The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 [Paperback]

Lea Jacobs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0520207904 | ISBN-13: 978-0520207905 | Edition: 1

The story of the fallen woman was a staple of film melodrama in the late 1920s and 1930s. In traditional plots, a woman commits a sexual transgression, usually adultery. She becomes an outcast, often a prostitute, suffering humiliations that culminate in her death. In more modern variants, the heroine is a stereotypical "kept woman," "gold digger," or wisecracking shopgirl who uses men to become rich. In The Wages of Sin, Lea Jacobs uses the fallen woman film, which served as a focal point for public criticism of the film industry, to explore Hollywood's system of self-censorship and the evolution of the rules governing representations of sexuality.
Drawing on the extensive case files of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the industry trade association responsible for censorship, Jacobs focuses on six films. Her close analyses of The Easiest Way, Baby Face, Blonde Venus, Anna Karenina, Kitty Foyle, and Stella Dallas reveal the ideology of self-regulation at work and the social constraints affecting the film industry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jacobs, an assistant professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, presents a well-researched examination of the ways in which the Production Code strictures of Hollywood's depiction of sex contributed to the screen construction of female sexuality in the '30s. The author writes, ``Because industry self-regulation functioned as a sort of machine for registering and internalizing social conflict, it provides an extraordinarily fruitful means of contextualizing film analysis,'' i.e., grounding it firmly in history. The resulting book is happily devoid of the jargon that mars much recent academic film writing, but it's a bit dry all the same. Jacobs's most interesting discovery is that the Code actually worked as a sort of preemptive strike to placate state censor boards while still allowing filmmakers a little breathing room. She challenges the commonplace that pre-1935 films were uncensored and shows that Code administrators were ``always complicit to some degree with the aims of major film producers.'' However, the tentativeness of her conclusions leaves one with the sense that this is a work in progress. Photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Lea Jacobs is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520207904
• ISBN-13: 978-0520207905
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,105,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How censorship REALLY worked, June 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 (Paperback)

If you're going to criticize a book, it is helpful if you 1)understand the argument of the book; and 2) understand how the author goes about making that argument. Every critcism that the reader from LA makes about this book reveals the reader's own ignorance.

LA Reader either ignores the fact that Jacobs has consulted over 100 censorship case files or does not know what these are (I am guessing the latter). Ignorance may also explain why LA reader attacks Jacobs for not having watched a film that no longer exists, and then ignores the fact that she painstakingly reconstructs the film as accurately as possible from available evidence (screenplays, studio memoranda, case files). Again, perhaps LA reader does not know what these are.

While one might not agree with Jacobs' conclusions, one can certainly not call them baseless. Jacobs may, at times, overstate continuities between the early 30s and later 30s, but at least she is aware of the fact that the Code existed and was enforced before 1934, unlike other books on the era (see Complicated Women, Sin in Soft Focus, for example).

This simplistic (and erroneous) view of censorship seems to have clouded LA Reader's judgement. Unfortunately, this view is one that is embraced by too many popular books on the subject (again, see Complicated Women and Sin in Soft Focus). LA Reader's apparent defense of this view, ignorance of the facts, and eagerness to attack a book that attempts to paint a more accurate picture of the way self-censorship worked in Hollywood, indicates that her/his views should be taken with a large grain of salt. On second thought, they should be ignored entirely.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So Obviously The Best Book on the Topic, August 28, 2009

By 

Patricia Fentriss "PF" (Snee, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 (Paperback)

The 'Travesty' review is indeed written by someone who is completely ignorant of what makes good film research - some kind of ornery film buff who thinks no one has anything to teach them. This is an extremely well research, well argued, and nuanced look at a fascinating topic.

4 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A TRAVESTY, March 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 (Paperback)

This book analyses the censorship histories of a small handful of films, one of which the author admits to not having seen. She writes from an ignorance of the era and comes to conclusions about censorship that are wrong and conclusions about women's place in the late twenties and thirties cinema that are not only specious but baseless, formed out of nothing but guesswork.
Anyone reading this book is likely to have seen more and know more on the subject than the author.
The truth is that the fallen women films of the early thirties explored sensitive subject matter, were protofeminist, and that the sentiments expressed therein -- the notion, for example, that sex before marriage was acceptable -- soon became mainstream in women's films, at least until the intrusion of censorship.
It's also true that the introduction of censorship caused a profound disruption in the content of women's films. The wrongness of Jacobs' argument that censorship made little difference is patently obvious to anyone who has ever seen more than five films from the early thirties and compared them to films from the late thirties.