Mahony Urges Film Industry to Accept Code

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said Saturday that “perhaps the time is ripe” for a new moral code to govern the content of motion pictures and television programs, but he stopped short of calling for mandatory compliance by the entertainment industry.

Lamenting a “breakdown of our social fabric” that he said is partly caused by graphic cinematic images, Mahony urged the entertainment industry to voluntarily embrace a set of guidelines that one proponent likened to the Ten Commandments.

“Regrettably, the distinction between outright pornography and many of today’s films and television productions has become blurred,” Mahony told more than 200 people who attended a Public Forum on Pornography, First Amendment Rights and a Family Film Code at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

“The motion picture and television industries must accept their share of the responsibility for (the) tragic results of their exploitation of sex and violence,” Mahony said, his words filling the ballroom where the first Academy Awards were presented in 1929. “These industries cannot hide behind a misplaced cry for ‘freedom of expression.’ ”

Since Tuesday, when Mahony’s support of the proposed production code was first announced, writers and movie executives have spoken out against the idea, defending the movie industry’s rating system. But until Saturday, the specific tenets of the new code had not been made public.

In a news conference before the forum began, Ted Baehr, chairman of the Atlanta-based Christian Film and Television Commission, discussed his group’s 19-page revision of the old Hollywood code, often called the Hays Code, which governed the making of movies from 1933 to 1966.

Baehr described the entertainment industry as “ghettoized” and out of touch and said he had modernized and simplified the language of the old code to come up with a “pro-active” guide to help the industry understand Christian values.

Baehr made frequent reference to the one-page “short form” of the code, which offers general advice to movie makers: Movies should display a respect for the dignity of human life and should omit excessive cruelty to animals.

“How can anybody argue with that?” Baehr asked, adding that his group has gotten a warm reception at the major television networks and movie studios. “We think we have the answer to their financial woes. . . . The truth will set them free, not only from sin and corruption, but from the bondage of losing money at the box office.”

Only later, as a dozen pickets protested “censorship” outside the hotel, did Baehr make complete copies of his proposed code available to the press. That longer version contained specific prohibitions that, were they strictly applied in Hollywood today, would probably prevent the production of most films now showing in theaters.

Among the images the new code would omit from movies are law enforcement officers dying at the hands of criminals, dancing that involved movement of the breasts, excessive and lustful kissing, and “white slavery” or prostitution. The code also would discourage films based on the lives of notorious criminals and would forbid “sex perversion or any inference of it.”

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said Saturday that Baehr’s new code still sounded outdated to him.

“We can’t go back 60 years to some kind of do’s and don’ts. It’s an anachronism,” he said, adding that the current rating system gives parents ample information to choose movies.

“I would not try to tell creative people how to write their stories anymore than I would try to instruct Hemingway, Beethoven or Picasso. . . . The best way to expunge a movie from the marketplace is (by) not buying a ticket to see it. It is the American people who make those decisions. And it has to stay that way.”

But Baehr said his code is intended to give voice to a majority of Americans whose views are underrepresented in Hollywood. The entertainment industry employed 91,800 people in California in 1990 and contributes billion of dollars annually to the state’s economy. Baehr claimed that industry executives and employees are out of sync with the nation’s tastes.

Since 1966, he said, the church community has “dropped the ball” by not offering its counsel to the entertainment industry. He compared his efforts to those of animal rights advocates or gay and lesbian activists who regularly lobby studio executives to win support.

“When they do it, Hollywood calls it politically correct sensitivity. When we do it, it’s censorship,” Baehr said. “If they’re going to listen to the gays, God bless ‘em. If they’re going to listen to the NAACP, great. Why should we be called censors when every other group is welcomed as sensitive?”

Mahony also scolded the religious community for not making itself available in recent years to “assist” the entertainment industry. And he appeared to urge filmmakers to highlight the good, not the bad, regardless of whether that image matched reality.

Opponents of the proposed code said Saturday that they were alarmed by Mahony’s decision to ally himself with Baehr, the publisher of MovieGuide, a “biblical guide” to movies that rates movies by their “offensive content.” Among the elements MovieGuide includes in that category are homosexuality, lesbianism, Marxism/socialism and satanism.

“Mahony’s proposal is indicative of an alarming new direction of coalition building between conservative Christian fundamentalist groups and the Catholic Church,” said Chris Fowler, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Mahony is “welcome to offer whatever advice he wishes to anyone who wants to listen,” said Michael Hudson, Western Director of People For the American Way. “But he crosses the line when he joins forces with those who condemn such movies as ‘Ghost,’ ‘Dances With Wolves’ and ‘Misery’ on the grounds that they are somehow ‘anti-Christian.’ ”