Controlling the Narrative: 

How Catholicism's Power Over Early Hollywood Manifests in Modern-Day American Government

Growing up in America, I had always known that predominantly white religions such as Christianity and Catholicism had an influence on our culture's opinions, goals, and actions, despite my personal interaction with such religions being limited to watching VeggieTales cartoons.  The question of how they have exerted their beliefs over the years as well as how and why similar principles are being used in government and social media today can be partially answered by Catholicism’s involvement with early Hollywood, and how that involvement developed throughout the years.  For the purpose of this piece, I will be using Christianity and Catholicism interchangeably, as Catholicism is a denomination of the larger Christian religion and holds many of the same beliefs.   Furthermore, this is not a piece against these religions, it is an examination of how they have influenced modern American culture through Hollywood, and how that influence has mutated over time into Christian involvement with government and other forms of media.

In a 2021 lecture at Dalhousie University discussing pre-code Hollywood, History Professor Alana Toulin explained how the Catholic Legion of Decency exercised authority over filmmakers in order to control the narrative that was coming from Hollywood.  The content of many popular films did not align with Catholic values; "Beginning in the 1920s, there became an increasingly loud strain in American life (especially among religious groups, most notably Catholics) that viewed popular culture like jazz music and movies as vulgar and indecent.”  Jazz music was most likely interpreted by the predominantly white Catholics this way due to its impact on and involvement with Black communities, however, the discrimination against the film industry was rooted much more in religion; "Filmmaking was seen as a particularly questionable business, and some of these attitudes were rooted in anti-Semitism...".  Anything that challenged the Catholic religion as the primary narrative for America would be quickly denounced, as Geoffrey O'Brien mentions in his article, "Hollywood's 'Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year'"; "It was more often seen as an exploitative cultural plague, administered by debauched illiterates who pilfered with vulgar abandon from the real arts of literature and drama."  A film that the Legion specifically disliked was Alfred E. Green’s Babyface (1933), which starred the iconic Barbara Stanwyck as a self-assured woman who uses men she sleeps with as stepping stones towards success in corporate New York.  As Professor Toulin put it, this image of a woman not only embracing her sexuality but using it to dismantle patriarchal structures “threw the Catholic establishment into a rage”.  With the concept of films themselves growing in popularity and their ability to reach wide audiences, the Catholic Legion of Decency realized that the denunciation of films like Babyface, as "movies that consumers should boycott" would not be enough.  In Balancing Acts: American Thought and Culture in the 1930s, Terry A. Cooney explains the strength of the Catholic influence on what would become Hollywood's Production Code, a set of regulatory guidelines for films; "The producers and distributors named one of the Catholic activists, Joseph Breen, to administer the code.  For the rest of the 1930s, Breen would have a sometimes extraordinary power to review movies and scripts to block the making or release of films containing material to which he objected.”  From this "assertion of respectable values" we can deduce that the Catholic Church did not want to take any chances with the American public- the values promoted by Hollywood must be unwaveringly Catholic no matter the religion of those watching the films.  This need for Catholic control over the film industry in the 1930s echoes a greater problem in American culture today: the pervasiveness of Christianity in government.

In a 2019 video, before she was elected to Congress, proud Christian and Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is shown denouncing Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in the Capitol building.  Danielle Zoellner comments on this incident in an article for the Independent; "In the footage, she was claiming that Ms. Omar and Ms. Tlaib were illegitimate Democratic representatives because they took their oaths of office on the Quran instead of the Bible.”  Every human has the right to individual religion, as well as the right to incorporate religious values into one’s own life, however, once you push those values and rules onto others, it crosses a line.  Many Christians expect people to respect their religion not only out of moral goodness, but because the right to one’s own religion is protected by the first amendment- so why can’t Christian representatives like Greene respect the first amendment and demonstrate the moral goodness they not only expect, but demand of others?  When it comes to the Constitution, the religious rights of Omar and Tlaib are made very clear, as Zoellner specifies;

"There has never been a law in United States history that requires an elected official of the country to take the oath of office with a Bible or any other religious text.  The United States Constitution actually states 'no religious text shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States'.  Why does the Constitution specifically say this?  The Framers of the Constitution valued the separation of church versus state."

Although she alone is not a representative of all Christians' opinions in the sphere of government, or all Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene's sentiment has been shared by many other Christian Republican officials, to the point where they are not only arguing to change the law regarding the oath of office, but they are denying validity to the current law and Constitution entirely because of their need to control the narrative of America to match their own views.  Though Christianity was being pushed in government long before this, its post-Trump era of prominence is exercising itself in ways like never before- how and why did we get here from the Catholic Legion of Decency in Hollywood?

We can see the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church's hold on Hollywood in the 1940s, during the film noir era.  The ambiguity of this genre challenged the authority of God, as Professor Toulin summarizes in a lecture on World War II culture; "The individual doesn't have control.  This was a disturbing suggestion for those Americans who believed in a providential god, or human will, or even the gospel of self-help."  While the genre was phased out in the 1950s, the Legion of Decency's reduced power over the 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? continues the trend of straying further from Catholic influences.  Leonard J. Leff's article on the film expresses this by citing the Legion's pointed requests; "The ACA formally required two changes: with an orange crayon, it indicated on a one-sheet how far Warner Brothers should raise Elizabeth Taylor's dress to eliminate her 'excessive exposure,' and it deleted from a one-minute radio spot George's line, 'Shove it.'".  These changes seem petty for a reason- Hollywood was no longer in the hands of the Catholic Church, and they were scrambling to limit what they still could.

