Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 79 been explaining to you to-night, and put it in definite form before you. There are eight of those standards, as follows: 1 The board prohibits obscenity in all forms. i. The board prohibits vulgarity when it offends or when it verges toward indecency, unless an adequate moral purpose is served. 3 The board prohibits the representation of crime in such a detailed way as imay teach the methods of committing crime except as In the judgment of the board the representation serves as a warning to the whole public. 4. The board prohibits morbid scenes of crime, where the only value of the scene is its morbidity or criminal appeal. 5. The board prohibits the unnecessary elaboration or prolongation ot scenes of suffering, brutality, vulgarity, violence, or crime. 6. The board prohibits blasphemy, by which is understood the careless or wanton or unnecessary offense against religious susceptibilities of any large number of people in the country. 7. The board prohibits anything obviously or wantonly libelous in films, any- thing calculated to cause injury to persons or interests from an obviously malicious or libelous motive, and films dealing with questions of fact, which relate to criminal cases pending in the courts. The board does not, in judging films, allow itself to be influenced by the moral character of persons who may be concerned in the production or acting of the films; but the board does retain the right to forbid, at its discretion, the ex- ploitation of unworthy reputations, such as the morbid representation of per- sons who may have been associated with famous criminal cases. 8. In addition to the above specifications, the board feels in general that it is right in forbidding scenes or films which, because of elements frequently very subtle, which they contain, have a deteriorating tendency on the basic morali- ties or necessary social standards. Now, Mr. Chairman, having presented those standards of the board to von, I want to summarize what I have said under three heads: I feel that this proposed Federal board of censors is unnecessary, because of this national board of censorship which is already estab- lished ; and I think, as you examine and study these standards which I have just read to you, you will find that they are wholesome stand- ards of criticism. I present them in order that you may know exactly what the standards of the b( ard are. I claim it is unnecessary to have a Federal board of censorship if this national board is doing the work under such standards; that it has proved that it is doing the work well by the fact which I men- tioned last Tuesday, and which Dr. Howe referred to this evening, viz, that last year they found 77,000 feet of film which they felt were not fit to go before the public, which film had a value of $438,000; in fact, the total value of the films rejected, including the sample films, would amount to over half a million dollars. I claim, because of that fact, we are doing the work well; and if we are doing the work well under a voluntary organization, it is therefore utterly unnecessary to have a Federal board which would not be operating under that same voluntary method. Mr. Thacher. FIow^ can a man tell, if he wants to take his children to a moving-picture show, whether or not the films have been ap- proved by your board ? Dr. Carter. It is on every film approved by the national board. Mr. Thacher. But the man who wants to go to the show does not see the films beforehand. How can he tell they have been approved by your board ?