Mahony to Propose New Code for Films, TV : Entertainment: Cardinal says audiences have the ‘right to decency on movie screens and on our public airways.’ He’ll urge an update of production standards used from 1933 to 1966.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, whose Los Angeles archdiocese encompasses the power centers of America’s entertainment industry, will call for a new motion picture and television code independent of the major studios and networks, his office announced Tuesday.

Saying the public has a “right to decency on movie screens and on our public airwaves,” Mahony will throw his influence behind an effort to update production standards that existed in Hollywood between 1933 and 1966, before the film industry adopted its own voluntary ratings system. The proposed code would establish a set of guidelines for filmmakers in the areas of violence, profanity, nudity and promiscuity.

“In an age of rape, date-rape, sexual harassment, child molestation, sex addiction, serial killings, AIDS and venereal disease epidemics, Hollywood simply must stop glorifying evil,” Mahony said.

Industry officials could not be reached Tuesday evening for comment on the proposal. But adoption of such a code would probably meet strong resistance from the creative community, which has opposed all forms of censorship and balked at imposing one set of values on the nation as a whole.

Mahony will outline his plan Saturday at a seminar held by the Archdiocesan Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and the Knights of Columbus.

Commission Chairman Dennis Jarrard said the proposed code would go beyond the Catholic ratings system now in place. Individual studios and networks would be asked to agree to abide by the standards. Jarrard said the goal ideally would be to re-establish film offices similar to the Catholic and Protestant film offices that existed before the mid-’60s.

“The old code was based on Judeo-Christian ethics,” Jarrard said. “We believe that like any other industry, you can pollute and rot a society just as easily through the culture-making instruments in the entertainment industry as you can by dumping acid out of steel mills into rivers.”

The proposed code, Jarrard said, would be patterned along the lines of the old one.

“Take a look at the movies you had then,” he said. “I don’t believe you saw the blood and the gore. You didn’t see a lot of people in bed.”

Jarrard said he believed a strict code could still bring about quality motion pictures. “Remember ‘Rear Window’ with Jimmy Stewart?” he said. “That was made under the old code. Remember musicals? That was a very big thing when when I was a kid. In essence, (a code) forces people to be creative.”

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, which administers the movie ratings, has long said that its voluntary system works best to protect free expression and free enterprise.

MPAA President Jack Valenti has said the voluntary system has effectively kept pornographic films out of the theater chains. The MPAA dropped its X rating in 1990 to avoid the stigma attached to it by porn films.

The current MPAA rating categories--G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17--advise parents on the suitability of movies for children.

Valenti could not be reached for comment on the Mahony plan.

Jarrard said, “The industry loves to administer their own codes and you can see the result of it. We have an enormous public safety and public health and morality problem in the country.”

The proposed code would not replace the U. S. Catholic Conference’s own ratings system for films. They include A-1, general patronage; A-II, adults and adolescents; A-III, adults only; A-IV, adults with reservations (“films that while not morally offensive in themselves are not for casual viewing because they require some analysis and explanation in order to avoid false impressions and interpretations”), and O, for morally offensive.

Among recent films, “Beauty and the Beast” was rated A-1; “The Addams Family” was rated A-II; “The Commitments” and “City of Hope” were A-III; “Boyz N the Hood” was rated A-IV, and “Cape Fear,” “Child’s Play 3” and “Double Impact” were rated O.