PCA considerations

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2011)

The film Lifeboat (1944) contains racial discriminative elements resulting from the PCA code failure to follow it's own primary principle of disallowing creation of entertainment that does harm to human beings in lowering the moral standards of those who see it. Drafted on March 31, 1930 the PCA omitted language of the initial meeting minutes that would have provided protection from willful offensive treatment of race. The review process for the film Lifeboat addresses individual censorship concerns only in relation to the moralistic behavior of white passengers. In contrast, the review poses no restriction nor objection to the 20th Century Fox Studios negative portrayal and morally objectionable inferences imposed on the sole African American character. Furthermore, it allowed for the continued representation of the stereotypical socially denigrated Negro at a time when movie viewing on a national scale was approaching its peak attendance. For both blacks and whites such portrayals caused harm to the moral fabric constitutionally governed that all men are created equal.