This collection of essays on ethics in screenwriting seeks to open up new perspectives on a topic that is commonly discussed, but relatively neglected in academic research. It will be useful to begin with a clarification of this apparent paradox. For many readers, ethics and screenwriting will define a core research topic in cinema and media studies to do with public debate around the morality of screen works, including attempts to censor or regulate what we see on the screen. The demands of screen censorship in the early 1900s in the USA placed a huge moral burden on filmmakers, but the impact of this regulatory system on screenwriters, and screenwriting, has rarely been explored as a problem to do with ethics in screenwriting. It will thus be useful to reevaluate the operation of the production code from this particular perspective.

In the USA, as early as 1907, and through the 1910s, cities such as Chicago and states such as Ohio created boards of censors. Fuelled by puritans and ‘yellow journalists’ the trend continued into the 1920s.

In 1921 alone, solons in thirty-seven states introduced nearly one hundred bills designed to censor motion pictures. The rules of the extant censor boards were mine fields. Women could not smoke on-screen in Kansas but could in Ohio. (Leff and Simmons 2001, 3–4)

As censorship states also had some of the biggest audiences, it was impossible not to engage with the boards, in what became a costly exercise of compliance for local exhibitors at first, and later producers. In the 1920s, off-screen scandals such as the 1921 Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle case, but also others, fuelled the image of Hollywood as a modern Sodom, feeding a panic over Hollywood’s moral standards.

Studio managers became concerned by the impact of off-screen scandal and on-screen immorality on financing, as well as the possibility of government regulation of the industry. In 1922, in an attempt to cool down hostility towards Hollywood, they moved to establish the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), and appointed former Postmaster-General Will H. Hays to lead the Association (Doherty 1999, 6; Maltby 1995a, 5–7).

The approach pursued by the MPPDA was multipronged, including the registration of titles and advertising, and a process under which studios presented scripts to the Association for evaluation (Vaughn 1990, 44). Two other strategies stand out. Firstly, to persuade stakeholder groups that the industry took moral standards seriously. These groups included the various censorship boards, along with an estimated sixty other groups including the National Council of Catholic Women, the Boy Scouts of America, the YMCA, the American Federation of Labor, the National Congress of Mothers and Parent–Teacher Associations, and the US Chamber of Commerce (Vasey 1995, 65–66). One mechanism here was a Committee on Public Relations, which was seen as an advisory group on ‘public demands and moral standards’ (Leff and Simmons 2001, 5). Established as a Department of Public Relations within the MPPDA in March 1925, it promised a ‘direct channel of communication between motion picture producers and the public’ (Vasey 2004, 320–321; see Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Inc. 1929).

With demands for censorship continuing a second strategy saw the MPPDA engage the studios directly and convince them of the value of ‘clean’ pictures and self-discipline; even though box office success and public interest in salacious movies often suggested otherwise. The move to self-regulation was given concrete form in 1927, when the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) relocated its offices to the West Coast. It was organized by Colonel Jason Joy, who would advise producers of problems facing scripts and scenarios, and met with studio representatives fortnightly, with more frequent contact around specific projects (Vasey 2004, 232). Also, in 1927 a guideline known as the ‘Don’ts and Be Carefuls’ emerged. These guidelines arose to appease exhibitors concerned by industry practices and were developed out of an analysis of the activities of the censor boards across the country over several years (Vasey 1995, 66).

In 1929 only 20 % of scenarios were sent to Joy (Leff and Simmons 2001, 8). Studios further flaunted the code.¹ Alongside calls for control from civic organizations were those from small-town exhibitors who bore the brunt of decency concerns. Industry fears that anti-trust legislation would be applied to the film industry intensified. A new approach was needed, which localized around discussion of a new code (see Maltby 1995a, 15). For Will Hays,

…[the] goal was the formulation of a production ethic, capable of informing interpretation and based not on arbitrary do’s and don’ts, but on principles. … Hence a morality was necessary, a philosophy of right and wrong. The industry was growing up, and the list of “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” had served its day. (Hays 1955, 438–439)

The MPPDA used the coming of the sound film as a pretext for a new code (Maltby 1995a, 23; 1995b, 58). However, other powerful currents were at work, including the mobilization of Catholic groups. Several different versions and drafts of a new code were put forward: by Irving Thalberg, Colonel Jason Joy, and Father Daniel Lord SJ (Maltby 1995b).The ‘Lord’ code has received the most discussion. Devised by Lord and Martin Quigley, publisher of the Motion Picture Herald, this was an ambitious document, going beyond a statement of ‘Don’ts and Be Carefuls’. It contained a statement of general principles alongside working principles addressing particular applications. A summary of the code was made public by the Hays Office in 1930, which contains a section on General Principles, and Particular Applications, and was accompanied by a ‘Resolution for Uniform Interpretation’. Although a compromise document (Maltby 1995a, 18) the new code had some impact, and story and screenplay submissions jumped from 48 in 1929 to 1,200 in 1930 (Leff and Simmons 2001, 13).