 This had nothing to do with religious defiance on Hollywood's part, as Leff describes- their departure from the Legion was monetarily motivated; "Motion picture classification was implemented within two years of the premiere of Virginia Woolf, and films became increasingly more outspoken in theme, content, and language.  But Virginia Woolf was not intentionally a political weapon... Albee's play was a good commercial property…”.  It was financially beneficial for Hollywood to advance with the times, something that religion, especially Christianity and Catholicism, has resisted since the invention of the word; leading to a greater divide between the two.  In Professor Toulin’s lecture on Redemptive Culture, she discussed how films began to push narratives of acceptance; "Movies also suggested that redemption might come through the embrace of one's social identity- as a woman, as Jewish, as queer, as African American, and so on...".  Christianity has historically discriminated against every group listed, so it is no surprise that it did not take lightly Hollywood's progression- in response, Hollywood did not take lightly to them either; "Although evangelical Christianity expanded during the 1970s, Hollywood tended to avoid religion, and sometimes mocked it...".  What were Christians doing to control the narrative during this time of growth, seeing as they no longer had a hold on Hollywood?

From the 1970s to the current day, Christians have mobilized politically in America like never before, to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to distinguish far-right Republican values from theirs.  A large proponent of this mobilization was the Moral Majority, defined by the Britannica Encyclopedia as an association that "...helped to establish the religious right as a force in American politics."  Their original mission hauntingly echoes the current stance of parts of the Republican party in 2021, despite the fact that the Moral Majority dissolved in 1989, showing truly how successfully they have injected religion into American politics:

"The Moral Majority was formed in response to the social and cultural transformations that occurred in the United States in the 1960s and '70s.  Christian fundamentalists were alarmed by a number of developments that, in their view, threatened to undermine the country's traditional moral values.  These included the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement...".

The association of Christian values with Republican ones has had such an impact on American thought that critics of the gay film Brokeback Mountain (2005) have discredited the homosexuality of the characters purely because of their assumed political stance.  Daniel Mendelsohn comments on the perceived oxymoronic nature of Jack and Ennis in his article “An Affair to Remember”; "But the fact that this film's main characters look like cowboys doesn't make them, or their story, any less gay... critics [are] trying to persuade you that Brokeback isn't 'really' gay, that Jack and Ennis's love 'makes no sense' because they're Wyoming ranch hands who are likely to vote Republican...".  After living in the U.S. for 22 years, I am positive that there are plenty of homophobic Democrats, but their position in politics will never be associated with homophobia in the same way that the Republicans' position is.  This is due to the sheer mass of Christians that make up the party and are actively trying to fight against homosexual Americans, citing the Bible frequently as evidence that homosexuality is sinful.

During the same decade that another groundbreaking gay film, Moonlight (2016), was being awarded Best Picture in Hollywood, the archaic and often barbaric idea of "conversion therapy" was being brought up in Congress.  Liam Stack’s article for The New York Times translates how congressional jargon about the right to ‘therapy’ ultimately green-lights this ancient form of abuse; "Conversion therapy was tacitly endorsed in the Republican Party platform for the first time this year in a line that supported the 'right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.'". This practice is historically a Christian one: "... often promoted by groups with ties to conservative Christian organizations like Focus on the Family, which says on its website that 'homosexual strugglers' can 'leave homosexuality' with the help of support groups like Homosexuals Anonymous or by 'becoming more like Jesus'."  After losing control of the narrative in Hollywood, Christianity had no choice but to mobilize within the government to impose their principles onto others, and this time with the force of the law.  A division of the previously mentioned Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, has made their Biblically-motivated political intentions clear on their website, and their own history of themselves strongly echoes the way the Catholic Legion of Decency tried to control the narrative through Hollywood; 

"FRC is going wherever technology will carry words and images.  Through broadcast video, the Internet, and radio, via RSS feeds and iPod downloads, by guest editorials and print interviews, through legal briefs and on-campus debates, using sermon notes and even tracking votes, FRC is making the cause of faith, family, and freedom real and immediate.  Not content to champion our cause for this day only, we continue to work with the rising generation through student internships to make a permanent home for family advocacy here at the seat of national government."

The migration of religion from Hollywood to the government, and in the FRC's case, apparently every other single piece of media, was one of both necessity and prejudice.  There has always been a theme within white American religion that is almost an entitlement to reality; they believe everyone should respect and live by their religion while refusing to respect racial minorities, women, the LGBT community, or other religions.  The Catholic Legion's obsession with the messages coming from Hollywood was a harbinger of what was to come- this need to dominate the narrative of the United States through a Christian lens, and using the government to do it.  What I take away from this dive into film history and politics is not a hatred of these religions, as the actions of some do not represent the feelings of all members or a hatred of Republicans, but a greater understanding of how that association came to be and why it had to happen.

Photo Credit: (Warner Bros.)