity, sex, swearing) and I would say “I don’t object to that, I object to the gratuitous violence”.

    I knew my kids just watched a lot of movies at their friends houses, but they knew what I found offensive and why, and I like to think ultimately it influenced them.

  25. 25.

    C Stars

    Last night we watched the film Operation Mincemeat. Pretty engaging. We’re halfway through Adventures of Baron Munchausen and will finish it tonight. Always a score when we find something that the 9-year-old, the 13-year-old, and the parents (old-old-old) can all enjoy.

  27. 27.

    Anne Laurie

    @delphinium: One odd thing that does bother me in films/tv is when people swallow pills without water.

    I assume it’s easier to film multiple takes if the actors are just palming pills & not chugging fluids, but some people *do* take pills that way.Ā  Spousal Unit will choke down a handful of pills & then take a drink — he’s a supertaster, and says fluid makes it difficult for him *not* to taste unpleasant / bitter pills before he can force them down.

  29. 29.

    eversor

    Are you against Christianity full stop.Ā  Are you for it’s utter destruction?Ā  Because if you are not you are for these codes, Trump, Alito, and anti humanity.Ā  It is the greatest pox on the world.Ā  You are either against Christianity or you are against humanity.Ā  There is no more middle ground.

    As I am not a fascist and did not vote for Trump I am against Christianity and fully support it’s complete, total, and utter destruction and it being put up as worse than Nazi Germany.Ā  That is the only fix for it.

    Good people are anti Christian.

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: When they merged the sites after the apocalypse, they didn’t include the year/month/date in the URL. Ā That made a difference for some things.

    It’s also possible since all the old posts disappeared for 6 months or more that Google kind of forgot about them. Ā (non-technical description)

  32. 32.

    delphinium

    @Baud: Yeah, I need a trigger warning for that and those movies where the actors are semi-AI (not sure what the exact term is); for example The Polar Express creeps me out.

  35. 35.

    RevRick

    I find it curious that as the Hays code was in its heyday, the age of marriage plunged, reaching its lowest of I believe 20 for women and 22 for men in 1950. Itā€™s almost as if repression led to a desperate search for an outlet.

  36. 36.

    Anne Laurie

    @delphinium: One guy I used to work with refused to let his kid watch anything with potential nudity but horrific violence was a-okay.

    An old friend used to tell the story of how his mother wouldn’t let her teenage kids see American Graffiti because it was ‘filthy’; she took them to The Godfather instead…

  39. 39.

    Betty

    Jung wrote essays on American repression and how it would create a kind of psychosis which we seem to be witnessing now with the whole QANON, etc. craziness going on.

  42. 42.

    sab

    @satby: My mother did that also. We were allowed to read James Bond books, but we were not allowed to watch Wild Wild West tv show.

  46. 46.

    prostratedragon

    During the height of the code period it was almost impossible to refer to everyday racial realities, or depict black people as other than servile and accepting of their place. For instance lynching could only be shown with white victims, as with Fury or The Ox-bow Incident, though the latter did dare to show a Mexican as another victim, and had a character who was the conscience and voice of suffering played by a black actor. In Fury, Lang placed a black actor in a conspcuous place, iirc moving either counter or orthogonally to the mob. Even in less charged scenes it was daring to show black extras going about their own business and not obviously that of a nearby white person.

  47. 47.

    Anne Laurie

    @C Stars: Why was it termed white slavery, though? It seems odd.

    Because slavery, including sexual exploitation, was considered the natural state for people other-than-white… and prostitution put white women on the same level as those people.Ā  Shudder!

    I remember reading (many many years ago) that the term ‘white slavery’ was deliberately coined by ‘Good Government’ GooGoos during the first Gilded Age, because it made both sex work and sex workers into a particular form of sanctioned horror.Ā  There’d long been a Victorian bias against ‘soiled doves’, but ‘white slavery‘ turned (stigmatized) working women into a class of exploited victims who needed, like African-Americans and immigrants, to be ‘retrained’ or ‘civilized’ before they could ever hope to aspire to membership in the Great American Dream.Ā  Nothing personal, of course — just (social) ‘science’.

