I read the Hays Code so you don't have to

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Everybody knows about the Hays Code, the self-censorship of the Golden Age of Hollywood to keep movies clean, moral, saintly, and indirect. But, has anyone ever actually sat down and read it?

[00:00:11]>> I haven't read it, though. Neither of us. Nobody has. Because it's far more entertaining and instructive than you'd expect. So, here's the video you never knew you always wanted. Some commentary on the Motion Picture Production Code that reigned from the early '30s to the late '60s. I found two versions, one from 1930, another from '56. They differ slightly. I'll leave their links in the description, close to my Patreon, nudge nudge, wink wink. Now, what exactly is in the Production Code? We start with some general principles, [music] stating that cinema is primarily entertainment, but they rebuild the bodies and souls of human beings. Off to a humble start.

[00:00:54]The first sections of the earlier version are mostly about how motion pictures are important, very important.

[00:01:00]The basic idea is that cinema is not only the most vivid and all-encompassing of all art forms, but also the most widely distributed and popular one.

[00:01:09]Therefore, it affects the most the hearts and minds of viewers. Because it can so easily influence audiences, the content presented in movies carries some responsibilities. It cannot be that type of negative entertainment that lowers the standards of life and living. It has got to be positive entertainment that improves the race. Yes, cinema is so powerful that whatever audiences watch will directly affect their lives. Am I laughing?

[00:01:39]You know what's interesting? This was written in 1930. At that time, the major theory of communications was that of the hypodermic needle. That's the belief that whichever idea, feeling, stimulus you give to the audience, any audience, they will all react the exact same way.

[00:01:55]As in, if you gather a group of completely different people, regardless of their age, sex, class, nationality, and show them all scenes of sex and violence, they'll all learn critically and immediately become a bunch of horny sadists.

[00:02:09]Reading the Hays Code, it's fascinating how the hypodermic needle theory is exactly what guides their principles.

[00:02:16]Society was a nip slip away from engaging in an impromptu perfume style orgy. Now you understand the generation that gave the world Reefer Madness. 16 years old and a marijuana addict.

[00:02:29]Here is the most tragic case. Yes, I remember. Just a young boy.

[00:02:35]Under the influence of the drug, he killed his entire family with an axe.

[00:02:38]Funny, first time in my life I've ever used something I learned in communications college. Thought the day would never come. These are the guiding principles. Movies are the most powerful means of communication mankind has ever been blessed to possess, and viewers are dumb brains that zombies that will imitate whatever you show them. Now we get to how those core beliefs affect movies themselves. Let's start off light. Sins.

[00:03:05]There are two types of sins. Repellent sins, such as murder, cruelty, and lies.

[00:03:11]You can show too much of them so as not to desensitize them to audiences.

[00:03:15]>> Now, but he looks like a kid about 15 years old.

[00:03:20]He won't be 16. And the attractive sins, such as sex, banditry, and revenge. You cannot use them to entice the audience's morbid curiosity. These easily influence lab rats of ours. Thank god for us in the movies, right? Me? Evil must always be presented as bad, and good as good.

[00:03:39]No grace here, you guys. Purity, kindness, innocence must all be celebrated, never mocked. Honestly, big movies still do that to this day. And negative traits, like dishonesty, corruption, adultery, cannot be made attractive or presented in a positive light, ever. Meaning that if a character commits a crime for money, you can't show him enjoying that money. I'd consider some scenes in gangster films as the characters enjoying the fruits of their sins, but maybe the censors didn't.

[00:04:10]If you pay attention to Faustian stories, you'll notice the character who makes a deal with the devil never really takes pleasure in his gains. He either regrets it immediately like in Alias Nick Beal or changes into an unhappy person like in All That Money Can Buy.

[00:04:24]Wealth from questionable means, too bad you can't enjoy it. May sound funny and old-fashioned, but you find masses today defending the same thing. Remember when people criticized The Wolf of Wall Street for glamorizing the decadent lifestyle? You'll find plenty of texts online on how these or those films are wrong for not condemning the actions of their immoral characters. Every war film is attacked for not being anti-war enough. Makes one think, huh? End of parenthesis. The laws of God and man must always be upheld. The courts of the land must be presented as just and efficient.

[00:05:02]That makes me think of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Isn't that movie about how corrupt the system is? No, not really.

[00:05:09]The 56 version of the code specifies a few government officials can be unjust, but the overall system of justice must triumph righteously in the end. And that's precisely what happens in Mr. Smith. The system is not unjust. A few bad apples are. I'm not FIT FOR OFFICE.

[00:05:27]I'M NOT FIT FOR ANY PLACE OF HONOR OR TRUST. AND they are all dealt with and rightness returns to the land. The system works. Hey, by the way, who won today?

