Should Movies Be Censored?

[TimothyIgnatius]

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 15:11[/BIBLEDRB]

Under no circumstances should any censorship ever be allowed, ever. Whether something is amoral is irrelevant, and to suggest otherwise would be to imply that the Church’s teachings are too weak to be challenged in any way, shape, or form.

When it comes to these kinds of things, context is key. The violence depicted in a historical film about the Holocaust is not the same as the violence depicted in a silly action movie. The nudity in the Titanic is not the same as nudity for nudity’s sake. Moreover the idea that these things pose challenges to the Church and society as a whole is ridiculous. If our minds have truly become that susceptible and porous, then the problem isn’t actually in what people see/hear but rather in how they react to it (as in how they think).

Seeing a violent movie doesn’t make me want to be violent. Seeing something with pornographic qualities doesn’t make me want to go have promiscuous premarital sex, it makes me go, “Oh my, this is rather disgusting, I think I’ll watch something else.”

Suggesting censorship is suggesting the power of Christ’s love through his Church’s teachings isn’t enough. It implies the Church isn’t strong enough to withstand opposition and therefore we must enact totalitarian laws to prevent this. Dangerous thinking, very dangerous, and certainly un-Christ like.

 

[JamesCaruso]

It scares me when people talk about censorship, because it’s just as easy to ban religious messages as it is to ban secular ones.

But not so with voluntary censorship, such as when the Church bans certain books or movies. You don’t have to abide by its findings, but you are given guidelines to follow if you so choose. Do you know if any Catholic rating systems still exist? Or Catholic evaluation systems might be a better term, where they actually discuss the pros and cons of movies/books from a Catholic POV?

 

[Timothysis]

Hollywood is the problem. They are part of society and know darn well what they’re doing. They bear a lot of the blame. They used to give us role models. Not anymore. They used to produce clean, wholesome films. Mostly, not anymore.

Hollywood produces these movies because that is what people pay to see. If the money dried up, then they would make different types of movies to bring the money in. Pixar is a good example; they know how to make the kind of movies that parents will bring their kids to see. The problem is not “Hollywood” but that moral integrity has plummeted.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Timothy
**
Suggesting censorship is suggesting the power of Christ’s love through his Church’s teachings isn’t enough. It implies the Church isn’t strong enough to withstand opposition and therefore we must enact totalitarian laws to prevent this. Dangerous thinking, very dangerous, and certainly un-Christ like. **

The Hays Office was not government censorship. It was censorship agree to by Hollywood as a way of self policing for entertainment unbefitting any self-respecting person.

Your argument doesn’t fit with historical facts. The Catholic Church has always encouraged Hollywood to censor itself. And certainly the Catholic Church is Christlike.

 

[PatriceA]

Timothy
**
Suggesting censorship is suggesting the power of Christ’s love through his Church’s teachings isn’t enough. It implies the Church isn’t strong enough to withstand opposition and therefore we must enact totalitarian laws to prevent this. Dangerous thinking, very dangerous, and certainly un-Christ like.**

The Hays Office was not government censorship. It was censorship agree to by Hollywood as a way of self policing for entertainment unbefitting any self-respecting person.

Your argument doesn’t fit with historical facts. The Catholic Church has always encouraged Hollywood to censor itself. And certainly the Catholic Church is Christlike.

Well I’m all for Hollywood “self-policing” itself, having a set of agreed upon boundaries in which to operate in. BUT, out and out censorship, NO WAY. I think perhaps your word of “censorship” is what is tripping up the conversation. I don’t want someone making the decision for me that I can’t watch a movie or tv program or I can’t read a book based on what they considered decent for me to read or watch. I don’t want the government making that decision for me either. But I’m all for Hollywood getting itself together and saying collectively they don’t need to make the movies that keep pushing the boundaries and they self restrict themselves to make more decent movies.

