The art of sound pictures (1930)

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WHAT PEOPLE WANT 29 people in general want. They want nothing. The question is almost as foolish as an inquiry into the average number of words in a conversation. There may be some such average. But, once you have discovered it, you find it is meaningless. What you, the reader, would most enjoy at this very instant cannot be determined by any universal formula. It is in a peculiar sense a historical problem, as well as a biological one. What you would now like to do, to have, or to be, depends upon your actual state of mind and body. Have you just eaten breakfast? Then you do not crave food. Have you gone without water for a day? Then you are almost crazy for a drink. Have you just quarreled with an old friend? Then you may be in a bitter mood and cannot enjoy anything while the mood lasts. Have you been away in some Arctic wilderness for six months, without even a newspaper to read? Then you may well be wild over almost any kind of a story or play or picture. Are you ten years old, or thirty, or eighty? Are you robust or sickly? Perhaps a powerful emotion, even though momentarily pleasant, may be the one thing you would most emphatically shun. Are you fat? Then you dislike hot weather and strenuous exercise, both in reality and in motion pictures. Do you suffer from hay fever? Then it may be that you loathe a photograph of a hay field and enjoy one of high mountains, which suggest air free of weed pollens. As with you, the individual, so with your neighbors and countrymen. Certain events and conditions of widespread influence will tend to give many of you similar likes and dislikes at a given time. Then we see a vogue arising. Should those influences persist many years, the