The art of sound pictures (1930)

WHAT PEOPLE WANT 23 respond to remarks or acts. So they feel their way cautiously, lest they arouse wrath, or ridicule, or something worse. At a motion picture performance, the spectators respond most freely to those scenes which they know appeal in pretty much the same way to everybody present. All their social training inhibits free response to whatever they know, or even faintly suspect, moves various spectators differently. Display a picture in which a rowdy jest at some Jewish rabbi or Roman Catholic priest is uttered. What happens? If your audience is a typically American one — ^which means highly mixed as to religions, age, sex, and social class — you may be sure that few people will laugh, while many will feel uncomfortable. Poke fun at any race that is well represented in American society, and usually, though somewhat less uniformly than with religion, your would-be wit fails. So with sex. People respond in widely different manners to sex appeals, both in real life and in art. One man hates the very sight of a prostitute, while another is lured by her. One girl thrills at Valentino, while her own sister jeers at him. Some folk regard all sex as a loathsome disease, while others consider it the most uplifting influence in human experiences. So the larger public, which embraces all these citizens, cannot “get together” and respond as a social unit toward pictures whose dominant theme and interest center on sex. All of this in no wise contradicts the view that sex is the strongest of all appeals. In fact, its excessive strength is the chief reason why people react so variously to it. A picture whose success depends upon its pleasing a hundred million people in thirty nations obviously must