Media Effects and Gender Discussion Topic

Media

The term media refers to two related entities. It is a general term for the various material and instrumental means through which ideas are expressed, including everything from paint, film, musical instruments, digital files, and architecture to language, images, sculpture, and sound. It is also a general term for the various organizations through which ideas are transmitted publicly, such as radio, television, cinema, and the Internet . Media productions of both types can be deployed to express eroticism and sexuality , and both have been the objects of censorship and repression since the growing influence of Christianity in Rome during the second and third centuries.

Censorship of individual works of art has occurred on the basis of whether the ideas they express contravene public notions of decency, which refer primarily to issues of obscenity . Notions of decency change through history and from culture to culture. The asceticism of early Christians, which dominated European cultures through the Middle Ages (467–1350), began to change during the Renaissance (1350–1600). From the time of the Renaissance, media produced and owned by wealthy private individuals became less the object of official censorship, although work produced for distribution among common people was still subject to a stricter scrutiny. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artists began to struggle with the occasionally repressive censorship of governments, but the range of permissible expression gradually began to open up. The standards by which artistic creations such as novels and paintings were deemed to be obscene relaxed from the zealous enforcement of obscenity laws in the nineteenth century to a more liberal understanding of aesthetics that began in the United States with the obscenity trial of Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin in 1922 and continued through the middle of the twentieth century when censorship of works deemed to be primarily aesthetic ceased. Various interest groups still battle over what should be seen on public media such as television. Considerations about what might constitute obscenity and decency reflect a balance of a culture's attitudes about the value of free speech and aesthetic expression on one hand, and in relation to what a culture imagines are the effects of seeing representations on the other.

As a public mode for the transmission of ideas, media remains a focus for control and censorship. Because such media organizations as television, movies, and the Internet are seen as powerful forces affecting the ways individuals—and especially children—view the world, their content garners more attention and limitation than literature or high art. The impetus to control media representations derives from the belief that realistic images wield particular power. The rationale for the Page 980  |   Top of Article Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930, states that "A book describes; a film vividly presents." The difference between description and presentation was understood to affect the imagination, viewers being less likely to filter the realistic images of cinema. Control of media is also motivated by media's increasing ubiquity within cultures and throughout the world.

FILM AND THE PRODUCTION CODE

Although censorship of print texts had existed long before the advent of photography in 1839 and cinema in 1895, the potential for widely disseminated realistic images of sexuality elicited increased scrutiny of photographic media. The invention of photographic techniques that enabled easy reproduction of photographs, such as postcards or in aesthetic journals, prompted the censors' focus on photographs. The rising influence of the film industry through the first thirty years of the twentieth century catalyzed growing discomfort with cinema content. In cinema's early years, when film audiences were mainly composed of the working class, civic leaders resisted any official censorship of cinema, seeing such censorship as class oppression. There was, however, pressure to keep films decent, which meant that films rewarded virtue, punished vice, and avoided depicting debauchery of all kinds.

After World War I, as mores relaxed and the power of Hollywood grew, some of the public blamed the movie industry itself for promulgating increasingly lax moral standards. Legislation was introduced in thirty-seven states proposing movie censorship. To forestall such governmental censorship, motion picture studios and distributors formed the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1922. They hired the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Will H. Hays, to oversee efforts to blunt criticism and to launch a public relations campaign that would assure the public that the film industry was taking a responsible attitude toward its content. After studying the specific plaints proposed in censorship legislation, the MPPDA came up with a list of topics that should never appear in cinema, such as "white slavery, miscegenation, sexual perversion, and ridicule of the clergy," and other topics about which film makers should be careful, such as "arson, murder techniques, rape, first-night scenes, the use of drugs, and excessive and lustful kissing" (Balio 1985, p. 268). Compliance with this list was voluntary.

For some, however, voluntary compliance with the list was insufficient, so the publisher of the Motion Picture Herald, Martin Quigley, collaborated with Daniel Lord, a Catholic priest, to produce a more definitive code, called the Motion Picture Production Code, which was adopted by the MPPDA in 1930. Members of the MPPDA monitored compliance with the code throughout the stages of film production. Falling movie attendance, however, motivated some studios to begin to ignore the code, a move decried by the Catholic Church, which formed the very influential Legion of Decency in 1933. Pressuring studios by threatening economic boycotts, the Legion of Decency forced the MPPDA to revise the Production Code in 1934. Compliance with the code was allocated to a committee, under the direction of Joseph Breen, which would review and approve all scripts and fine the producers of those films made without approval.