  48. 48.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    In tonight’s installment of Henry Johnson, Brookings Fred Meyer Store Manager, an event that occurred shortly after our son was fired. I have a lot of detail on this event because my wife was the one who discovered what the employee was up to. Here we go..

    It is closing time and an employee from the Photo/Electronics department asks an employee of the Apparel department to hold a small shopping cart full of items from that department (apparel) in their back stockroom. The employee requesting the hold will return the next day and buy the items. Holds are allowed as long as they are held in the department that they are from and it’s not for longer than one day. The item(s) also can not be marked down clearance items as all clearance items must remain on the sales floor, no holds are allowed. This is an old and well established rule.

    The next morning my wife (Apparel manager) saw the items that were set aside and checked them out. She noted that in the closing rush it seems that the Apparel employee forgot to check for clearance items and it turns out that most of the items were clearance. A big no-no. The Apparel employee who did the hold was a recent hire (< two months at the time) and is still learning the ropes so their missing this detail in the rush to close is not surprising. The Apparel employee will be coached about this without any infraction/punishment.

    To be continued…

  49. 49.

    There go two miscreants

    Those of us who grew up Catholic in the 50s and 60s (at least in the Baltimore area, probaby elsewhere too) also had to deal with the local archdiocese censors who went even beyond Hays. What a crock!

    Also, let me recommend an amusing website (which I have no connection with) of movie reviews (many B and below as well as pre-code):

    1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

  51. 51.

    different-church-lady

    Personally, I feel that there should be things in life that are kinky and things in life that aren’t kinky, and I prefer that everything in the world not be one or the other, and that people pay attention to which one is appropriate at which time.

  57. 57.

    FelonyGovt

    I did have trouble, when my daughter was a young teen, how very sexualized even PG-13 movies were. I remember a bunch of us taking our kids to the movies and being surprised at some of the situations they showed teens in. That was 20 years ago now, I guess thatā€™s just how things are now.

  58. 58.

    sab

    @Baud: But very violent. Not killed dead violence but men pounding on each other, and chair clubbing and crotch kicking and all that. Mom felt not appropriate for kids. She may have been worried about our furniture.

  60. 60.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Continued from post #48:

    The employee requesting the hold has worked there for almost 25 years and is aware of the rules regarding holds, yet requested the hold anyway. The employee requesting the hold is not exactly the best employee as they have been talked to numerous times for things like shopping while on the clock, wandering away from their department to chat/gossip with other employees, not focusing on their job and numerous other minor infractions, most noted/coached on but not frequent or severe enough to suspend/fire.

    Among the many clearance items in her hold there was also one non-clearance item that was missing its printed price tags/UPC. Instead, stapled to one sleeve was a piece of paper with the UPC of a different apparel item hand written on it in pencil. The UPC code used was that of an apparel item that was also on clearance.

    To be continued…

  61. 61.

    Tom Q.

    @There go two miscreants: Queens NY here, from the same years.Ā  We had to take the Legion of Decency pledge in the pews every year, and promise to go by their ratings.

    My first “What the hell?” related to that came when I saw Miracle on 34th Street was rated Morally Objectionable in Part.Ā  Why?Ā  Because Maureen O’Hara’s character was DIVORCED.

  63. 63.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: Aliens. Moist throated aliens.

    It’s rare that I take fluid in the mouthful with any pills. Perhaps with ones that stick inside the mouth. Or afterward, especially if the directions say to take plenty of water.

  65. 65.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Continued from post #60:

    When she removed the paper from the garment my wife saw the printing on the back side of the paper that indicated that it is a piece of scrap paper from an old ad for the Photo/Electronics department. The same department as the employee who requested the hold. The clearance priced item UPC attached to the garment is significantly lower than the retail price of the Garment. It appears that the Photo/Electronic employee was going for an unauthorized discount via the self-checkout.

    My wife filed a report with Asset Protection and requested that the Asset Protection manager take pictures of the handwritten UPC and the actual item UPC (from manufacturer tag inside the garment). My wife then returned the clearance items to the store floor and set aside the garment with the wrong UPC stapled to the sleeve for pictures and to have the correct tags put back on it.

