Thoughts of a most impure and libidinous character

The Transition #5

Part One: The Transition
Part Two: The Sacred Fetish of Academic Freedom
Part Three: The Times They Have Changed
Part Four: The 2020ers

Censorship went into steep decline in the last three decades of the 20^th century, to the extent that it became a loaded term, almost always negative in a culture that values liberation and freedom. Censors from previous ages are rarely regarded in a positive light, viewed as either oppressive or merely quaint.

The Hays Code was the most famous, standing as a convenient guide to the moral values of the old order. This prohibited American films from profanities such as ‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘Hell’, or ‘any inference of sex perversion’, ridicule of the clergy, or ‘Willful offense to any nation, race or creed’. It ensured that filmmakers showed caution in such areas as ‘theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, et cetera (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron)’ and ‘excessive or lustful kissing’. Movies were not to encourage sympathy for the criminal, nor encourage sedition, nor show cruelty to animals or rape. It was a moral code that laid out what a society believed.

The Hays Code was abandoned in 1968, the same year that saw the end of censorship in British theatre. It was one of the keystones of the ‘permissive society’, as it was spelled out by liberal Home Secretary Roy Jenkins – along with liberalised rules about divorce, changes to the abortion law and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts.