ABSTRACT
Beginning in the late nineties audiences experienced a dramatic revolution in movies. Religious pressure groups lobby Hollywood to avoid prurient or realistic sexuality and, instead, depict traditional “family values.” Today’s evangelical movement shares many similarities with other rebellions against movies, including the famous 1934 church-led revolt against Hollywood that ushered in Hays Code censorship. Just as religious conservatives effected dramatic change in Hollywood then, today’s evangelicals profoundly impact movies now. Today’s evangelicals seek an end to depictions of adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, and drug use and demand more positive depictions of family values, nuclear families, churches, and ministers, as well as more biblical-themed movies. As a result of lobbying, group prayer sessions, and other forms of evangelical pressure, religious-themed movies now appear with increasing frequency, along with large numbers of secular family values films. These dramatic changes have resulted in a new era dominated by a code advocated by evangelicals and conservative Christians and Jews. In fact, the “evangelical code” emerges as one of the most potent unofficial Production Codes in motion picture history.