    To be continued…

  70. 70.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Continued from post #65:

    The Photo/Electronic employee came in later that day (they were off work that day) and was very upset and angry with the Apparel employee they talked to because nearly everything they had set aside had been returned to the floor. They complained that it took them a lot of time to get all of the items they wanted the night before (on company time, it seems) and now they would have to do it all over again. Nothing was said about the item with the incorrect UPC stapled to it.

    The employee was suspended and sent home the next day she came in to work. My wife was told by another manager that the employee was heard bawling their eyes out in Henry’s office before leaving. While the employee was away from work Henry talked to the lead in her department, telling them that when the employee returned to remind them to focus on their work. The lead told Henry they do that all of the time and the employee just doesn’t care to perform better. Two days later this employee returned to work, telling their coworkers that they were not suspended but instead went to a funeral. Everyone who knows what heppend is like, WUT??!!

    End of that story. Does anything sound hinky to to anyone here? My wife sure thinks so.

  71. 71.

    HumboldtBlue

    @C Stars:

    The story and the primary characters are so much deeper and interesting than what the movie was able to get across.

    Montagu and Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley in that inimitable British way), particularly Chumley, were fascinating characters bordering on genius and the plan was concocted by none other than Ian Fleming who was on the staff of the Chief of Royal Navy intelligence.

  72. 72.

    lowtechcyclist

    @eversor:

    Are you against Christianity full stop.Ā  Are you for itā€™s utter destruction?Ā  Because if you are not you are for these codes, Trump, Alito, and anti humanity.Ā  It is the greatest pox on the world.Ā  You are either against Christianity or you are against humanity.Ā  There is no more middle ground.

    Oh, it’s you again.

    New year, same boring schtick, I see.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    I donā€™t have a good way to explain it, and Iā€™m sort of working off those ā€œcanā€™t see the planet in question but can see its effectsā€ methods that astronomers use, but after we had that big disruption in the Balloon Juice force and our site was borked for, what, several weeks, Google search results for this site got a lot ā€œshallower.ā€ Harder to find stuff, and the results mostly cut off earlier than about eight or ten years ago. Almost like Google thought we went out of business and then jettisoned a lot of archives.

    ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ

  74. 74.

    lgerard

    What was left out here, the saccharine productions of the 1940’s led to a precipitous decline in movie going as audiences were not impressed with these so called classics.

  76. 76.

    gwangung

    I would speculate the long held cultural repression that the Hays Code represents led to the wildness of the 60s counter culture revolution.

  77. 77.

    Ohio Mom

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I see you saw my comment to you last night. Not much I can add. I am reminded of a warning my aunt gave me, a long time ago.

    I was in high school at the time, and complaining to her about how incompetent some of my teachers were (most were fine but there were a few outliers and I guess I had them all at once). She answered, somewhat briskly, ā€œYou think you are seeing incompetence now? Wait til you get out into the world. Most people are a bunch of stupid fucks.ā€

    Not much I can add to that, either. How I miss her!

  81. 81.

    There go two miscreants

    @Tom Q.: Oh right, that was what they called it; couldn’t remember the name. (Didn’t know that about 34th Street but I would have been outraged also.)

  82. 82.

    kalakal

    Not the Hays code but a good example of failure of censorship .

    When the filmĀ Life of Brian was released in 1979 the vast majority of the UK population was amazed when legions of self appointed God botherers screamed that it was blasphemous. We were even more amazed as various city councils banned it. One such was Leeds where I then lived. However the neighbouring city of Bradford ( the cities run into each other, there’s no gap) didn’t. For the next 2 months the cinemas of Bradford showed only one film as the population of Leeds & adjoining areas (pop 1.2 million) flooded into Bradford (pop 200,000). The restaurants, pubs, and cinemas of Bradford had by far their best summer ever. Those of Leeds, not so much

  87. 87.

    zhena gogolia

    @delphinium: I have no problem with nudity. My old-lady-yells-at-clouds complaint is that every film now seems to involve graphic vomiting. Why? Why?

