Code, a literal list of all the big no-nos of cinema, was predictably obsessed with sexual purity, traditional values, and marriage, and deeply informed by racism and misogyny. The rules stipulated the subjects that could not, under any circumstance, appear onscreen, including profanity, sexual perversion, and ridiculing of the clergy.4 The Code existed to enforce a very limited idea of morality whereby any character who dared to transgress any heteronormative ideas around gender, sexuality, family, and morality could only be shown onscreen as a cautionary tale.
