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Buchanan's facetious commentaries have become a byword, pandering to the old idea that your material, because it is not story, can have no interest unless it is made into entertainment by the addition of comic titles or commentary.
And that is the fundamental root trouble that applies to all shorts — documentary, newsreels, magazines, travelogues, sportlights. They must be entertainment, and by entertainment our movie magnates would have you understand emotional appeal. They deny anyone the right to think, they deny us the right to intellectual entertainment.
Yet, through the magazine, we have an aid to the creation of a socially conscious cinema. It has a journalistic format, and as such it is of value. We want to elevate it from the ranks of 'TitBits "; we want to make it a weekly review of the world — something that is not cheap like "Tit-Bits," nor highbrow like the "WeekEnd Review." It should become a review with a definite status, a newspaper make-up, a political policy. And if so, how can it become socially useful?
It should maintain a close liaison with the newsreels. It could reconstruct from the newsreel, with added material, the motivation of political events; it would cover current social problems — slums, unemployment, world exchanges, unbalanced production. Industry would not be important for the curious things that are made in its factories, but for its developments. The wheels of industry begin to turn again — giant new machines to relieve manual labour; how the machine is replacing the hand in modern industry is of far more importance than the making of a violin, or the building of a piano. New inventions and the developments of science are far more interesting than the peculiar behaviour of certain substances under experiment. There is an interesting possibility in visual reviews of films and plays. New theories of education can be more vividly interesting than child prodigies. Fashions only become of importance in their social aspects: show the housewife how to make a dress for five bob — don't let's hob-nob with Mayfair. New social services, postal developments, new aspects of safety first, analytical reviews of sport — these are all possible subjects. Why not special regional items, new methods of agriculture and the discoveries of research for the farming areas, indications of useful leisure employments for the industrial areas ?
According to formula and rig d preconceived ideas the above suggestions are not entertainment, but ask yourself what you understand by the word " entertainment." It has unfortunate associations : we need a recasting of meaning.
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