    I didn’t even mind the “infamous” White Lotus season 1 scene as much as I hate scenes of vomiting, which trigger my gag reflex.

  88. 88.

    lowtechcyclist

    @kalakal:

    For the next 2 months the cinemas of Bradford showed only one film as the population of Leeds & adjoining areas (pop 1.2 million) flooded into Bradford (pop 200,000). The restaurants, pubs, and cinemas of Bradford had by far their best summer ever.

    Bet they were looking on the bright side of life!

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    When they merged the sites after the apocalypse, they didnā€™t include the year/month/date in the URL. That made a difference for some things.

    Y’think?! Goddamn, that’s an important detail.

  91. 91.

    Ohio Mom

    When I was growing up in an apartment building in the Bronx in the late 1950s-1962 (when we moved to Queens), one of the dads in the building my parents were friends with, as it was explained to me, ā€œSpeaks Italian (I am thinking his parents must have been immigrants) so he watches movies from Italy for the government.ā€

    I always got the impression my parents were a bit jealous of such a cushy job.

    Itā€™s very vague memory, maybe I will ask my sister for details. Sheā€™s five years older than I am and remembers many things I was too young to get at the time.

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    Studio honchos not being complete fools, there were cases when a script was submitted for approval with scenes and/or dialogue which the producers never had any intention of committing to film to be used used as bargaining chips in order to sneak in material which otherwise may not have passed muster if landed on the desk of the notorious Mr. Breen or his minions.

  93. 93.

    kalakal

    @HumboldtBlue: There’sĀ  a 1956 film of Mincemeat calledĀ The Man Who NeverĀ Was based on Montagu’s book. Montagu actually appears in it as a sceptical senior officer who has to be argued into approving the plan by the actor playing him.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    People whoā€™d never seen a Black person in real life, for example. Or people who could not have explained the anatomy of the opposite sex. These are the viewers the Code was invented for ā€“ to keep them safe from anything on screen that would make them uncomfortable…

    Pre Code, but especially after the Code era, movies depicted black and Asian people that white people preferred to see. It reinforced a phony social order and also reinforced simplistic lies about sexual behavior.

    Every now and then a film might point out the hypocrisy of the roles that non-white people were expected to play. Here’s a clip from a 1937 movie with James Cagney and Phillip Ahn.

    It’s also crazy to remember that sometimes scenes with black actors were removed altogether from films distributed in the South, so as not to offend white sensibilities.

  98. 98.

    Steeplejack

    @RevRick:

    I find that implausible (“the age of marriage plunged”). I thought (average) marriage ages were always pretty low until about the 1960s.

  99. 99.

    Almost Retired

    Late to the thread, but my best friend is from an old behind-the-scenes Hollywood family with strong opinions on this. Ā In his opinion, one of the most pernicious aspects of the Code was that women who ā€œsinnedā€ (defined broadly) could not expect a happy ending, but must ultimately be punished. Ā Men could be loveable rogues. Ā Scripts had to be rewritten. Ā His great uncle worked on the film version of ā€œOf Human Bondage,ā€ and spoke of how they had to make the Mildred character even less sympathetic than the book.

  103. 103.

    Ohio Mom

    @schrodingers_cat: A while back (a couple of years ago maybe? Before Dobbs was overturned and she briefly returned), when we were all missing Mnem, Ruckus told us he was in contact with her and she was fine.

    Hearing that helped. I still miss her but I donā€™t worry anymore. There are a number of other lost us commentators I hope are also okay, debbie from Columbus comes to mind.

  104. 104.

    Dan B

    The Hays Code made me feel very alone as a gayling in the 50’s and when I finally found gay people in 1969 there were guys who wouldn’t kiss during sex b3cayse that would “make them gay”.Ā  Gay affection was worse than sex.Ā  Ā It’s ha4d to imagine today when 20% of Gen Z do not identify as straight.

  109. 109.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @kalakal: Life of Brian led to a failure of censorship in other countries as well. It was banned in Norway, which led Swedish promotions to say “So funny, it was banned in Norway!”

