PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 1927 BY THE MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS AND DISTRIBUTORS OF AMERICA
Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:
11. Willful offence to any nation, race or creed;
Remember the Don'ts and Be Carefuls? Well you might remember number eleven above. As stated in the preamble, anything listed "shall not appear... irrespective of the manner in which they are treated." This was in 1927, the year The Jazz Singer gave voice to the movies. It was a hit, a smash hit. It excited audiences. It changed the way movies were made. And it had it's lead character, played by Al Jolsen, look like this for one of his numbers:
After The Jazz Singer, blackface became popular in musicals (despite protests from the NAACP). And when something becomes popular in the movies, studios find a way to keep it in. But what about nudity and language you ask. Those were popular, weren't they? No, actually they weren't. Or at least they weren't worth the trouble. Powerful groups like the Catholic Legion of Decency (founded in 1933 by Archbishop of Cincinnati John T. McNicholas) began organizing boycotts and muscling newspaper giants into dropping ads for studios that made "smut" movies. So by 1934 it was suddenly in the best interest of the studios to drop language and nudity and abide by the Production Code. Besides Joseph Ignatius Breen, who headed up the Production Office, was a good Catholic.
But neither the studios nor the Catholic Legion of Decency, or any other church for that matter, had any problem with denigrating African-Americans on the screen for the purpose of entertainment. So in one of the most insidious and cowardly acts of the Motion Picture Association (and they had many) the Production Code included not one provision for the treatment of race. One will recall that the 1927 list of "Don'ts and Be Careful" included the provision listed at the top of this post. However, when the list was revised and expanded upon to create a formal set of guidelines (The Production Code of 1930) the provision above was separated into two parts, not three. Those two parts were covered under sections dealing with Nationality and Religion. The part dealing with race was dropped. Blackface and Stepin Fetchit were too popular. If they had a provision outlining proper treatment of race, and didn't follow it, it could be clearly used against them by both filmmakers and activist groups stressing that either the rest didn't need to be followed as well or they all had to be. Easier to just leave it out. Then audiences could be treated to grand entertainment like this, free of oversight:
Like most, if not all, moral codes dictated by an elite few, the Production Code was pretty much a sham. It contained some provisions that made sense (children should not be used in sex scenes or have their genitals photographed) but 95 percent of it was pure garbage. Going through the code one could pick and choose which guidelines were the most laughable, the most unnecessary or the most puritanical but the most hateful, the most despicable and the most shameful guideline is the one that isn't even there. It's the one that was dropped and it is hateful, despicable and shameful not because of what it says but because of its absence. What it says, in the 1927 list of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" is that no film shall contain any subject matter or actions that are "willful offences to Nation, Race or Creed." What no one knew in 1927 was that when the full code was revised and published in 1930 it would contain the most heinous insult to race imaginable by its very omission of any guidelines for its portrayal. One could say it was politics. One could say it was money. But one could not say it was an oversight. Its absence was intentional. For that reason alone, no one can deny that it was, in every sense of the word, a willful offence to race.
A willful offence indeed.
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