Example history of film dissertation topic 2:

Joseph Breen’s Production Code Administration: Moral reform in American cinema of the 1930s. The introduction of the Production Code Administration in 1934 saw the vetting of scripts and films as a reaction to increasing public concern over content. Acts such a couple rising from a sofa and passionately embracing, with the screen fading out thereafter, offended American public morals as it suggested that such scenes were preparatory for non-marital sex. The PCA – through the strenuous efforts of its head, Joseph Breen – sought to remove such ‘suggestive’ scenes from cinema, even requiring that marital ‘intimacies’ were sanitised. This thesis considers the degree to which such reform was a reaction to post-Depression era politics, or simply an attempt to enforce rigorous self-regulation to avoid regulation by other, perhaps even more rigid, authorities. Suggested initial topic reading:

• Doherty, T. (2007). Hollywood’s censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Greene, J.M. (2010) ‘Hollywood’s Production Code and Thirties romantic comedy’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 30(1), pp. 55-73.
• Sarris, A. (1978) ‘The sex comedy without sex’, American Film. Vol 3., pp. 12-13.