  114. 114.

    Ohio Mom

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: On second thought, I will add this: Your family has crossed paths with an ableist petty tyrant asshole, no question about it. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of arbitrary bully bosses in this unredeemed/yet-to-be redeemed world.

    You will regroup and find another pathway for your son because thatā€™s what we autism parents do. As Another Scott (who has an autistic brother) says, Eyes on the prize.

  115. 115.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I have seen YouTubers posting their reactions to an Indian film called RRR. Do you know why this film is popular Is there anything controversial about the movie?

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: This Nevada story got some attention here earlier today. The big showdown will be March 4, when the Democratic Central Committed elects leaders for the next two years. Both Nevada Senators and all three Democratic Reps back the “Unity Slate” led by state Assemblywoman Danielle Munroe-Moreno, as do the Culinery Union and state AFL-CIO.

    John Ralston’sĀ Nevada Independent and other state news sites are reporting on the contest. Ralston is also commenting on his Twitter feed, and he’s very pro-Unity Slate..

  128. 128.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ohio Mom:

    Yup, thus my short war I am waging. Once I have said what I want for someone else to hopefully stumble over in the future, I am done with it. The reason I am doing this is because of the unnecessary hurt Henry Johnson inflicted on our son. About a week ago our son blurted out “Henry didn’t make me cry.” and it stopped me cold. I know our son’s way of talking and with a few questions I had what he meant clarified to ‘I wasn’t going to let Henry make me cry.”

    It hurts so much to hear the hurt in him that I have to say something, somewhere.

    The first time I took him to the store (at his request) after he was fired I saw that he came out of the doors with the hood up on his winter coat, pulled forward as if to hide his face. We he got to the car I asked him why his hood was up and he was silent. I asked him if he was embarrassed about being fired and he said “Yes, I don’t want them to see me.” I was furious but kept it to myself.

    I told him that he had done nothing wrong and had no reason to hide. He did the same thing on his second visit so the next time I made him leave his hooded jacket at home and while he didn’t like it, he went in and found out that his coworkers missed him and were glad to see him. He was so happy when he came out that my eyes were wet.

    His fellow employees miss him and all kinds of workers there have come up to him and my wife to tell them that they don’t agree with what happened and that they miss him. The head office lady calls him “My little buddy” which is funny because he’s about a foot taller than her…lol. I view those fellow workers of his as rock stars for the way they have treated our son.

  129. 129.

    Tony Jay

    I think I must have mentioned it before, but one of my favourite short-stories is The Pierce Arrow Stalled by English film critic and novelist Ā Kim Newman. Itā€™s not long, but I do love the window on a world where Fatty Arbuckleā€™s car broke down, the scandal that convinced Hays there was political power to be gained from accepting the job the Hollywood moguls had been offering him never happened, so America continued pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable on film with a Government that was all too happy to have a distraction from the Depression.

    Letā€™s just say that Gone With The Wind is a very different film, and Garboā€™s acting skills gain newā€¦ well, Newman knows his movies, and heā€™s no fan of the Code.

  132. 132.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: The director prescribes to Modi and Sangh’s version of India. It has a lot of problematic subtext that sails over the heads of most western audiences. I saw the trailer. Seemed to over the top for my taste. Plus it is in a language I don’t understand. Two reasons I have not watched it so far. Some of the reviews by American critics I have read are so cringe.

    ETA: My guess as to whyĀ  It is popular it is a spectacle like Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments etc. Hollywood doesn’t make movies like that anymore.

  134. 134.

    Chip Daniels

    Looking at the other side of the Hays coin, what is remarkable about the Sexual Revolution is how much of the “traditional” moral structure is embraced freely, by people who have the choice to reject it.

    For example, in the early 70s when I was a teenager, Deep Throat became a crossover hit, the first porn movie where respectable people could admit seeing it, and talking about it. There were lots of breathless predictions about how in just a few years, porn would be mainstream andHollywood would have A list actors in full on coitus.

     

    But…that never happened. As it turns out, eroticism is a potent ingredient in film, but most filmmakers understand that in too great a dose just detracts from the artistic vision.

