Psychologically, the larger the audience, the lower the moral mass
resistance to suggestion.
"REASONS SUPPORTING PREAMBLE OF
PRODUCTION CODE OF 1930"

The transition to sound in American cinema set off a struggle to control and contain the social effects of the talkies. Audiences, the media, censors, and the film industry's internal custodians were disturbed by the changes they were seeing and hearing. The new and unregulated utterances coming from the screen stirred up a simmering debate over what screen actors should say and how they should say it, over who should control the end-users' access to films, and who should monitor the movies' implicit values. During the 1920s seven states and several major cities had established boards of censorship to regulate films shown within their jurisdiction, and in 1930 legislation was pending to establish others. These agencies professed to safeguard citizens from the movies' possibly hazardous...