Re: RARA-AVIS: Movie Industry Wimps?

rikke & hanne Kesten (rbkhbk@bcn.net)
Thu, 30 Jul 1998 09:41:58 -0300 If you were offered a choice between self-regulation by an industry
committee or legislated regulation through governmental control which
would you choose? The movie industry was able to avoid legislated
controls by creating self-censorship boards. Then when times and
attitudes changed their control boards merely began to look the other
way on content issues. No need to pass new laws through the Congress.
This was true of the Consent Decree in which the companies voluntarily
agreed not to own all three sides of the business -- production/finance
of films, distribution of films and exhibition. They did this when
pressure was mounting for a legislated decision on the matter.
Same with censorship. It was gonna happen and the studios, cleverly,
I think, finagled a means of compromise through non-legislated
acquiescence on the issue.
--steve kesten

Mark Sullivan wrote:
>
> Actually, I would define wimping out as rushing to censor yourself,
> either by blacklisting alleged or past or even present Communists or by
> recutting your movies to please an industry board, simply because a few
> government officials threaten they might step in, instead of standing up
> and testing if film has the same first ammendment protections as the
> printed word......
> Mark
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