    So even when given complete unfettered freedom, filmmakers of shows like Rome or Game Of Thrones carefully limit the eroticism so as not to ruin the overall cenematic effect.

    And there were other predictions- that marriage would vanish and people would embrace casual sex like social drinking.

    But again, even when offered unfettered freedom, most people self-regulate their sex lives to be sober and responsible.

    The Hays Code, and most moral strictures, are actually unnecessary since people prefer tolive responsibly anyway.

  135. 135.

    WaterGirl

    @schrodingers_cat: It was referred to in multiple threads in the run up to the elections in November, but it never had a post all its own.

    Well, that it had been taken over and that it wasn’t going well was discussed, but nothing about Bernie being unhappy. Ā I think that part is new.

  137. 137.

    Ohio Mom

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Thatā€™s a sweet epilogue. Itā€™s a terrible shame that one ratfink could upend such a good situation. So many supportive, understanding coworkers! That just makes it worse.

    Oh well, Onwards! (And laser death eyes directed to HJ)

    ETA, So much for the carnard that autistics donā€™t want or need human connection. Look how happy Son was to see his old workmates and get their support.

  138. 138.

    lgerard

    No, the trend was already well underway. The number of weekly movie goers declined by more then half from 1940 to 1950.

  140. 140.

    Quiltingfool

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Sounds hinky to me. Ā I donā€™t know if anything untoward went on between employee and manager; perhaps the manager canā€™t deal with crying employees?

    Iā€™m a cynical old broad and have to restrain myself from thinking the worst about that situation.

  141. 141.

    kalakal

    @Chip Daniels: That’s very well put.

    It’s rather like with horror movies, your mind is much better at scaring you than explicit gore. Hitchcoock knew this well. There are certainly main stream slasher movies but none are half as scary asĀ Don’t Look Now which has almost no violence.

  142. 142.

    schrodingers_cat

    @WaterGirl: I think Bernie likes to maintain plausible deniability but many of his political spawn lack what little sense he has.

    Good. I haven’t been around much and was wondering. Thanks for answering my question.

  145. 145.

    NotMax

    The Hays Code as a concept never fully expired, it mutated into the ratings system (G, M (later GP, still later PG), R and X).

    X, oddly enough, was never registered so its use is available to all and sundry. A reason why you’ll see, for example, “Rated XXX” but not “Rated RRR.”

  146. 146.

    RevRick

    @Steeplejack: According to US Census data, the age of first marriage in 1890 was 26 for men and 22 for women, declined to 25 for men and held steady for women in 1910, declined to 24 for men in 1930 and 1940, fell to 21 in 1920 for women, and rose in the next two decades. In 1950, the ages plunged to 22.5 for men and 20 for women and held fairly steady until 1970 for women and 1980 for men when they began rising. By 1980 for women and by 1990 for men, the age of first marriage had risen back to 1890 levels, and has continued to rise until today, when itā€™s 30 for men and 28 for women.

  148. 148.

    Ohio Mom

    @Chip Daniels: Unfettered sexual freedom got its mellow harshed by the HIV epidemic, even among straight people.

    But I am pretty sure there are and will always be young people getting unfetteredness a whirl.

  150. 150.

    chopper

    @Another Scott:

    i posted a few weeks back that according to a diary on the GOS, a woman going by the nick Mnemosyne died a few months back. not sure she’s the same one, but seems definitely possible

  151. 151.

    Suzanne

    @satby:Ā We often dismiss the way frivolous things like movies had a strong role in setting social mores.

     
    Frivolous things like movies, and advertising, and TV shows, and popular books, etc etc etc, are probably 20x as influential as any law or politician or court in affecting the ways that people see and understand the world.

  152. 152.

    Chip Daniels

    @Ohio Mom:

    The cliche is that young people are just these insatiably horny lustful weasels, but in every survey and study done about orgy clubs, BDSM clubs and such, the participants are invariably middle aged moms and dads with scarcely a pimply faced youth to be seen anywhere.

     

    Young people, for the most part, lead sex lives that are pretty tame.

  153. 153.

