What's ironic is that when Disney's original animated
Snow White was released in 1937, the Hays Code was still in effect. For the ignorant, the Hays Code was an industry standard by which studios agreed amongst each other not to produce any films which would do any one of numerous things that might offend audiences. Just a few planks of the Hays Code are listed below.
Films depicting crime had to show that in the end, crime did not pay.
All depictions of the clergy had to be respectful.
Liquor use could only be shown when integral to the plot.
The enslavement of whites could not be depicted (they were cool with showing blacks enslaved, though).
And here is one in particular, and I quote directly from the code:
The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.
The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code)
Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On : NPR
The Hays Code was not a law - it was merely a policy by the studios to not offend the moralizers. And that is the very definition of political correctness. Today, there is much more social latitude for producing fictional content, whether it be on stage of film or television or in print.
Of course, the same hand-wringers who go on and on about how they supposedly loathe political correctness are the first to wield it when something offends them. Remember the conservative outrage over Clint Eastwood's
Million Dollar Baby for its non-judgmental depiction of euthenasia? Or the teeth-gnashing over the pro-environmental vandalism depicted in
Hoot?
Brokeback Mountain,
Wall-E,
Milk, the lists goes on and on... the usual suspects take some time off from spouting outrage over political correctness to spout their own political correctness - though, it should be noted, those who prattle on and on about political correctness invariably define political correctness in the following self-absorbed way:
"Codes of speech or behavior meant to minimize offense - except for those codes that I happen to like!"