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Photoplay Censorship
By JOHN S. GREY
The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures is just as necessary to the public welfare as are the Pure Food Inspectors, whose business it is to examine and pass judgment upon the various foods offered for sale. The only difference is that the censors of Motion Picture shows pass upon our mental and moral food rather than the physical edibles which we consume.
The Pure Food Inspectors are expected to know something about chemical analysis, a knowledge essential to the proper fulfillment of their duties. The National Board of Censors should be equally well equipped in knowledge of what best interests and pleases the Motion Picture patrons, without corrupting their morals or offending their modesty.
A Pure Food Inspector who showed any bias against an article or individual merely on personal grounds, or because his individual tastes or preferences were not satisfied, would be severely censured. He is not occupying his responsible position solely for his own benefit, but for the public good. He is there to see that the people are protected from buying impure or poisonous foodstuffs.
In like manner members of the National Board of Censorship cannot be guided solely by their personal likes and dislikes in approving or condemning picture plays. We are a great, and, it must be admitted, a manysided people. What some of us decry, others enjoy, and vice versa. True, we have, or ought to have, a general code of morals, but there exists a remarkable elasticity of views on the question of individual morality. Too drastic prohibition of scenes representing crimes, such as assaults and robberies, seriously interferes
with the proper presentation of a plot or coherent story.
No sane manufacturer of films would think of portraying any kind of vice as triumphant. If shown at all, and it is often vitally necessary to show it, the leading idea is to condemn vice and show both its vileness and its punishment. The greatest pulpit preachers of the world have always done this. Why? They could not emphasize the value of virtue without contrasting it with vice as something to be avoided.
Most of the successful playwrights of the past, including the immortal Shakespeare, wove their best and most absorbingly interesting plots around some heinous crime, generally a murder, and not a few of the old and favorite plays bristle with tragedies of all kinds. But the " moral' ' is there, too, the leaven of virtue triumphant characterizes all, and thus a powerful lesson is inculcated, and the audience warned of the dire consequences of crime.
If the Motion Picture play is to be a reflex of Nature, it must show its modicum of evil as well as its appreciation of virtue. It must be true to life, not to one side of life. A villainless melodrama would be a curio, and any play of a serious nature that pretends to be true to life, yet contains no hint of evil, is unreal.
Members of. the National Board of Censors should be men of broad minds and they should have no narrow prejudices. There have been many picture plays in the past that were highly reprehensible and deserving of condemnation, but the strictures should not be too drastic, or the playgoing public, as well as the manufacturers and players, will suffer with the authors.
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