How About a Little Censorship with your Salt

Salt of the Earth was an oddly entrancing film that made me laugh and get a little angry. It was a film from 1954, so its pace was a bit slow, and its style a bit crude, but I was able to overlook that accept the story for what it was. The idea of women fighting to get their rights, not only against their outside oppressors, but against the men who control their lives as well, is one that any culture in any decade can understand. It seems that no matter how hard we try, we must always work harder than the boys to be respected as equals.

Salt of the Earth had many very comedic moments when the men had to do "women's work", and when the women were locked in the jail and got so annoying that the Sheriff refused to arrest them again. These are things that are still portrayed on sit-coms and comedy films today, and they make contemporary audience laugh just as hard.

One very interesting parallel in the film is when Esperanza has a meeting with some of the women leading the picket lines. Her husband is cranky from a long day of housework, and is so annoyed by her meeting that he goes to the bar. When he comes home, Esperanza is in bed when she says "I always wait up for you". Despite taking care of the chores that wore her husband out in one day every day, she always waits for him to come home from his meetings as a sign of respect, and yet he could not wait for her to get done with a ten minute meeting. This is one of many times that it is obvious the men do not respect their wives.

Something that I thought was interesting when doing the reading for "This Film is Not Yet Rated" is that the ratings board was created, according to Arnold White in "Whimpers & Whines: The doc that attacks the MPAA relies on new tricks of the trade", "partially to prevent dangerous government interference in filmmaking". It would seem as though "Salt of the Earth" would be a perfect example of why this intervention was needed, but it wasn't so much the government that caused the problems with the film, as it was the people of the United States. The government indirectly effects the box office performance by brain washing the citizens into thinking that the film was communist propoganda, and convincing that them that if they watched it their country would be at risk. But ultimately, the citizens of the U.S. and even Hollywood refused to accept the film on their own.

The reading that we did for "This Film is Not Yet Rated" was interesting, and gave me a new perspective on the film. Even before the film came out when I was in high school, I hated censorship on any sort of art, but this film gave my thoughts a voice . Unfortunately, I fell victim to the film's propaganda and let my emotions take the better of me.

The reading we were assigned described the films purpose, which was more or less to expose the MPAAs rating system as unjust. The film uses interviews with filmmakers, and follows detective hired by the director to figure out who is on the ratings board, and also examines the process that the film itself goes through to get a rating. The reading also includes the article by White that I will discuss in further detail later, as well as the history of censorship in the article "HUAC (House Un-American Acts Committee) and the Censorship Changes" by Jeanine Basinger. The later article gives a lot of in depth information about how the HUAC was able to effect films like "Salt of the Earth" and further determine what kinds of films came out of Hollywood. The scariest part of the reading, for me, was the part in which Basinger acknowledge that Hollywood executives had a two day secret meeting, during which time they decided to make anti-communist films in an attempt to avoid pickets an losing money. Luckily these films were not successful financially, so after about twelve of them, the trend died out.

The Film Reference Encyclopedia took the history of censorship back even farther, citing the type of content monitored in nickelodeons. In those days it was the police who had the power to censor films, which they eventually took for granted and began to turn a profit instead of focusing on what was best for the citizens. After this came the rise of Hayes who created the Hayes code, which eventually lead to many great films in the noir genre being littered with sexual tension from innuendoes, but also limited the ways in which artist could express themselves for many years.

After reading White's article I have come to realize just how easy it is to get caught up in Dick's propaganda and let your emotions speak instead of your intelligence. While I am not a supporter of censorship, "This Film is Not Yet Rated" does have its flaws, and is as one commentator put it "willfully distorted". Dick, as White points out, brought together a lot of "liberal think-alikes" to have the comment on the MPAA and their process. White claims that these independent filmmakers, such as Kimberly Piece and Darren Aronofsky, are being painted in an incorrect light as "fearless independent filmmakers," when in fact they are simply cry babies. While these directors do make good points during the film, I feel it is also necessary to acknowledge the fact that touchy subjects can be portrayed in artful ways that do not offend people. As a filmmaker myself, not of much accreditation but with a bit of experience, I am about to direct my first sex scene and have been stressing about it for a few weeks now, but something I know for sure is that I do not intend to show too much, because I believe the less you show in a situation like that, the more impactful the moment is on the audience.

One thing that I must point out, as a side note, is that White claims an NC-17 rating does not hurt a film. While it may still be shown or distributed, NC-17 films often do not get enough showings to be nominated for Oscars (as was the case with the recent Ryan Gosling film "Blue Valentine" that had to appeal its MPAA rating in order to get the showings to be nominated), and are pushed out of many communities, like those that exist in the heartland of the United States, because they have been dubbed as inappropriate. To me the NC-17 rating marks a film as unwatchable to many people, and this is not something that I believe anyone should have the power to do to a film that is not their own.

Thinking about the film as a propaganda piece will make me view it differently this time. Instead of being an anti-censorship filmmaker, I am going to approach it as a conservative thinker and see how it effects me differently. I'm sure the message will still ring true to the artist inside of me, as well as that little voice in my head that seeks to rebel more than to conform, but I think the film will also take on a less powerful influence when I think about censorship. White makes a good point when he acknowledges that Valenti created the MPAA, in part, to combat government interference in filmmaking. While censorship may be bad, it isn't as bad as Dick paints it in the film, because it does do some good as well.

In the first part of the reading, there is also a quote from an MPAA board member in which they say, "we don't create standards, we just follow them". To this I have to raise the question of whether or not that is acceptable. If we do not challenge things, they cannot be improved, and as the overseeing body that determines the morals of the film industry, I feel that the MPAA should question standards. Society is always changing, and that should be reflected in the boards decisions.

****New Terminology****

Postmaster General

This was the position once held by William Hayes, and since I had never heard of it, I decided to look it up. The position, according to the American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, is "The head of the United States Postal Service. Until 1970, thepostmaster general was head of the federal Post Office Departmentand a member of the president's cabinet. In 1970, the PostalService was set up as an independent agency in place of the PostOffice Department. The Postal Service is operated like a privatecorporation, although postal workers receive the benefits of federalemployees."

This made it seem wierd to me that he would eventually create the code that would rule what was accepted as decent by the film industry prior to the creation of the MPAA, making a huge and undeniable impact on the history of film in the United States.