The revised Production Code continued the pressure on the studios to produce films with redeeming moral content yet without necessarily enabling any realistic portrayal of social problems or sexual relations. The code provided generally that films not "lower the moral standards" of their viewers by not sympathizing with criminals and by not providing detailed or graphic presentations of murders or other crimes. It required that "the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home" be upheld, which meant no overt depiction of adultery; no gratuitous sexual scenes; no "excessive or lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures"; no "sexual perversion," "miscegenation," "white slavery," "child birth," or "sexual hygiene"; no "vulgarity," "obscenity," or "profanity"; no "nudity" or "indecent exposure"; and no "dance suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passions." In addition films could not make fun of or vilify clergymen. Various interpretations of the code resulted in unrealistic portrayals of married life and sexuality, especially the convention of a married couple occupying twin beds, or the notion that in all love scenes the actors must each have one foot on the floor.

Of course, studios had always found ways around the Production Code, particularly by developing their own conventions for portraying extramarital sexual relations and adultery. They may not have actually depicted adulterous scenes of romance, but films suggested such activities through their plots. For instance, the plot of The Women (1939) depends entirely on a husband's extramarital affair. Films in the genre of film noir found ways to imply dark criminal behaviors by protagonists, as in, for example, Double Indemnity (1944).

By the 1950s the conditions that had forced studio acceptance of the Production Code had disappeared. The Legion of Decency no longer represented an economic threat, foreign films that ignored the code were imported and shown in the United States, and the mores of culture had relaxed enough to permit some filmmakers, such as Otto Preminger, to ignore the code altogether, which he did first in The Moon Is Blue, a 1953 film that by early-twenty-first-century standards appears to be boringly Page 981  |   Top of Article innocent. By the late 1950s studios were ignoring code provisions about vulgarity, profanity, and adultery.

By the 1960s the Production Code was no longer enforceable. Films were released without approval. To retain some sense of control and fend off any threat of government censorship, the Motion Picture Association of America (the former MPPDA) instituted a rating system in 1968. Its four ratings—G, M, R, and X—classed films according to their levels of explicit sexuality and violence. The general principle of the rating system has remained since 1968, though the letters assigned to each level of explicitness have varied. M became GP in 1970 and then PG 2 years later, before being split into two ratings in 1984—PG and PG-13. The latter restricted films with higher levels of violence to older children. X became NC-17. From the 1980s on film rating systems were aimed much more at protecting children rather than adults from film content.

THE TELEVISION RATING SYSTEM

Television also received its share of concern over content. For many years networks employed censors who screened television programming for explicit sexual content, profanity (which was bleeped out), nudity, and obscenity. Until the 1990s, with the growing influence of cable television 's vaster array of stations, the big three networks' self-censoring was sufficient control. Television's self-censoring was also a necessary economic practice, because its advertisers had an interest in the programming they supported reaching the largest number of viewers. Television programming remained conservative so as not to offend large groups of viewers.

Cable programming removed the local base of network programming. Its providing networks had no discernible location and thus had less motivation to closely monitor their content, especially because cable stations were not freely available to anyone who tuned in and subscribers were paying to see them. Television rating systems were thus instituted not to control the content of television programming but to warn parents about content so that they could monitor their children's viewing.

Television has two rating systems. The first is the TV Parental Guidelines, established in 1996 by the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Cable Television Association, and the Motion Picture Association of America. These ratings appear at the beginning of every television show. TV-Y means that a program is appropriate for all children. TV-Y7 designates programming designed for children who are 7 years old or older. The primary consideration in these ratings is whether content will frighten children. TV-G is programming deemed suitable for general audiences, with little violence, no explicit sexuality, and no profanity. TV-PG refers to programming where parental guidance is suggested. Such programs contain violence, sexual situations, infrequent profanity, and/or sexually suggestive dialogue. TV-14 (Parents Strongly Cautioned) indicates programs with more intense violence and sexual situations, profanity, and/or suggestiveness. TV-MA designates programming appropriate for mature audiences only, containing graphic violence, explicit sexuality, and/or indecency.

