This section will look at the ways that the internet has led to a hypertextual history of the production code.  It should be noted that on the whole, the history that is present on the web does not take advantage of the potential of hypertextuality.  With the key exception of  David P. Hayes'  version of the Production Code, the sites looked at used links very sparingly.  Furthermore, when they did so they contained links either in separate pages or spatially separated them from the text on the page.  Despite the general resistance to hypertext, the sense of authorship and coherence in these works was challenged by hypertext in three ways.

The first is the impact of search engines which placed the sites in juxtaposition with each other.  As such, they ensured that a wide variety of different interpretations of the history of the Production Code were all made available to the reader, therefore breaking down the ability of the author to obscure competing views or to seal the borders of their work.

Secondly, accessing pages through the results of a full text search means that pages are viewed by themselves, which is often contrary to the way in which the author wishes for them to be seen.  This not only changes the context in which the page is read but also makes it physically difficult to establish who the author is.  This is particularly the case when it comes to what appear to be undergraduate sites.  Whilst one would normally access these through a course page which would have a link to student writings, when one is confronted with an essay under a url with .edu in it, the tendency is to assume that it has university backing.  It took a great deal of leg work to establish that Otto Ruokonen was a student and without this knowledge one might give his article a greater degree of respect than it would otherwise receive.  Donna's writings on screwball films also spring up out of the context in which she would have envisioned them, and the knowledge gained from her homepage , that she is writing as an enthusiast, not an expert, is perhaps crucial to engaging with the work (although I am baffled as to how an historian would assess the credibility of an author who has written part of her website in the voice of her cat!).

Finally, even the limited use of links between sites can be seen to allow for the appropriation of an authors intention.  The links to the Reformation of the Arts version of the Production Code serve as an example of this.  Whilst the reformation of the arts places the code within the context of contemporary cultural decay, two other websites link directly to the code.   The University of Colorado popular culture page  prefaces its link to the code by noting that it 'summarizes' the code in 'laymen's terms'.  This substantially changes the way that one reads the site, even though the Arts Reformation version of the code is in fact accurate.  The second example is the link from T. Birch's  'Films and Popular Culture Site' .  He prefaces his link to the code with a comment that he thinks most people will agree with the code, especially the general principles, but warns the reader 'to be on the lookout for provisions of the code that clearly reflect the wrong sentiment, such as Provision II, number 6'.  Clearly Birch is creating a framework for viewing the code that is different from  that intended by the group who placed the Code online.

It is therefore clear that even though there is as yet very little truly hypertextual history on the web, the search engines and the few links that are in place are challenging the role of the author and breaking up the internal coherence of a text.  It is therefore clear that an historian working on the history of the Production code would have to grapple with these theoretical questions in order to do meaningful work on the internet.
 

Introduction
Part One: Primary Sources on the Web
Part Two: Secondary Sources on the Web
Part Three: The Impact of Hypertext
Conclusion