Censorship meant better movies?

There are really interesting responses to the above statement in the comment thread over at Libertas regarding the above philosophical POV. On the surface, or quite a bit beneath the surface, the statement seems possibly true. The Russian literary output under the choking censorship of the Tsars produced giants like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and at least ten other giants. Back in Shakespeare's time, Queen Elizabeth could have you executed if she didn't like what you wrote. And believe it or not, the artistic output in what is now Iraq was astonishing under various vicious governments.

However there was next to nothing produced while the fascists ruled Italy. Germany under the Weimar Republic had been the absolute giant of the movie business, but as Hitler was moving into power all the artistic talent moved to Hollywood. In country after country under all forms of "controls" from Church through governments the absolute absence of all meaningful literature, movies, or plays is plain to see. All deviation is actually proof of what artistic constraints do to a culture.

Yet, while Hollywood operated under a very rigid self imposed censorship (Hayes Office) during the Thirties and most of the 1940s, the American movie output was astounding. Because almost all of what are now referred to as "classics" were produced before 1950 it seems rational to think that censorship was a cause of the astonishing quality.

During that time all sex was only hinted---refer to the scene in The Big Sleep wherein Bogart enters the bookstore across the street from a crime scene ostensibly to gather info and spy on the shop, but encounters a seemingly bookish Dorothy Malone who, when smitten by Bogart, changes her hair, dumps her glasses, and turns into a hot babe. Malone then pulls the shade as she locks up and glances at Bogart---the scene immediately cuts to Bogart opening the blinds and looking across the street. We simply assume that he and Malone "got it on." But even if we don't "get it" the movie rockets ahead. Movie after movie that today would be filled with pornographic sex and hence rated at least "R" had to avoid all sex and all direct depictions of violence---a guy shoots somebody and only after the gun shot is a body shown, if at all. All this made movies better; and also worse because of what didn't get made.

So the premise of this argument is only good as far as it goes. What isn't mentioned in this "analysis" is that movies like "From Here to Eternity" (from an obscenity filled book), any of the Bond movies (imagine them without sex or violence), or The Godfather with all its absolutely necessary violence, could have been made at all under the old censorship code. And the number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, would be cut by at least 75%. Hayes censorship went much farther because they also told a writer HOW to present all material. Under the old code husband and wife never ever shared the same bed so no scene of real intimacy (not sex) was possible. The old code choked off the use of real language used in criminal and real life so that all movies had this "Hollywood" aura of phoniness (something they still can't shake); and since there could be no out of wedlock relationships that were successful almost nothing containing that possibility got through.

But it is in the realm of politics that the sex-violence prohibition was most affected. Any hint of past presidential affairs, any scene that contained an historical figure punching someone out, as the real Abraham Lincoln did at a rally in Illinois, never got by. Nor did any movie with so much as a hint of political history, such as the cause of WWI, got produced.

So while it is true that censorship boards created rules that made many movies much funnier or much more involving, its overall effect was to deprive audiences of the truth. Now whether or not this might be a good thing is up for discussion, but I think it is beyond dispute that censorship stifles story telling and movie making, reducing all to cliche' after cliche' passing for plot and dialogue.

We live in an age today that has no self discipline, no restraints, and certainly no taboos. God is dead and the only really active religion in the world would, if it gained power in the West, strangle any and all artistic output.

And all you have to do is look to Britain, the source of most all of our Western Art, to see capitulation to Muslim doctrine. Great Muslim movies? Not in my lifetime.