The Motion Picture Association of America and their ‘rating system’ (Motion Picture Association of America, 2016) serves as an industry backed form of self-regulation for the content of films for the American consumer. However, amongst the changing times of the Country following World War II and leading into the turbulent 1960’s, Major movie companies were willing to forego industry-approved regulation for major films, forcing the MPAA to change from the Production Code towards the modern-day Rating system.
Film as an art form has always been infatuated with replicating real life. The modern camera and phonograph recorded visual and auditory stimuli for playback purposes, conveying motion, movement, emotion-- reality. Leading from a war that …show more content…
Hard Core: How the struggle over censorship saved the modern film industry states that although Valenti stated that it was wrong to bicker over the content of a film in his memoirs, even though in 1966, he was “arguing with grown men and women over these matters” (Lewis, 2002). Furthermore, the widely publicized censorship case of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was presented as a movie that received an “exemption”, even though the screenplay was edited involving the removal of the phrase “screw you”, and the retention of phrases such as “hump the hostess”, and numerous “God damn” phrases in Elizabeth Taylors’ character dialogue for Virginia Woolf. (Nichols, 1966) As stated beforehand, the economic pressures from foreign movies pushed big studios, like Warner Bros to create movies like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the case of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Warner bros. was prepared to create and market the film, whether or not the MPAA placed their arbitrary seal of approval. Furthermore, Jack Valenti implies that he, as well as the MPAA memebers were influenced by the “changing times” (Valenti, 2005) of the 1960’s, which I believe is a convenient interpretation of History used by Jack Valenti upon looking back on the period. This is not a paper on the turmoils of the 1960’s, but I can assure you that the old order wasn’t readily adaptive to the counter-culture of the mid
Film as an art form has always been infatuated with replicating real life. The modern camera and phonograph recorded visual and auditory stimuli for playback purposes, conveying motion, movement, emotion-- reality. Leading from a war that …show more content…
Hard Core: How the struggle over censorship saved the modern film industry states that although Valenti stated that it was wrong to bicker over the content of a film in his memoirs, even though in 1966, he was “arguing with grown men and women over these matters” (Lewis, 2002). Furthermore, the widely publicized censorship case of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was presented as a movie that received an “exemption”, even though the screenplay was edited involving the removal of the phrase “screw you”, and the retention of phrases such as “hump the hostess”, and numerous “God damn” phrases in Elizabeth Taylors’ character dialogue for Virginia Woolf. (Nichols, 1966) As stated beforehand, the economic pressures from foreign movies pushed big studios, like Warner Bros to create movies like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the case of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Warner bros. was prepared to create and market the film, whether or not the MPAA placed their arbitrary seal of approval. Furthermore, Jack Valenti implies that he, as well as the MPAA memebers were influenced by the “changing times” (Valenti, 2005) of the 1960’s, which I believe is a convenient interpretation of History used by Jack Valenti upon looking back on the period. This is not a paper on the turmoils of the 1960’s, but I can assure you that the old order wasn’t readily adaptive to the counter-culture of the mid