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Chapter 3. Black Characterizations
- University of Massachusetts Press
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37 THREE Black Characterizations In 1930 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) enacted the Motion Picture Production Code (henceforth the Code) for filmmakers to follow. Throughout the 1920s civic and religious groups, furious at the increasing sexual and violent content of films, had called for either the movie industry to censor itself or the federal government to institute controls. Code author Martin Quigley, a devout Catholic and the publisher of the trade periodical Motion Picture Herald, consulted with Catholic leaders before drafting the new rules. In general terms, the Code sought to affirm the principles of “good taste,” requiring that “no picture shall be produced which will lower the standards of those who see it.” It stipulated that “the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown on the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin,” that “revenge . . . shall not be justified,” and that “the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld.” Specific rules prohibited profanity, including “the words God, Lord, Jesus, Christ—unless used reverently,” as well as the portrayal of ministers of religion “as comic characters or as villains.” Also forbidden was the depiction of “excessive and lustful kissing ,” “suggestive postures and gestures,” and any hint of “sex relationships between the black and white races.”1 During the 1930s, as we have seen, most of these rules were honored mainly in the breach. As movie attendance dropped with the onset of the Great Depression, Hollywood resorted to the tried-and-true formulas of the past, sex and violence included, in order to attract audiences. In response , religious organizations as well as government officials went back on the attack. Catholic leaders nationwide urged boycotts of objectionable movies and blacklisted them in denominational magazines. In Congress, Raymond Cannon, a Wisconsin Democrat, introduced a bill designed to punish distributors of films involving depravity or containing mature and morally offensive content.2 38 Chapter Three By 1934 the film industry decided that it could no longer ignore its critics . Under the direction of Will Hays, the MPPDA set up the Production Code Administration (PCA), an agency composed of executives experienced in handling the MPPDA’s relations with movie studios. Hays appointed Joseph Breen, a Catholic, as the head of the PCA. The MPPDA ordered its studios to submit scripts to Breen for approval, levied fines against Code violators, and prohibited the exhibition of films lacking the Production Code Seal of Approval in its theaters. The PCA began enforcing the Code on July 1, 1934. After that date, Hollywood began producing completely different kinds of motion pictures. Gone were the Western and the gangster films, both of which involved numerous scenes of now taboo gunfights. Another casualty was Mae West, famous for her portrayals of sexually aggressive women; the PCA deemed her sexually charged comedies unacceptable, and her career subsequently went into decline. The new, PCA-approved genres included screwball comedies, dramas, and musicals. In all of these films, African Americans played mostly supporting roles as domestic servants or rural slaves. Animation producers, wanting to keep their contracts with distributors , made corresponding changes to cartoons, discarding the progressive African American images of the early sound era: no more celebrations of New York jazz, no more black characters owning and operating their own businesses, no more allusions to interracial sex.3 Instead, the servile and passive figures that had been featured in literature for generations accounted for nearly all the African American cartoon characters seen from the Great Depression through World War II. Such figures were very practical for animators developing PCA-friendly comedy since they required little characterization; earlier writers had already established their comedic personalities. The images also gave cartoons greater likelihood of success with audiences, for viewers had been primed through decades’ worth of stories to laugh at the characters. They were in the public domain, so animators did not have to pay licensing fees to borrow the already popular figures. Moreover, the basic nature of the characterizations made them easily adaptable to the various story formulas that came and went between the mid-1930s and mid-1940s. Some studios tried vainly to hold on to jazz celebrities. Co-producers Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, for example, altered black jazz carica- [3.235.199.19] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:13 GMT) Black Characterizations 39 tures to make them suitable for the Code era. In toning down the famous characterizations, however, Harman-Ising turned the hip, urban Cotton...