The declaration of a Culture War from the entertainment industry was announced officially on Nov. 1, 1968, by Jack Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA. He made the declaration only two years after being "anointed" to the position by the seven major movie studios in 1966 as their chief lobbyist and cheerleader.

This declaration of war came in the form of an "abolition" as Valenti set out to "free the screen" from the "slavery" of the MPAA's own Production Code, a basic guiding code of content followed by the major studios for almost 40 years. In its place, Valenti established the Movie Ratings System that is in existence today.

The National Association of Theater Owners was privately persuaded by Valenti in early 1968 to take part in the "Emancipation Proclamation," though some theater owners feared the drastic move of "age-appropriate movies" would spell a prescription for disaster. Their worst fears would, indeed, come true.

In 1969, the year after the Production Code was abolished and the Ratings Scheme installed, more than 60 percent of the movie-going audience disappeared, many never to return again. The 44 million weekly ticket buyers who came to the theaters in 1965 dwindled to an all-time low of just 17.5 million. To this day, movie attendance has never returned to the 44 million weekly ticket-buying attendance, even with the U.S. population increasing by 100 million people since 1968.

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Author and critic Michael Medved would refer to this as the amazing case of "the missing movie-goers" who had "fled from the theaters with horror and disgust."

While the Production Code of 1930 was never perfect, it was constructed like a constitution – open for amendments. But, to abolish it was revolutionary and enormously misguided. In fact, the Production Code ushered in the Golden Era of filmmaking, offering entertainment and challenging content that was open and accessible to people of all ages with a unique feature known as "dual understanding."

This allowed moviemakers to tackle controversial subject matter with the implied content that adults understood at its deeper meaning and children understood at a broader, general level that only young minds could comprehend – basically, good and evil. As author Gregory Black described the Production Code, "While the audience knew full well what was going on, it would be up to their imagination to conjure up the details."

The imagination of children and adults are two quite separate areas of understanding and comprehension.

One of the most brilliant examples of the "dual understanding" strategy by a director working under the Code was Robert Mulligan's screen adaptation of the Harper Lee classic "To Kill A Mockingbird" in 1962. The widely popular and award-winning film tackled a series of heated and controversial issues including racism, mental illness, rape, murder and the insinuation of incest.

At the age of 5, "Mockingbird" was the first movie I remembered seeing as a child in Huntsville, Ala. And, as a 5-year-old, all I remembered at the time was the story of a brother and sister named Gem and Scout whose daily adventure was consumed with catching a glimpse of the mysterious Boo Radley in the dark house at the end of the street. The other scenes and dialogue in the movie passed right over my head, though I knew, somehow, that an epic "adult battle" was going on between right and wrong.

This was the brilliance of the Production Code that allowed people of all ages and families to sit in the same theater at the same time watching the same movie without the ever-present haunting specter of "age-appropriate" content, which is code language for "debauchery."

Valenti's alternative ratings scheme is not only less than perfect, it was a ploy conceived in secrecy, deception and the apparent attempt to install the "forbidden fruit" agenda that filmmakers continue to use today to change and warp the value system of the audience.

Children grow up now wondering why some movies are off limits to them but perfectly OK for their parents. This is a daily dilemma that rarely existed before 1968. With ratings appearing on television in 1997, at Valenti's guidance, the family has been thrown into a moral quagmire of trying to decide what is "safe" and what is "dangerous" to watch, not only for children, but also for adults if they plan on being good role models.

Columnist Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe best summarized the whole ratings scheme as a "lame solution" when she wrote, "The rites of passage to adulthood are now defined by card-carrying access to alcohol, tobacco and big-screen mayhem. What message does that send about what it means to come of age?"

By rewriting the rules, Valenti unleashed the dark side of Hollywood, and 40 years of influence on the culture has not passed unnoticed. Every aspect of life has been affected. Even literature, publishing, fashion, lifestyles, politics, social policy, education, workforce philosophies, religion and family structure have taken on a detrimental value system that Hollywood promotes 24/7.

In 1990, as a location coordinator for the Georgia Film Office, I had the opportunity to scout locations with Robert Mulligan for "The Man In The Moon," his last movie. I told him of my experience watching "Mockingbird" 28 years earlier, and I asked him if he could have directed the same movie after Valenti's 1968 "revolution."

Mulligan, then 65, said that it was possible, but interference from young turk producers would have demanded "a quota of salaciousness" that would have shut out an entire generation of children and adolescents. He added, "The problem with producers today is that they greatly underestimate the mind of the audience, and they are doing everything in their power to take away the individual's right to think for themselves."

And, if somebody (Hollywood) is thinking for you, is that democracy?

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Michael Boyer is the author of "The Hollywood Culture War" and a former 20-year veteran movie location coordinator and film commissioner.