The TV Parental Guidelines are augmented by another system used by pay cable networks such as HBO. This system began in 1995 before the institution of the TV Parental Guidelines. It, too, indicates relative levels of violence, explicit sexuality, and profanity. V indicates shows with intense violence, whereas MV refers to shows with mild violence. AC designates programs with adult content, which refers to suggestive situations and dialogue. AL indicates the presence of mild profanity, with GL indicating strong profanity. BN tells viewers to expect brief nudity, whereas N warns that there will be nude scenes lasting two minutes or longer. SSC means there are graphic sexual acts, and R indicates the presence of graphic rape scenes.

In addition, the Federal Communications Commission promulgated rules that require computer-chip control of programming on all television sets with screens larger than thirteen inches. The V-chip can read ratings encoded in television programming and block access to any programs for ratings selected by parents.

MUSIC CENSORSHIP

Music—even classical music—has not been free from censorship. Because music has no images (though music videos do), reasons for banning music have been related primarily to political issues or profanity and political criticism in lyrics. Music from classical composers who were German or associated with the Nazis was banned for a time in such countries as Israel. In the (Joseph) McCarthy era of the 1950s, Pete Seeger's (b.1919–) and the Weavers' single "Wimoweh" was denounced because of Seeger's supposed ties with communism. In Britain the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen" (1977) was banned from airplay because of the lyric, "God save the Queen / The fascist regime." In 1996 retailing giant Wal-Mart banned a Sheryl Crow (b.1962–) album because lyrics in the track "Love Is a Good Thing" implicated Wal-Mart in selling guns. Wal-Mart has also refused to sell any music they believe is nonpatriotic or offensive.

Even if singles played on the radio were not banned, certain lyrics were often censored through several methods. Offensive lyrics were blanked or played at zero volume, or bleeped. Portions of songs were resampled or replaced by other parts of the song, resung by removing Page 982  |   Top of Article the lyrics and keeping instrumentals, back-masked by reversing the audio, or simply skipped. This type of censorship typically involves lyrics deemed to be profane, overtly sexual and suggestive, inflammatory (such as mentioning bringing guns to school), or racist.

In 1985 a group of politicians' wives, headed by Tipper Gore (b.1948–), whose husband, Al Gore (b.1948–), would become vice president, formed the Parents Music Resource Center to urge record companies to rate the records in a scheme similar to that used on television. As in television ratings the ostensible concern of such projects is to protect the innocence of impressionable youth, even though music censorship often has more political dimensions. For example, some radio stations refused to play Sinéad O'Connor's (1966–) music after she had refused to play the "Star-Spangled Banner" at her performances. Similarly, certain stations banned the music of the Dixie Chicks because the group's musicians had criticized George W. Bush.

THE INTERNET

The Internet is also seen as posing dangers to impressionable youth. Because the Internet has no specific location and because it has not been censored, legislators have taken action to try to limit pornography and obscenity on the World Wide Web. Their first attempt to protect children from material they might stumble upon online was the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This statute made criminal "the knowing transmission, by means of a telecommunications device, of 'obscene or indecent' communications to any recipient under 18 years of age … the knowing use of an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age communications that, in context, depict or describe, in terms 'patently offensive' as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

This act was later declared to be an unconstitutional limitation of First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. Congress quickly passed a substitute law, the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, that was more focused on the World Wide Web and defined restricted material in explicit relation to the standards by which free speech is protected. The law was quickly challenged, again as an unconstitutional restriction of free speech, with litigation pending as of early 2007. Many Internet services, however, provide filtering programs that disable the display of material characterized by certain keywords linking the site to overt sexuality.

SEE ALSO Advertising .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ArtsReformation.com. "The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930." Updated April 2006. Available from http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html.

Balio, Tino, ed. 1985. The American Film Industry. Rev. edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bernstein, Matthew, ed. 1999. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Black, Gregory D. 1994. Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Communications Decency Act of 1996 (codified at 47 U.S.C. § 223, et seq.).

Greenberg, Bradley S.; Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo; and Dana Mastro, eds. 2001. The Alphabet Soup of Television Program Ratings: (Y-G-PG-V-S-D-14-FV-MA-7-L). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Herumin, Wendy. 2004. Censorship on the Internet: From Filters to Freedom of Speech. New York: Enslow Publishers.

Lewis, Jon. 2000. Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. New York: New York University Press.

Nuzum, Eric. 2001. Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America. New York: HarperCollins