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)

16 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. It has resulted in the raising of the tone of the American pictures; its criti- cisms have been helpful; its sense of fairness and honesty have been beyond question, yet such a censorship is not objected to, because it is a purely volun- tary censorship. So long as its judgments and decrees commend themselves as fair, sensible, honest, and reasonably intelligent they will be adopted cheerfully. But if any attempt were made to convert such a board into a purely political organization, with all the evils liable to flow therefrom, its decisions would command the support neither of the public nor of the film producers. The i)roposition of the advocates of censorship is to constitute a single cen- soring b!>(ly with rower to enforce its decrees and jud^'ments and extending in its operation over the entire country. In other words, such a body would have the power, first, to require th-it no picture should be shown anywhere in the United States until first submitted to the censors: second, then to review each picture, approving it when it meets the personal views of the censors and re- jecing it when it does not; third, to call upon the authorities to enfoi-ee these judgments and prevent the showing of a condemned or unlicensed picture; and, fourth, to require the payment of a tax for the censoring of each picture and every copy thereof. It is not inevitable that the moment the American people accept the principle of censorship and admit that it is proper and right, such a single, central cen- sorship board will be followed by other bodies of censors in the various States and municipalities? While we might start out with the one board of censors, we probably should find ourselves, in the course of a few years, confronted by two or three hundred little boards of censors all over the country, each with its own opinions, each enforcing its own decrees, and each imposing a tax on the business, which the public must pay eventually. Do the advocates of censorship i-ealize the tremendous significance, in a re- actionary sense, of their suggestion? They forget that the great fundamental rights for which mankind contended for niiiny centuries were: First, the right to follow the dictates of conscience or religious freedom; second, the right of free speech; and, third, the right of a free press. We should remember that it was only a few centuries ago that men were not allowed to worship God in their own way, but only in the way laid down to them by certain autocratic authority. If they worshipetl God according to their own conscience, they generally were burned at the stake, buried alive, tortured, or banished. After religious freedom was won, the right of free speech still was denied. No one dared, for a moment, to express his opinions on any mat- tei'S that did not meet with the approv:il of the same autocratic authority. If a government was known to be corrni)t, the citizen or subject was afraid to say so, under fear of imprisonment or of having his ears cut off or li's nose slit or of actual death. After the great moral victories of the people against the gov- erning class in securing freedom of religion and of speech, the freedom of the press was the last great concession that was won. The people at last won the right to print freely, in books and newspapers, their oi)init)ns and views on any subject, being held, of course, accountable to the law for libel, gross immor- tality, etc. Now, these struggles were all against censorship. Censors were known from the days of ancient Kome—men who set themselves up to guide their fellows in what they should or should not do. In nunlieval times the church, and sovereigns who ;icted in cooperation with the church, were censors who laid down rules for the guidance of the multitude on the subject of religion and morals. With the invention of printing, tirst the cbnri-h and then the State became the censor, and retpiired the licensing of every hook and paper before It could be issued. Then, with the development of the st;ige, that, too, became the object of censorship, so that plays, before they could be performed, had first to receive the license of the censor. When our Govermnent was formed, the struggle against these inquisitions, in this country at least, had been won. Censorship was to have no foothold on American soil, and, therefore, the first amendment to the Constitution provides that— "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro- hibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Gov- ei'nment for a redress of grievances." Probably every State in the Union has some similar provision in its State constitution. In New York and in Ohio, for example, we find it embodied in substantially the following language: