![]() ![]() Hollywood’s moral ambiguity was literally in the clutches of the Hays Code which the MPPDA used to wage a moral battle against Hollywood that they perceived would eventually lead to cultural ruination. These characters left an impression on trade papers like Variety that called this phenomenon – “queer flashes.”Īlso in the early twenties, there were notorious scandals on and off screen. ![]() Ironically, queers were pretty visible onscreen at this time in American cinema. Hollywood movies weren’t afraid to show gay characters or reference their experiences. In the early era of talkies during the gutsy cinema of the Depression era, there was nothing stopping the studios from producing daring films. In the late 1920s before the Hays Code, films began to speak becoming audible and more realistic as Hollywood recognized that many Americans knew all about sex. Their interference evolved into the Hays Code created to oversee silent and talking pictures. It was during the Depression Era, before the cultural politics of Clergy and reformer organizations came in and initiated the need for moral governance over the film industry. Pre-Code was a glorious time in the history of cinema. Pre-Code was a brief period in the American film industry between the dawn of talking pictures in 1929 and the formal enforcement in 1934 of the Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) familiarly known as the Hays Code. As women rode the first wave of feminism and prohibition was increasingly challenged, filmmakers began to expand their boundaries and feature more controversial plotlines. ![]() The 1920s especially were a time of shifting societal norms and expanding artistic experimentation. Prior to the Production Code, LGBT characters were somewhat prevalent, if heavily stereotyped and exploited, in a number of major films. THE LAND OF MORAL AMBIGUITY: HOLLYWOOD & THE HAYS CODE “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex Relationships are the accepted or common thing…” ![]()
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