The full version of the Lord–Quigley code was published in 1934. It is the fusion of the earlier summary and the full document (see Leff and Simmons 2001, 285) that is normally referred to as the formal ‘Production Code’, although the simultaneous publication or private circulation of different versions of the code makes it difficult to pin down an authoritative version (Jacobs and Maltby 1995, 3). By 1934, federal legislation looked extremely likely (Doherty 1999, 324). Following action by the Catholic Legion of Decency, and spurred on by social science research (the Payne Fund studies)—which promoted the view that the movies were highly influential on the conduct of vulnerable members of the audience—the code formed the basis of a new, mandatory and enforceable self-regulation regime.

The key elements of this new regime were (1) compulsory submission of scripts for consideration by Production Code Administration (PCA), with appeals going directly to the MPPDA; (2) the replacement of the SRC with the PCA, under the authority of Joseph I. Breen; and (3) a $25,000 fine applied to any film shown without a Production Seal. This was seen as a response not only to religious groups and new research, but also the fear that the newly elected Roosevelt Administration would institute regulation of the film industry under the New Deal. As Thomas Doherty notes, ‘The studios found themselves fighting a three-front war against church, state, and social science’ (1999, 8).²

This sketch of the Production Code can only partly capture all of the forces at work in this period: fears over the rise of ‘moral indifferentism’ after the Great War (Quigley 1937, 27); technological change; the great depression and financing issues (Vaughn 1990, 57); changing patterns of cinema attendance; trade relations between distributors and exhibitors (see Vasey 2004, 321); all contribute to a fuller picture. Nevertheless, it serves to portray a research paradigm that will be familiar to many readers. This paradigm, I want to argue, can serve as a useful reference point for debates about ethics in screenwriting, but has also contributed to the neglect of broader questions and perspectives in ethics in screenwriting. In the absence of a well-developed approach to ethical analysis it forms a default way of thinking about key issues of morality and practice. While clearly the Production Code has specific origins in US screen culture it has wider discursive power in terms of how it frames or codifies discussion of questions of morality and practice, and restricts discussion of ethics. As a discourse it successfully forms questions of ethics and practice around morality, entertainment and compliance, to the extent that it articulates a key moment in discussion of ethics in screenwriting, without posing critical questions about the nature of ethics, or screenwriting. Thus the paradox with which I began this chapter: ethics in screenwriting remains both commonly discussed but neglected.

As a dominant framework and discourse through which ethics in screenwriting has been articulated the research on the code has some shortcomings. The first shortcoming to highlight is that its primary focus is on morals rather than ethics, and more specifically the project of how to establish ‘a standard of morality independent of public taste’ (Vaughn 1990, 41). While many readers and philosophers will find the words ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ interchangeable, some scholars insist on a distinction between the two terms (see Rajchman 1986, 72), and I shall do the same. The articulation of morality spelled out in the Production Code has to do with sin and evil, moral standards, correct standards of life, natural and human law. This extends to prohibitions on representing homosexuality, childbirth and sexual relations between people of different races. Although there are instances where the Production Code is described as an industry ‘code of ethics’, on close inspection this is an injunctive, or negative ethics, one designed to expel offence and indecency rather than engage with the complexities or ambiguities of social ethics (Doherty 1999, 328).

When discussing morality and the Hays code, two caveats should be made. Firstly, the code is not a straightforward reflection of morality. Instead, it is the by-product of a series of moral panics and institutional negotiations (Jacobs and Maltby 1995, 3). Secondly, the sincerity of industry and the Hays Office, and its ability to wear a ‘mask’ of morality (Vaughn 1990, 45), was the subject of open debate (Maltby 1995a, 24; see ‘Morals for Profit’, New York World, 1 April 1930).

A second way in which the discussion of decency, morals and motion pictures, falls short in the discussion of ethics in screenwriting is that rather than focus on screenwriters, narrative craft and ethical choices, attention is primarily directed towards issues of regulation and compliance of a work to be exhibited under a code, or subversion of the code itself. In a rare consideration of the space of the writ...