REGULATION QUESTIONS: FILM

Assess the significance of regulation in shaping the production and distribution of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings (2021).

Regulation has played a significant, if shifting, role in shaping Hollywood film across both periods. In 1937 and 2021, the regulatory environment did not simply restrict content it actively shaped the commercial strategies of the institutions producing and distributing these films.

In 1937, the dominant regulatory force was the Hays Code, enforced by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. It required that films must not lower moral standards, banning content including nudity, homosexuality etc. For most studios this meant constant negotiation between creative ambition and censorial constraint, but Snow White occupied a uniquely comfortable position: Disney's "family values" reputation meant the film largely reflected rather than battled the Code.  In the UK, the British Board of Film Censorship classified it as an "A" certificate, requiring cuts to some of the darker expressionistic sequences; however, the uncut version was reclassified "U" by 1964, demonstrating that regulatory standards are not fixed moral absolutes but products of their cultural moment.

By 2021 the Hays Code had been replaced by the MPA's age-based system. Shang-Chi was awarded PG-13 in the US, a classification strategically pursued by Disney, since it maximised the teenage audience whilst avoiding the commercial damage of an R rating. The BBFC awarding a 12 in the UK. Crucially, these ratings were designed into the production from the outset: the comic-book fantasy framing of violence is a deliberate mechanism for achieving the commercially optimal certificate, illustrating how institutional awareness of regulation shapes creative decisions rather than simply filtering them afterwards.

However, two further regulatory forces shaped Shang-Chi's distribution in ways that have no equivalent in 1937. First, the Covid-19 pandemic created an entirely new quasi-regulatory environment. The film's release was delayed multiple times before launching on Labour Day weekend 2021, exclusively in cinemas rather than simultaneously on Disney+, which was an unusual decision for the period, driven by pandemic uncertainty. The film's theatrical exclusivity was therefore not purely a strategic choice but a response to the disrupted regulatory and commercial landscape that Covid had created around exhibition.

Second, and more significantly, China's state regulatory framework, controlled by the China Film Group Corporation's monopoly on foreign film imports, meant Shang-Chi never entered the Chinese market at all. Given that Avengers: Endgame earned over 30% of its global box office from China, this was a substantial commercial blow, limiting Shang-Chi's international earnings considerably. The irony is acute: a film designed in part to celebrate Chinese cultural identity was blocked by the Chinese state, arguably because its fictionalised, Hollywood-inflected portrayal of that culture was deemed politically or culturally unacceptable.

Livingstone and Lunt argue that new technologies open up opportunities and risks that fundamentally complicate regulation, visible here in Disney's restriction of Shang-Chi's streaming to Disney+ a convergence of production, distribution, and exhibition within one corporate structure that echoes the vertical integration anti-trust legislation had dismantled in the 1930s. Hesmondhalgh's framework is equally useful: regulation, rather than constraining dominant institutions, often consolidates their power, since large conglomerates like Disney are best placed to navigate classification systems, exploit streaming exclusivity, and absorb the commercial damage of losing access to markets like China, losses that would be fatal to smaller competitors.

Regulation has therefore shaped both films profoundly, but its nature has evolved from content censorship towards a complex interplay of classification strategy, state market control, pandemic disruption, and digital distribution each reflecting the institutional priorities of Hollywood in its respective era.