Conclusion
It is now possible to offer a brief overview of the ways
in which the history of the Motion Picture Production Code is presented
on the internet. Whilst there is little traditional scholarship or
valuable primary source material on the internet, what is on the web can
be seen to be articulating new challenges for historians. Whilst
much of the secondary material is not analytical, its highly varied nature
forces historians to reconsider the multitude of contexts in which the
Code must be assessed. This is particularly true of the way that
the internet forces an historian to confront the uses of the past in the
present debates concerning censorship and cultural regulation. Furthermore,
even the relatively slight turn towards hypertextuality that is present
on the internet challenges the historian to think about the meaning of
the text and the author. In short, then, whilst an historian would
be hard pressed to work on the Motion Picture Production Code solely from
the material found online, what they would find online would force them
to consider some important new historiographical questions.
Introduction
Part One: Primary Sources on the Web
Part Two: Secondary Sources on the Web
Part Three: The Impact of Hypertext
Conclusion