 

[Baelor]

The goal was to desensitize you to the idea of sin and a good, clean conscience. Your only choice, most of the time, today is the even more bad at the movies. I lived through it.

Do you have evidence that this was a wide-spread conspiracy?

Hollywood is the problem. They are part of society and know darn well what they’re doing. They bear a lot of the blame. They used to give us role models.

No Hollywood star should ever be a role model. If I consider someone I have never even seen in real life a role model, we have a problem.

Not anymore. They used to produce clean, wholesome films. Mostly, not anymore.

That is obviously false. It is not the case that not a single clean, wholesome film has been produced recently.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Baelor

Do you have evidence that this was a wide-spread conspiracy?

Yes, but the best evidence is having lived through it, which is hard to demonstrate to someone like yourself who obviously hasn’t lived through it.

No Hollywood star should ever be a role model. If I consider someone I have never even seen in real life a role model, we have a problem.

I suppose you have never seen the President of the United States either. Does that mean he should not be a role model?

**That is obviously false. It is not the case that not a single clean, wholesome film has been produced recently. **

Ed never said that. In fact, he went to see one movie this year!

 

[Baelor]

Yes, but the best evidence is having lived through it, which is hard to demonstrate to someone like yourself who obviously hasn’t lived through it.

Can you even articulate how living through it provided experience? Why should anyone believe that there is a conspiracy if no evidence can be brought forward?

I suppose you have never seen the President of the United States either. Does that mean he should not be a role model?

Yes. A given President of the United States should not be a role model; he should simply conduct himself morally in public (and in private, ideally).

Ed never said that. In fact, he went to see one movie this year!

It is not even the case that they mostly do not produce clean, wholesome movies; his statement is simply false.

 

[pollynova]

What are you afraid of? No Catholic needs permission from any outside source to produce clean and wholesome entertainment, and to have standards that are good for the soul.

Peace,
Ed

I’m afraid of the government stepping in and saying, “No, you can’t talk about how this and that is a sin, because it’s offensive to some people.”

 

[Seeker1961]

I believe in personal censorship. Investigate, do your research and choose wisely.

And as far as “living through it” being proof of some widespread conspiracy-there are other people on the planet who lived through the same time period. Everyone doesn’t believe that there is a bunch of people sitting around in pink shirts and feather boas in a dark room saying “we just MUST get everyone to have more sex!! WE must make them hate God!!! We must convert them to be GAY!!!”

What really happened was there were a bunch of men in suits and ties trying to figure out how to make more money!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

pollynova

**I’m afraid of the government stepping in and saying, “No, you can’t talk about how this and that is a sin, because it’s offensive to some people.” **

You persist in believing that this is about government censorship when it’s really about Hollywood censoring itself by setting up standards and requiring film makers to abide by them.

Do you really have a problem with that?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

seeker
**
What really happened was there were a bunch of men in suits and ties trying to figure out how to make more money! **

Yeah, like Hugh Hefner, who also hates religion and through his magazine Playboy (which I used to read in my youthful atheist days) has done everything he could to subvert it. But you wouldn’t know about that, not having lived through it.

 

[Baelor]

You persist in believing that this is about government censorship when it’s really about Hollywood censoring itself by setting up standards and requiring film makers to abide by them.

Yes, because it is not clear what the standards should be. The Church forbids viewing pornography and gratuitous violence. What else should be censored for everyone, given that the Church does not condemn anything else intrinsically?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Baelor

**Yes, because it is not clear what the standards should be. **

Perhaps not clear to you or me at the present. But standards could be hammered out that would restore sanity in the entertainment business. Aside from pornography (soft and hard) and gratuitous violence, I should think Hollywood could clean up the graphic gutter language it is prone to today. Neanderthal gutter language never makes a great movie, and it is one of the reasons that Raging Bull is not a great film when it might have been.

It has always puzzled me why Hollywood went thataway, when the best movie makers of the last 40 years should have been bright enough to understand that the vulgarisms they introduced and celebrated in the movies might someday well into the future be condemned by a culture that had recovered its appreciation of cleaner language.

