The Indianapolis times., 1930-04-02
Mnvia Morals

VIII n Hays. the high priest of movie morals, has
handed down q tablet of commandments ms
organization the Motion Picture Producers ana DIS
trbutors of America Inc representing about 80 per
cent of the industry, in annual meeting Assembled mas
subscribed TO the new rules of sef-censorship
And If the press agents are to be believed the
countrys soul is saved again and the screen VIII S0u
nothing but purity and light
Poor Hays he has a hard time. Moses hso ohiy
n consuIt Jehovah But VIII is caught between his
movie bosses and the buenose censors His solution
-eems to have been TO assemble lot OF generahteS
IS SOD 20 the censor without making them specihc
.nough to trouble the producers
For instance:
"17,e Use of liquor in American life shall be re-
ricted to the actual requirements OF CHARACTERIZATION
- plot obscenity in word, gesture, reference song
oke or by suggestion is forbidden indecent OF ul-
due exposure is forbidden That scenes of passion
shall not be introduced When not eSSeh'iai " ~ p'
:" etc, etc.
Those rules about use of liquor and scenes OF
,assian are obviously meaningless. AS for obscenity
and indecent" those words may mean everything or
nothing. depending on changing social customs and
creeds and upon whether the individuals mind is
clean or dirty
In explaining his code, Hays summarizes list OF
subjects which must be treated, as he says, within
the careful limits of good taste"
But theTe the usually willy viii gives the whole
show away
taste is a matter of education and culture ana
Intelligence: it is the difference between the civilized
and the uncivilzed. That is why the play which
seems most highly moral to the puritan censor
offends one of finer culture vulgar, cheap and
dishonest.
And that is why the censor with unclean mind
reads his own obscenity into works OF truth and
beauty such as Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Hardys
Tess of the D'Urbervlles, Tostoy'S Anna Karenina
and Shakespeares 'Othello'-to mention only few
Of the classics recently perverted or banned by the
movie censors.'
new-and very readable-book Censored: The
private Life of the Movies" by Morris Ernst and Pare
Iorentz gives figures for state board movie censor
shin throughout the country which show that OF 579
feature movies reviewed in 1929 only forty-two, de-
spite the factory precauon Of the companies passed
untouched In one or more states, forty-four were
rejected and in the remainder 1880 cuts were
ordered"
! We believe there is nothing more obscene than
censorship itself We believe that governments have
no more right to censor movies than books, plays
public speeches and newspapers.
We believe the public interest and the public moral
code of the day are protected adequately by the
ordinary criminal statutes against ndecency and the
ordinary functioning OF cur judicial machinery with
jury trial.
We wish Hays organization had the courage to
fight the censors instead Of parrong their unclean
prohibitions and then proceeding by evasion to make
the whole business doubly dirty.
If the American people can be trusted to govern
themselves, they be trusted to do their own
movie censoring-the only kind of healthy censorship.
We rather would accept the morals and taste Of the
American public, registered at the box office and
protected by the jury box than the morals and taste
OF Hays the cenSors as set down in this latest
silly code.