A Free Soul

Watching "A Free Soul", with Norma Sheaer, Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore. 1931, pre-code movie. Gangster being represented by an attorney whose flapper daughter falls for him.  Pre-code is that time between sound 1929 and mid-1934. The Motion Picture Production Code sensorship guidelines usually labeled "Hays Code".

So films with sexual innuendo, miscenegation, profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence and homosexuality. So it was difficult to regulate and there were many instances of dispute. A lot of film was damaged by going through and altering them, but some studio heads ordered items to be destroyed but many weren't.

Clark has some great phrases and Norma Shearer is amazing in her slinky silk dresses. Definitely sensorship worthy. I caught an expression he uses in mixed company:

So I looked up the word Picayune. It is a Spanish from Spain reference to blindfolding. But it was so obscure in the dialogue it prompting me to look it up. 

So here we are on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2017. Those pre-code days are circling back. In a time where press and journalism is seen as out of bonds. People's personal freedoms are being sequestered. The extreme right is coming into play. What we are allowed to know, to see, to hear and how we should feel is being dictated again. This time in the way of news. The Picayune.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This is our first amendment. This was important enough to our forefathers they drafted it immediately.  I think that this couples well with:

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552, is a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures and grants nine exemptions to the statute.^[1][2] This amendment was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite his misgivings,^[3][4] on July 4, 1966, and went into effect the following year.^[5]

It is what it is and either we put our heads in the sand or we follow our convictions. Awe and inspired the Women's March follows. There isn't a thing in our makeup that allows up to return to those days where codes dictated what our heart and minds are allowed to witness.

We do see the past and find we are not returning there. As the weekend brings peaceful protest amazing creativity and eloquent speeches, I look at our lot in life and find that we are bound for positive change. It is chalenging to us to bare witness to injustice but now i sense those voices are met with other voices. One becomes two, then three and four. This becomes the force that calls for notice.