 

[Baelor]

Aside from pornography (soft and hard) and gratuitous violence, I should think Hollywood could clean up the graphic gutter language it is prone to today.

The bigger question to me is whether the Church should start censoring things that She does not intrinsically condemn in Her own teaching.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Baelor
**
The bigger question to me is whether the Church should start censoring things that She does not intrinsically condemn in Her own teaching. **

Let’s get the discussion back on track. We are talking about whether Hollywood, not the Church, should re-institute self-censorship standards with respect to sex, violence, and language.

 

[Baelor]

Let’s get the discussion back on track. We are talking about whether Hollywood, not the Church, should re-institute self-censorship standards with respect to sex, violence, and language.

We have a slight problem:

You:

One of the salutary effects of the Catholic Church on American society was its influence with Hollywood during the period of the 1930s through the 1960s.

The Catholic Church’s influence was mentioned in post one.

But I will rephrase to suit your mercurial desires. Why should or would Hollywood, a collection of secular companies, on its own initiative, censor itself? How would this even occur independent of religious influence?

Why should we as Catholic consumers push for censorship beyond that which is taught by our faith? The Hays Code was certainly not in line with Catholic teaching.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Baelor
**
The Hays Code was certainly not in line with Catholic teaching. **

It certainly was, while at the same time reflecting secular interests. If you watch Singing in the Rain or The African Queen or any other classics of the era you can detect the ultimate pleasure of film making without any hint of X-rated language, sex, or violence.

Today we are told by film critics and a great portion of the public that Quentin Tarantino is the ultimate film maker.

Blah! Blah! Blah!

The Catholic Church’s influence was mentioned in post one.

Influence (encouragement to make better movies) is not the same as censorship.

 

[Baelor]

It certainly was, while at the same time reflecting secular interests.

Perhaps you should read it more carefully:
MPPC:

Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:…
White slavery;
Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);

If you watch Singing in the Rain or The African Queen or any other classics of the era you can detect the ultimate pleasure of film making without any hint of X-rated language, sex, or violence.

For many movie-goers, those two films (and many others, for that matter) do not provide the ultimate pleasure of film-making.

Today we are told by film critics and a great portion of the public that Quentin Tarantino is the ultimate film maker.

Tarantino makes films of excellent technical quality. As does Scorcese. Lars von Trier also makes very stimulating and beautiful films. Christopher Nolan has made some excellent original films.

Influence (encouragement to make better movies) is not the same as censorship.

And yet you claim that the earlier censorship was due to religious influence. On what basis do you want Hollywood to censor its material?

 

[edwest2]

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 15:11[/BIBLEDRB]

Under no circumstances should any censorship ever be allowed, ever. Whether something is amoral is irrelevant, and to suggest otherwise would be to imply that the Church’s teachings are too weak to be challenged in any way, shape, or form.

When it comes to these kinds of things, context is key. The violence depicted in a historical film about the Holocaust is not the same as the violence depicted in a silly action movie. The nudity in the Titanic is not the same as nudity for nudity’s sake. Moreover the idea that these things pose challenges to the Church and society as a whole is ridiculous. If our minds have truly become that susceptible and porous, then the problem isn’t actually in what people see/hear but rather in how they react to it (as in how they think).

Seeing a violent movie doesn’t make me want to be violent. Seeing something with pornographic qualities doesn’t make me want to go have promiscuous premarital sex, it makes me go, “Oh my, this is rather disgusting, I think I’ll watch something else.”

Suggesting censorship is suggesting the power of Christ’s love through his Church’s teachings isn’t enough. It implies the Church isn’t strong enough to withstand opposition and therefore we must enact totalitarian laws to prevent this. Dangerous thinking, very dangerous, and certainly un-Christ like.

You are very wrong.

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_29061936_vigilanti-cura_en.html

Ed