The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Among the Magazines Conducted by N. L. G. THE ultimate purpose of this department is to supply in readable form, and quite informally, a digest of the literature on the subject as it appears from month to month in various periodicals. The busy reader may find here as much as his time will allow him to cover; the curious or scholarly reader can use the department as a starting point for wider ranging, with marked economy of his time. Last month the department began with a single review. In this number we cover several of the most significant among recent articles, bringing our survey approximately up to date. Once this is done, "Among the Magazines" will concern itself wholly with the articles of the preceding month—or of the current month in the case of magazines published far in advance—and will adopt a form of presentation and arrangement which will make for easiest reading and readiest reference. The Motion Pictures—An Industry, Not an Art by Burton Rascoe in the Bookman for November THE most notable of recent attacks on the motion picture. It has roused a storm of violent protest and des- perate defense on the part of the film in- terests, and has unquestionably exercised a wide influence on the opinion of the thoughtful fraction of the public. It is the most convincing arraignment of the in- dustry that has yet appeared for it is made with reasonable restraint, limits it- self mainly to real weaknesses, and avoids the attempt at blanket damnation of the whole thing—a proceeding usually fatal to the intention. Starting with the verdict of the Na- tional Research Council—that the aver- age adult male in America possesses a "fourteen-year-old intelligence"—Mr. Ras- coe reminds us that this average person with his "sinister burden of prejudices, taboos, neuroses and superstitions" is really the "arbiter of our destinies in any vast group expression such as custom and law, manners and recreation." It is he alone who makes media of information self-supporting, newspapers and popular magazines, and hence he dictates the course that racial education must follow. The cultured minority can continue to ex- ist for it can subsidize its own media of information from the monstrous suc- cesses made possible by the sanction oi this average person, but as for racial dis- semination of the minority's culture- well, the "outlook is dim." The very conditions of modern life ard such as to keep the average person whal he is. His sensitivity to aural and visual impressions is continually dulled by the crash and foar of cities, by lurid lettering on bill-board and electric signs. Hence the blatancy of newspaper headlines and advertisements, and the violent sensa- tions of the movies are necessary to reach his numbed and jaded intelligence—only fourteen years old to begin with. The motion picture industry "has bej hind it a vast deal of shrewd and adven- turous business acumen but not one in- fluential directive mind above the level of a stock promoter, not one guiding peri sonality who has revealed more than a glimmer of aesthetic interests or even o] elementary taste." But America's penl chant for seizing upon any promise oj financial success insured the rise of the inl dustry to the dizzy height of "fifth in the world." The newspapers and Wall Street brought about the costly theatres, the massive studios, built Hollywood, anl made possible the ridiculous salaries which transformed "obscure stock pea formers" into "national figures." As to the literary value of the output, 14 V