[00:05:36]We did. Justice works so well the protagonist cannot take it in his own hands. There's no revenge in films under the code. I'd never noticed that before I read it. Revenge is only ever allowed in films that take place in lawless lands, like the Old West. If it's in the present, the hero must follow the law.

[00:05:54]He cannot kill anyone for any reason other than self-defense.

[00:06:00]That's where the whole Han shot first argument comes from. There was no Hays Code at the time, but George Lucas grew up on films where the good guy can only kill the bad guy in self-defense. So, he made Greedo shoot first and Han dodge distant lasers with a totally natural neck movement, because that's what heroes do, god damn it. The original trailer for Casablanca, Rick announces he'll shoot Major Strasser. All right, Major. You asked for it.

[00:06:27]They had to remove that line from the movie, because the hero could only ever kill to defend himself, never to stop someone from doing something. Put that phone down. Get me the radio tower. Put it down.

[00:06:41]We were one Han Kenny rubberneck away from launching a whole Rick shot first movement. And I, for one, can't wait for Warner Brothers to release a new version with Major Strasser saying, "Maclunkey."

[00:06:52]Maclunkey.

[00:06:54]Put it down. Maclunkey.

[00:06:57]On that killing note, there's a common misunderstanding that crime always had to be punished in old movies, but that's not actually true. The very first document from 1930 already said that punishment wasn't mandatory, as long as it was crystal clear to the audience that crime is wrong. Such is the case in Scarlet Street. In it, Edward G.

[00:07:18]Robinson kills his lying girlfriend and gets away with it, legally speaking. His punishment is being consumed by guilt.

[00:07:25]He tries to off himself, but fails even in that. You see, that type of demonetizable action was discouraged as a way to solve problems. Bad theater, they call it. Discouraged, mind you, not forbidden. It's still used as a solution in A Star Is Born and Anna Karenina, A Star Is Born, in Anna Karenina. It just could never be used to escape the law.

[00:07:47]Though it is kind of used in The Big Knife. There are all sorts of loopholes.

[00:07:58]Billy Wilder gets called a cynic all the time as if it were a bad thing.

[00:08:02]>> I can handle big news and little news.

[00:08:03]And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.

[00:08:06]>> But his films always had the immoral character getting repentant and then punished anyway. He was very much in line. That gentleman is a masterpiece of understatement.

[00:08:15]>> When it comes to crime, there's a bunch of specific rules. The document from 30 Outlaws Tommy guns, the most movie gangster object ever. There's no reference to it in the '56 version, so I guess they had to relent. A film can't show the mechanics of crime in so much detail the audience can learn how to do it. When Rififi got a US release, lazy criminals doing their homework at the movies must have rejoiced. Write that down. Write that down. Torture could only be shown with discretion. Like Kiss Me Deadly, which only shows the woman's writhing legs and later we see the torturer had pliers. Your mind fills in the painful blanks.

[00:08:52]Let's talk about kidnapping. Kidnapping.

[00:08:55]That's kidnapping. With one more P it is. That's kidnapping. Kidnapping's fully forbidden as the main theme of the movie. That immediately makes me think of The Hitch-Hiker. Kidnapping is basically the whole movie. Maybe it doesn't count as kidnapping kidnapping.

[00:09:09]There's no ransom involved. It's just hostage taking and coercion. Very arbitrary, but okay. Wait, children can't be kidnapped? Isn't that the story of O. Henry's The Ransom of Red Chief?

[00:09:21]That one's unquestionably about kidnapping. Now they're putting a sack over JB's head.

[00:09:28]No.

[00:09:31]Now they're toting him away. Oh, wait, the '56 document has it. You can kidnap a child if it's light and the child is returned unharmed. There we have it, kidnap away. There's this story that the collector ended with the unrepentant criminal going unpunished because the assigned Hays Code delegate fell asleep during the ending. Five will get you 10 that's just Hollywood folklore. The movie did inspire a bunch of serial killers though, so maybe the code was right all along. Took a nap during work hours, what's the worst that can happen?

[00:10:06]Anyway, the code was getting lax at the time of The Collector. Like how in the first adaptation of The Children's Hour, they had to remove all references to lesbians and make it a straight love triangle. When they remade the film in 1960, [music] they could already touch the homosexual theme. Even though the code still forbade what it called sex perversion. And I looked through the keyhole and they were kissing and Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine kissing. Take heed, Hollywood.

[00:10:35]You're arousing my morbid curiosity.

[00:10:38]Since we're here, let me share the absolute best passage from the Hays Code. All legislators have recognized that there are in normal human beings emotions which react naturally and spontaneously to the presentation of certain definite manifestations of sex and passion. The presentation of scenes, episodes, plots, etc. which are deliberately meant to excite these manifestations on the part of the audience is always wrong. It's subversive to the interest of society and a peril to the human race.