    KrackenJack

    As always a day late and a dollar short to the thread…

    The ppl who invented & enforced the Hays Code either didn’t think or didn’t care about the mirror effect of cinema: what we see in the movies influences how we live our lives

    I’d have to disagree to the point of questioning Coldiron’s grasp of the topic. They did think and they did care about the mirror effect. The prohibitionists absolutely believed that Hollywood was contributing to the moral decay of America and that , conversely, sanitizing the cinema would improve society. They expected it would make people behave “better.” Repression was a perfectly fine outcome. People suffering for their sinful nature? Hays would hardily approve. These are people who would bring back stoning if they could.

  154. 154.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ohio Mom:

    Regarding your ETA:

    That was the biggest benefit of our our son going to work. He was a withdrawn person. His childhood can be described as on the outside, looking in. He rarely talked to others and only when prompted, always responding with short answers and no elaboration. Kids were mean to him so we had to keep a sharp eye on him. One time when he was little I saw him standing out in our back yard. About 15 minutes later I noticed he was in the same spot, which was odd. I went and asked him what he was doing and he told me that the girls across the street told him to stand in the back yard so that was what he was doing.

    I looked out from the back yard and saw the girls across the street, giggling and then taking off when they saw me looking at them. I took our son into my shop, sat him down and explained to him what assholes are and that they are mean people. I explained to him what they were doing was wrong and they did it so they could laugh at him. A few days later I heard him tell her that she was an asshole, right out in front of our place. I just about died laughing hearing our 12 year old kid dropping that bomb on her and walking away. They never talked again.

    The job at Fred Meyer forced our son out of his comfort zone/shell and into communication with others. There were a few stumbles but he viewed it that he HAD to talk to customers because that was what he was instructed to do in orientation. It was his job and what they were paying him for, so he did it. It took a bit of time but he communicates more openly now and it has improved a lot, for which we are thankful.

    Unfortunately when shit goes sideways he shuts down and is unable to defend himself against people he does not know. Thus his not defending his actions when he was suspended.

    Maybe he would still be working if he had just attempted to get an unauthorized discount and burst into tears when caught.

  155. 155.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: A British historian ( Peter Laslett?) in the 1960s and 1970s did a lot of work going back centuries in British parish records and discovered that people got married a lot older than we had thought. Mid to late twenties for men, early twenties for women. Makes sense, since they would have to be in a position to support a family. The early teenage marriages a la Shakespeare’s plays were more for dynastic alliances of high nobility and royals.

    Probably much the same in North America.

  156. 156.

    RevRick

    @lgerard: The first half of that decade was affected by the war effort, when eventually 12 million men were conscripted and gas rationing crimped moviegoing. Surging TV ownership postwar (and neighbors invited to share the viewing) cut into the movie audience.

  157. 157.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Quiltingfool:

    There’s a bit more to that story that I’m reluctant to add. Let’s just say that the HR person and her share an out-of-country kinship of sorts, and her excuse for setting the clothing items she had aside was that they were being bought to donate to Ukraine.

    Which, based just on the kinship of sorts, I believe is pure bullshit.

  158. 158.

    pajaro

    @C Stars:

    Back in the day, I forced my kids to watch “blockbusters that changed dad’s life.”Ā  FWIW, Lawrence of Arabia holds up really well, Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape, so =so, and Spartacus, not well at all.Ā  Some of the acting is really cringe-worthy.

  162. 162.

    lgerard

    Only 9% of households had TVs in 1950, and they were largely concentrated in the northeast. It took until the middle of the decade for TV ownership to become common.
    The war certainly had some effect on movie going, as did the fact that fewer movies were produced from 1940’s onward. But the trend had already been underway beforehand.

  164. 164.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ohio Mom:

    Yup. When I first heard of their passing at Kos I thought the same thing but was relieved to find out it wasn’t our Mnem.

    But still sad for that person.

  165. 165.

    Ohio Mom

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:An autism mom blogger I read once said something like, Okay, we have early intervention for young children, now we need late intervention for our adult children. They are ready to learn new things but there arenā€™t always the situations they need to teach them.

