culture and cinema

 in the 1920-1930s, filmmakers realized people much prefer movies with racy and violent content - these made more money. but states began realizing this content wasn't what they wanted people to be seeing. catholics began banding together en masse (eg, the National Legion of Decency) to take down these movie studios and their products. many states began forming committees aimed at discussing how to censor content in movies. movies were showing things the government didn't want laypeople, women or children to see. left to their own devices, these industries began to showcase common elements of the human condition: gambling (major league baseball 1919), alleged murder and rape (1921). corporations realized they still needed to appeal to public opinion in order to profit off them. OR, they realized they were losing control of them, and wanted to bring them back into the fold (eg, Catholicism, since much/all of this was rooted in that and masterminded by Catholic players). in the case of movies, the MPPDA's list of "don't do's" lists a number of things which couldn't be depicted in movies made by the studios, suggesting that movies DO have an impact on the psyche of the masses - as would any form of media, eg radio, news. any means of communicating ideas to others is grounds for changes in thought and behavior. an extreme example is propaganda, especially when it's used to promote things like genocide. 

a bunch of catholic people got together and made this list , the MPPDA, which banned: profanity, nudity, drugs, sex perversion, white slavery, interracial sex, STDs, childbirth, children's genitals, ridicule of the clergy, and willful offense to any nation/race/creed. they then have a longer list of "be carefuls", or things which you should really consider NOT doing, eg: negatively framing other nations, arson, firearms, robbery, brutality, murder, sedition, sympathy for criminals, sex, rape, marriage, and lustful kissing. 

but culture continued to evolve, and by 1962 prostitution was acceptable enough to be included in films. so was interracial relationships and adultery. does society have a natural tendency to progress towards acceptance or intrigue in foreign ideas in this way? 

by the late 1960s, the censorship code was over.