This section will analyse the state of secondary historical material on the internet. It will argue that the vast bulk of material online provides little more than an encyclopaedic approach to the history of the Production Code. It will then look at the way that these overviews of the Code are thrown into a variety of contexts online before concluding with a discussion of the 'quality web' of more academic work.
1) The Web as Encyclopaedia
The vast majority of references to the Motion Picture Production Code turned out to be little more than one to three paragraphs on its history. These function as a précis of the key narrative elements of its history, noting the perceived immorality of film in the 1920's and the role of the Catholic Legion of Decency in the emergence of the self-regulating system and tracing its fall to the foreign and independent films of the 1950's and 1960's. One of the most detailed examples is in fact reproduced from Katz's Film Encyclopaedia , true evidence of the encyclopaedic nature of their approach. Another telling example of the approach is the nine line 'resume' of William Hays that can be found on the Wabash College website.
The production code also often comes up as part of a timeline. These tend to take two forms. The first is as part of a history of film such as at the Gilder Lehman Institute , which defines one era of American film history as 'The Decline of film Censorship'. The second is as part of the history of censorship. A good example of this can be found on the Tabula Rasa website, which mentions the Hays Code as part of a timeline which dates back to 585 b.c.
On one level this superficial, descriptive history appears to do little more than turn history into a trivia of dates and odd events. This is evidenced by the fact that the New Jersey Grand Jury decision on Otto Preminger's The Moon is Blue, a key case in the decline of the Code, is a part of the Useless Knowledge website! At a deeper level, the continued treatment of the history of censorship through superficial and anecdotal methods obscures the need for analysis and the problems of historical interpretation. For example, many sites, including Tabula Rasa , mentioned the fact that the code required that married couples in bed together had to show one foot on the floor at all times. Whilst this could possibly have been the way that the code was implemented, no such provision is present in the code itself. Therefore one must conclude that there is a need for analytical rather than narrative history on the internet.
Given the superficial, trivia-like nature of 'history' on the web, it would appear that the internet can function as a fact checker in much the way that Roy Rosenzweig suggests (see note 1 below). Nevertheless, one must be careful in accepting what is presented on the net as being inherently true. One site, which boasts of being 'a great resource for movie lovers of all ages' and of having 'a detailed history section' lists the code as being introduced in 1934. Actually, as all of the other websites acknowledged, the code was introduced in 1930 but was largely unenforced until 1934.
2) The Web as Contextualising Agent
The various superficial readings of the history of the Code do serve one important historical function, however. By quickly outlining the code in the process of discussing various other issues the websites serve to place the code in a great diversity of contexts. These contexts can be broadly classified into two groups: those pertaining to contemporary issues, and historical ones.
According to Michael O'Malley and Roy Rosenzweig 'The web offers an instant education on the uses of the past in the present.'(see note 2 below) One can certainly see this function in the history of Production Code. Many of the references to the code are included in discussions of present debates concerning film censorship and regulation. Some times this is made explicit, the @ccess censorship site has a history of censorship section because 'it will help create a backdrop and deeper understanding and perhaps even aid in the resolution of current conflicts'. In most cases, the history of the production code is merely skimmed over as part of the background to the movie ratings system. The Movie and Television Ratings site provides a good examples of this phenomenon as does Andrew Histand's discussion of the inadequacies of the ratings system. Whilst these recountings of the past tend to be value neutral, in many cases contemporary concerns effect the way that the Production Code is represented. Jack Valenti, in the 'How it Works' section of the MPAA website, argues that he 'junked' the Production Code because 'there was about this stern, forbidding catalogue of "Dos and Dont's" the odious smell of censorship'. He is attempting to justify the present ratings system by opposing it to the censorship system of the code and in doing so he makes an historical interpretation of the Code to fit his contemporary purposes. In contrast, the website for the independent film The Girls' Room addresses the issue of censorship as a result of their troubles with the ratings board. As such, the website seeks to discredit all cultural regulation by arguing that it is out of step with cultural values. The copy of the "Do's and Don'ts" is headed 'the follies of 1927: The Grand Ol' Days of film making' whilst they ask 'try coming up with the last film you saw that followed all!'. Next to the MPPDA crime regulations of 1938 they place risque ads from 1900, to point out that society was never as innocent as the censors would like to believe. It is interesting that both of these sites tend to conflate the Production Code of 1930 with the earlier "Dos and Donts" codes of the 1920's, perhaps in an attempt to more fully class the Code as censorship. In any case, it is clear that the history of the Production Code is clearly placed in the context of contemporary concerns by the material that is on the web.
The second way that the internet serves to contextualise the history of the code is through its inclusion in more specific studies of various cultural forms. The Crime Pays site argues, largely through implication, that the code emerged in response to their focus of study, gangster films. Gary Jackson's website, The Hollywood Thirties , discusses his 'favourite hobby', the watching of old films. Whilst he clearly enjoys all films of the period, there is an implied criticism of the code because he states that his favourite films are from the pre-code enforcement period of 1930 -1934. In contrast Dr. Onalee McGraw argues that her favourite films are of the period of the code because of their greater moral awareness. In this debate of personal taste, the historian is forced to confront the fact that censorship has an impact on the viewer, a context that could otherwise be missed. The Code is also placed in more obscure contexts such as screwball comedy , the career of the 'godfather of gore'-Herschell Gordon Lewis and regional diversity, such as the history of censorship in Mobile or New York State. It is also worth noting that the long timelines discussed above place historical events in a much broader context than traditional scholarship.
All of these sites force the historian to think about the various ways that any one event can have an impact on a variety of different groups and interests, and that history has a role in the present. Both of these important elements are reinforced by the role of the search engine which throws these competing approaches into juxtaposition without respect for the authors intentions. [see Part Three ]
3) The Quality Web
Of the 'quality' history websites explored only H-Net produced any hits. All of these were discussion postings such as reviews or bibliographies, referring to history offline. In terms of online journals, the history of film would seem to be well represented. The Journal of Cinema Studies has full text online as does Screening the Past . The only article of relevance was Russel Campbell's analysis of ' Prostitution and Film Censorship in the USA ' but this would appear to be a product of the current focus of film studies on thematic issues over institutional ones rather than a product of the web itself. All of the leading texts on the production code do have some presence on the internet, as a course website from the King's College London has scanned excerpts of them. Nonetheless, there is a distinct shortage of academic, analytical work on the internet.
Conclusion
It would thus appear that there is a shortage of analytical, secondary material concerning the production code on the internet. Whilst this poses a problem for the historian, as well as normalising attitudes to the narrative and 'useless' elements of history amongst the general public, the ability of the internet to facilitate an understanding of the myriad of contexts, both historical and contemporary, is a blessing for the discipline of history. The internet thus appears ripe as an arena for good historical work to be done on the Production code, but as yet has not been taken advantage of.
Notes
1) Roy Rosenzweig, 'the Road to Xanadu: Public and Private
pathways on the History Web', The Journal of American History, vol
88, no.2, Sep 2001, p.559.
2) Micheal O'Malley and Roy Rosenzweig,'Brave new World
or Blind Alley? American History on the World Wide Web'. The Journal
of American History, Vol.84, No.1, June 1997, p.139.
Introduction
Part One: Primary Sources on the Web
Part Two: Secondary Sources on the Web
Part Three: The Impact of Hypertext
Conclusion