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Topic: Navels and The Hays Office
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted March 23, 2008 01:38 PM
Though I wasn't around back then, (as that all ended before i was born.) I thought that the Hay's office offered a handy thing for the public for two reasons ...
One: people who may have lighter sensibilities, wouldn't have to be wary of taking thier families to the movie theater to see a film. It's interesting that the whole family, durings the "Hay's regime", could see a film on ANY SUBJECT, but the family could be assured that the subject would be tackled in a tasteful manner.
Number two : You don't have to drop down into the sewer to discuss or film any number of subjects. I believe that when the hay's office left the scene, film-makers were allowed to be a lot more lazy about what they put on screen. It took ingenuity at times to show on screen, what you couldn't show on screen; to suggest something outlandish and perhaps immoral through looks, clever dialogue and such, instead of just putting up images that, while some would be comfortable, others would be put off by it and besides, the more risque your material would be, the harder it would be to get as many people to see it as possible.
I remember a film called "hardcore" with George C Scott, about a very religious man who finds out that his runaway daughter has been sucked into the hardcore porn industry and kept against her will. Though there are a few images that are hard to watch, the film did a very good job of not going to the sewer to tell the story.
I remember that long take of George C Scott, as he first finds out what has happened to his daughter, when he looks (barely) at the screen and winces in pain at what he's seen (and we haven't seen) on the big screen, and ends up weeping intensely. We don't have to see what was on the screen, we don't need that voyeurism, we can see the damage on his face.
So, to conclude, I don't wish to sound prudish, (hell, anybody who knows me, knows me well! I'm anything but that!), but I do believe that our desire to portray anything on screen these days is to bring down the excellent craft of storytelling and dumbs down things for the audience and leaves them, well ... dumber! Leave something to the imagination!
The Hay's office did serve a very useful service.
(By the way, many people STILL hold to those "outdated" morals.)
-------------------- "All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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