The wages of sin: censorship and the fallen woman film, 1928-1942

story of the fallen woman was a staple of film melodrama in the late 20s and early 30s. In traditional versions of the plot a woman commits a sexual transgression, usually adultery. Expelled from the family, she becomes an outcast, often a prostitute, suffering various humiliations that usually culminate in her death. In more modern variants, the heroine is a stereotypical kept woman, gold-digger, or wise-cracking shopgirl who uses men to become rich. Recognized and defined rather loosely as a type, the fallen woman film, often called the sex picture, became a lightning rod for regulation by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), the industry trade association responsible for censorship. The Wages of Sin uses the example of the fallen woman film to examine the institutional framework of industry self-regulation and to consider how the representation of sexuality was circumscribed within this context. Mining the extensive MPPDA files, Lea Jacobs reconstructs this process of self-regulation, focusing in particular upon six films that posed distinct problems for the MPPDA because they had encountered difficulties with state censors, or had provoked protest from reform groups. In her historical study, Jacobs combines a knowledge of recent film theory with readings of The Easiest Way, Babyface, Blonde Venus, Anna Karenina, Kitty Foyle and Stella Dallas to show the ideological processes of self-regulation at work and the social constraints under which the film industry operated. Industry self-regulation did not proceed by cutting things out of completed films, but rather by a process of negotiation between producers and industry censors about material that was thought to be potentially offensive in story treatments and scripts. They engaged in debates about how to promote ideal models of gender roles, marriage and family life within the constraints of the fallen woman genre. Jacobs demonstrates that the codification of censorship and the codification of the genre itself were inextricable.