Motion Picture News (Jan - Mar 1914)

THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS i HarK. to Chicago's Censor-Czar ! Chicago, February 18. MAJOR M. L. C. FUNKHOUSER, Chicago's Censor-Czar, has made the fatal admission that the Board of Censors, of which he is the official head, is an unAmerican institution, a bigoted bureaucracy, an organization that has no faith in the people whom it pretends to serve and protect. Probably Major Funkhouser would be the first to deny that he had ever made such an acknowledgment. Ridiculing "constituted authority" is one of the things the Major censors most mercilessly. And such an admission is more than ridicule of the authority vested in him. It will be necessary, therefore, to put Major Funkhouser on the witness-stand, as it were, and let him convict himself out of his own mouth. During an interview with a representative of The Motion Picture News the Major was asked this question: "Do you not believe that the people would, of themselves condemn any theatre that might attempt to show immoral or harmful pictures?" The Major's answer should pillory him forever as a reactionary. "No!" he replied, without an instant's hesitation. Could any Russian bureaucrat display more real contempt for the public at large than this man. who imposes his judgment upon two millions of human beings because he believes they have no judgment of their own? BUT to go on with the interview. The Major's answer was in two parts. How he gets deeper and deeper into the mire of inconsistency and self-exposure with each fresh endeavor to justify himself will be plain as he answers each of the questions. There are three glaring indictments, however, to be brought against Major Funkhouser as a motion picture censor, and these may as well be stated as emphatically and as conspicuously as possible. First: Major Funkhouser has no faith in the people's instinctive love of decency. Second: He believes in rigid censorship of motion pictures, but considers censorship of the stage unnecessary. Third: He never visits a motion picture theatre. The attitude of mind implied in any one of these Funkhouser policies is enough to unfit a man for the delicate and difficult task of wisely censoring motion pictures. The three, taken in conjunction, form the best possible basis for impeachment, if such a course could be pursued against the Major. Since that is out of the question, the harassed exhibitors of Chicago can only appeal to a just and self-respecting public opinion against an individual who is usurping its rightful authority. No, Major Funkhouser does not believe that the people in general are innately decent enough to boycott a theatre that chooses to display insidious pictures. Why? Let him answer for himself. 6 t r> ECAUSE.-' says the worthy censor, "there is a class D of people whose morals are loose; who would take delight in visiting these places." There are only two conclusions to be drawn from this. Either Major Funkhouser believes that the majority of Chicago's inhabitants are guilty of loose morals Or he fails to realize that the will of the majority is as powerful a law in business as in government. What the majority of the people want they will have, in By His Obun Admissions He Con%)tcts the "Board of tOhich He Is the Official Head, of "Being an \7nAmerican Institution, a Bigoted Bureaucracy ', ^CVhich Has J^io Faith in the People Whom It Pretends to Serx)e and Protect V ^» **• spite of Major Funkhouser and his kind. And what they do not want, they need no guardian such as Major Funkhouser to defend them from. By his own confession the Major's position is either hopeless or superfluous. "Why do you not censor the legitimate stage?" he was asked. "We do not censor the stage attractions because the people know what they are going to see beforehand." Would it not be well for the Major to pause and consider whether the motion picture screen has ever been the scene of such shameless and frankly debased productions as have from time to time been flaunted on the boards? Is he not "barking up the wrong tree"? Did he never suspect that while he is waiting for the mouse at one crack in the floor, it has already escaped by ; nother? And how can he be so reckless as to leave a people whom, so he say's, do not know good from evil in motion pictures, to choose for themselves between the attraction^ of the legitimate stage? The Major, be it repeated, never visits' the motion picture theatres. IF any man is ex-officio a critic, it is a censor. Would an art critic presume to pass upon pictures if he never attended an exhibition? Would a dramatic critic establish the rule for himself of never entering a theatre? Is the Major so all-knowing that he can learn nothing by mingling with the audiences in whose behalf he is exercising his authority as a censor? He will probably reply that his seventy-four associates on the board attend so thoroughly to this that he does not need to make the round of the various theatres. One moment, however. "Is it in your personal power. Major Funkhouser, to pass or reject a film?" he was asked by his visitor. "It is," said the head censor. "The duties of my office give me this power." If this does not constitute a moral obligation of the most vital sort upon the Major to acquaint himself as fully and accurately as possible with the conditions at the motion picture theatres, what kind of a moral obligation would Major Funkhouser recognize? Instead of which, he relies upon the members of the board, some of whom are cranks, many of whom are prejudiced, none of whom is infallible and all of whom have no sympathy with or understanding of the exhibitor's point of view, to furnish him second-hand with the valuable data to be collected from a study of the theatres and their patrons. T S this just? Plainly, it is a "benevolent despotism," "an enlightened tyranny" that Major Funkhouser has set up in Chicago. He has power as absolute in his own field as that of a czar. And, like the Czar, he knows nothing of the millions in whose behalf (?) he is exercising this power, except as it comes to him through his advisers. A despotism and a tyranny it undoubtedly is. The enlightenment and benevolence behind it is not by any means so free from doubt. Yet, despite the gulf that separates the autocratic Major from the humble motion picture theatres, he can quote figures regarding them as glibly as if he were a nightly visitant to every house in Chicago.