    You found a way to provide late intervention.

  169. 169.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ohio Mom:

    And I was sooooo happy to discover it! Kids like our son can be taught new things, even as they age. It’s having someone willing and understanding to take the time to make the investment into the lessons given, that’s the problem. Our son can be told to do something and he will go ahead and do it without understanding what he did. Ask him to do it the next day and he will just stare at you, waiting for instructions as he has forgotten most of it already.

    Take the time to explain exactly what he is doing and why he needs to do it just the way he is being instructed, and he often is able to recall and perform the task on his own. Be overly thorough to make sure that he understands all aspects of what is going on, far more thoroughly than would be required for a non-autistic individual. If it has been a while he might need a memory jog which is just reminding him of the importance of doing it the way he was taught. For some reason it works with our son.

    One funny example:

    Our son had to grab a walkie talkie for his job and was required to check in with the lead when he arrived and was ready to work, when he went to/returned from break and when he went home. After a few weeks he stopped checking in when he got to work but still kept checking in for the rest of the days events. His bosses reminded him to check in when he got to work and he would resume checking in, only to once again stop after a short time.

    This went on for a few rounds before his department manager asked my wife to talk to him about it, so she told me to talk to him about it. I asked him why he kept quitting the check in when he arrived at work and he told me because they kept telling him to go to the B-side of the parking lot to work. Since they always told him the same thing every day he checked in he decided that he already knew what was going to be said to him so he just went directly there and went to work.

    Once I explained to him that the real reason he was required to check in was that if there was an emergency after he got to work, like a building fire, that his bosses would know where he was and be able to find him fast. After that he never missed a check in when he started his work.

    A couple of weeks later he told me that they finally had him start out on the A-side of the parking lot that day, which he thought was really funny.

  170. 170.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I want to add that we told his boss what the communication problem was and she started explaining things better and more thoroughly to our son. She was surprised at how much better he understood what was being taught and his improved retention of knowledge.

    It was sad that she transferred to another store, she worked well with our son. His last boss was good too but his former boss Amber absolutely rocked.

  171. 171.

    Feathers

    Dead thread, but if anyone wants to see the sort of films we missed because of the production code, track down the uncut version ofĀ The Phenix City Story.Ā It shows every so often on TCM. You can tell itā€™s the good version if it begins with an introduction from the real people involved in the story.

    Phenix City, Alabama, is right across the Georgia border from Fort Bennington and was known as ā€œthe wickedest city in America.ā€ It was run by a corrupt mob who openly ran gambling and brothels. They directly paid the salaries of the local police force. A local lawyer decides to run for the stateā€™s attorney general as a reformer and violent hell breaks loose.

    The case was famous. The local coverage won the Pulitzer Prize and there was a special issue of either Life or Time. This, and the local citizens who wanted the story told, persuaded the Hays Office to let the story be told truthfully. So it was made with racial slurs, strongly implied sexual violence, corrupt police, and an open acknowledgment of the state of racial terror in Alabama. It was screened for the Freedom Riders before they went South so theyā€™d have a sense of what they would face.

    Hard to take, but a strong recommend, and a good show of what the Hays Code hid from America. The documentary with the residents of Phenix City is shown before the movie, but Iā€™d recommend watching it afterwards. Itā€™s so much more impressive to watch these everyday people after you know what they went through.

  173. 173.

    deekaa6

    For one of the meanest, nastiest pre-code movies see 1933’s Baby Face with Barbara Stanwyck. A father pimps out his daughter and it gets even uglier from there.

  174. 174.

    chopper

    @Kay:

    oh well that’s good. the GOS one was also in some groups regarding food sensitivities and i remember our mnem talked about them a lot, so i worried

  176. 176.

    C Stars

    @pajaro: lol good to know. They’re pretty cynical about dated old movies, but sometimes the strangest things capture their interest. We recently accidentally watched the 1959 version of Journey to the Center of the Earth (someone had recommended the more recent one to me) and despite all the wacky SFX–or maybe because of it–the kids were really into it. I just laughed the whole time at Pat Boone trying to do a Scots accent.

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