Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

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18 MOTIOX PICTURE COMMISSION. of the theater and the producers of the fiJui should l)e pmiisiied with the great- est severity. We say the situation is precisely the si.me as when a newspaper prints a libel. We can not prevent tlie paper from printing the libel, but we can hold the paper strictly accountable for doiuji so. We can not prevent a man from uttering scandal, but he can be arrested and prosecuted for doing so. We believe the American people are the proper censors of pictures. We do not believe that a theater can exist at all unless it represent a respectable public sentiment. A tlieater showing improper films will not be patronized except by tliose ])oisons who always are sfekiiit: evil, and in that event the theater owner will be i)unished and his theater closed by the police power." Our opponents probably will say that our position will not be effective in practice, because it will be dilhcult by legislation to determine what is or is not an improper, immoral, or ol)jectionable picture. Is not this objection an admission that the censorship is essentially an un-American institutionV Ours is a country of law, but the advocates of censorship place the opinion of cen- sors above the law. In other words, first they imagine an evil, then they con- cUide that the law will not reach that evil to correct it, and insist that the only way the evil can be dealt with is to place the power of control in their own hands. Truly, a dangerous doctrine. We believe that if the law is ineffective in reaching the pictures that really are objectionable (not to a small body of perhaps supersensitive censors, but to the American people), the proper course to follow is to change the law and make it effective. That is the American way to handle this question. It is distinctly an un-American way for any man or body of men to insist that their opinions on the subject of morals or taste shall be accepted as the opinion of the entire people. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful whether any immoral or indecent pictures, in violation of the law, ai'e being shown to-day. The late Mayor Gaynor, of New York City, who had the matter investigated, wrote as follows: " When I became mayor, the denunciation of these moving-picture shows by a few people was at its highest. They declared them schools of immorality. They said indecent and immoral pictures were being shown there. I person- ally knew that was not so. But I had an ofticial examination made of all the moving-picture shows in this city. The result was actual proof and an official report that there were no obscene or immoral pictures shown in these places. And that is the truth now. Wherefore, then, is all this zeal for censorship over these places? * * * i have asked the people who are crying out against the moving-picture shows to give nie an instance of an obscene or im- moral picture being shown in them, so that the exhibitor may be prosecuted, but they have been unable to do so. What they insist on is to have the pictures examined in advance, and allowed or prohibited."—(Letter to board of alder- men, Dec. 27, 1912.) I say without hesitation that if the advocates of censorship were seeking to destroy the motion picture, they could not adopt a more effective course. Not that any honest producer is desirous of putting out pictures that should be con- demned. They all recognize that permanent success comes only by an appeal to the great body of honest and moral common people, the bone and sinew of our country. They do not oppose censorship because they fear honest censor- ship, but because they fear it will develop into dishonest censorship and graft. If you subject the industry to such burdens in every State, city, and town, each one seeking its " fees," each enforcing its opinions, each providing its special license, it is difficult to foretell what the results will be. Assuredly, the motion-i)icture business will be badly handicapped—whether fatally time alone would show. It does seem most unfortunate that the motion picture, with its great possi- bilities for good, should be the object of attack by those who, in their zeal, are willing to turn back the hands of time 300 years. Whatever evil may exist can be overcome by perfectly lawful methods, in keeping with American ideals—not by the establishment of a weapon having such possibilities of in- quisition, oppression, and dishonesty as compulsory cenorship. [March, 1914, of Motion Picture Magazine] Second article for the affirmative, by Canon Ch.ise. Before this debate is closed I hope to win President I>yer to sup[iort the kind of official censorshij) which I am advocating, for in his lirst article he opposed something very different from what I li.ivt> ever advocated.