In fact, in 2023 they are talking about censorship on western cinema; The simple answer would be no, but the signs, coming mainly from across the Atlantic, are not entirely encouraging. Recently, due to some unfortunate incidents, such as the original PG rating of the thriller “M3GAN”, there has been a lot of buzz around the video game industry. Hollywood which require tightening of the relevant criteria. In fact, a few days ago, a “tweet” that went even further, calling for the restoration of the famous Haze Code, was viewed several million times and garnered a large following.

But what is the “haze code”? In the early 1930s, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, Will Hayes, put forward a series of strict rules and restrictions that every Hollywood film must comply with: sex, violence, nudity, drugs, immorality, religious reporting, and many of them were included in the regime of open censorship. , which operated for almost four decades, until 1968. The then massive influx of European films that threatened to capture the attention of the public with their “spicy” images led Hollywood studios to the virtual abolition of the rules and the adoption of a selection system that, with some changes, exists to this day.

And, of course, during the era of Prohibition, inventive filmmakers found ways to get around the code. In the 1946 film Notorious, Hitchcock had Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman constantly move their faces closer and further apart in order to “observe” the three-second rule for each kiss, in a romantic sequence that lasts almost two and a half minutes. Still others preferred to show the main characters (dressed) in bed smoking, implying a love act that had just ended.

In the days when the main audience of multiplexes were teenagers, almost all Hollywood productions competed for a PG-13 rating, which means they are suitable for everyone, and parental supervision is recommended for children under 13 years old. On the contrary, Rated-R films necessarily require the presence of an adult companion and are considered almost doomed at the box office from the very beginning. Therefore, self-censorship of creators is destructive, whether it will increase even more depends on the late conservatism of the time.