[00:11:13]This is my favorite new everything ever.

[00:11:16]I can't wait to quote it verbatim in the most innocuous contexts. This is always wrong. It's subversive to the interest of society and a peril to the human race.

[00:11:28]No pickles then, got it.

[00:11:31]So no naked. You can't even wear clothes that delineate the human shape. Not only that, it seems characters can't even notice that someone off screen is naked.

[00:11:40]Brothels can't be identified, which explains that mysterious respectable female interaction place from From Here to Eternity. Members are entitled to all privileges of the club, which includes dancing, snack bar, soft drink bar, and gentlemanly relaxation with the opposite gender, [music] so long as they are gentlemen and no liquor is permitted.

[00:11:58]Got it? Gentlemanly relaxation with the opposite gender.

[00:12:01]>> No lustful or open-mouth kisses, which explains those dry humping versions of kisses from the classics.

[00:12:08]It's written that seduction is forbidden. The MPPDA must have had a far more specific definition of seduction than I do, cuz old movies had what I'd call seduction scenes all the time. And then, Natacha, it's midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half. Then there's the subject of It rhymes with grape. Rest assured because it rhymes with grape should never be made to seem right or permissible. Well, I hope not. You can't even show the struggles preceding it rhymes with grape, but A Streetcar Named Desire and Bhowani Junction most definitely show the struggles. But, I'm pushing my luck too much in terms of monetization, so let's change the subject.

[00:12:50]Love can only exist under the laws of God and man. It explains why there were so many remarriage comedies. After screwing around for 90 minutes, when movies were short, our attractive leads would realize they were always meant for each other all along and retie the knot. An odd man out in that era was Dodsworth, which ended with the divorced staying divorced and the husband finding new love. Billy Wilder, you again? Why am I not talking about Otto Preminger?

[00:13:22]Remember Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? Did you know it's a remake of a little known film called Bedtime Story with David Niven and Marlon Brando? Steve Martin's so much better than Brando in this role.

[00:13:34]While the remake has a wonderful surprising conclusion, the original ends with Brando marrying their target. If there's the slightest chance they bond, they need to get married first.

[00:13:47]Take Lover Come Back and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Both these excellent comedies have scenes of characters going on a bender all night long and waking up hungover, amnesiac, pregnant, and God be praised, married.

[00:14:03]The crazy monkey humping with a complete stranger was preceded by a hasty and forgotten legal ceremony. So it's perfectly fine under the laws of the code, meaning they were young, wild, and free, horny as sin, but they went through the trouble of finding a properly appointed justice of peace and declaring their undying love in the ocean to the present one-night stand at 3:00 in the morning, and only then getting a room and kinky animal sex, as we all do.

[00:14:33]Bad words. You can't say derogatory terms like chippy, fairy, goose, nuts, pansy, SOB, and son of a. You can't say these words either. Everybody knows the whole kerfuffle Gone with the Wind had for saying them.

[00:14:47]>> What you reading there? Oh, it's called Gone with the Wind. You can have it.

[00:14:50]It's only got one swear word and not a very good one. Gone with the Wind, eh?

[00:14:54]Well, let's see you. Garbage, my line.

[00:14:57]Garbage, garbage, my line.

[00:14:58]>> You also can't say obscure bad words that only the sophisticated part of the audience will get. Oh no, not my sophisticated obscenity.

[00:15:08]They didn't know gunsel, though.

[00:15:09]>> I told that gunsel that he should have to talk to me before he threw. They assumed it was the same as gunman, which it later was. Keep that gunsel out of my way while you're making up your mind.

[00:15:17]>> So Sam Spade ends up calling a thug a catamite, and nobody bats an eye.

[00:15:21]>> I'm just giving the ganjel. Ha, you sensors think you know every insult under the sun, you silly geese. Oh, sorry.

[00:15:29]I kept looking for a reference to toilets because of the famous cycle story of how hell-bent Hitch was of showing the first toilet in a movie.

[00:15:37]Hey, to each his own. Better to have a bizarre goal than none at all. You do you, Alfie. But toilets are never mentioned, so I must assume they fall under the umbrella of vulgarity. Here's another fun fact. The code almost thought of age classifications right from the start but couldn't quite reach the idea. Unlike books and music, somehow they couldn't conceive of a way of limiting films to certain groups.

[00:16:01]Took them long enough, but they did.

[00:16:03]I've got it.

[00:16:05]No.

[00:16:06]Now, remember, failing to like and subscribe and specially to join my Patreon is always wrong. It's subversive to the interest of [music] society and a peril to the human rights.

[00:16:19]Thank you for watching.