Educational film magazine; (January-December 1920)

THE CASE AGAINST THE MOVIES Degeneration in Film Comedies Produces. Reactions which Coun- teract All the Good Effects of 'Vrhole?oine Drama* By Laxtrence Augustus Averill, M. a.. Ph. D. II ^HOSE of us who keep our fingers more or less con- I tinually on the pulsebeat of life often find oiirselves I diagnosing in their incipiency diverse sorts and va- rieties of human ills which, unchecked, might come ■'-r or later to jeopardize life itself. For manv months !iere has been developing in one phase of our human "Urse a condition which is eliciting a considerable !>t of comment and vituperation on the part of those n.i have at heart the best welfare I thi^mselves and their fellows. fh'' writer is referring to the re- jt unseemly injection of the vul- r, the immodest and the indecent 0 the motion picture comedy. He ;ls that he is in a position to raise i voice in the matter owing to the it that for several years he has ;n a member of the executive com- ttee of a moving picture board ich has been closelv allied with 1 police department in a large citv. ring which time he has had excep- nal opportunity to study the whole iblem of the movnng picture from great many diflferent angles and wpoints. So common is film de- leration becoming that it is grow- to be a frequent topic of conver- ion among mothers—not to say ir children as well—and of delib- lion among moving picture cen- ship boards in m.ost cities where ;h local means of protection have !n organized. As a result of this germinating blicily. careful and solicitous rents are beginning to scrutinize ferply the quality of program ad- rtised even by the best theaters he- re permitting their pubescent and descent sons and daughters to pa- inize them. They realize that the le seems to have arrived, owing to a great number of atributory causes, among which the organization of the »\ing picture industry itself is perhaps the strongest, len no film manufacturer is willing to rule out the vulgar d the coarse from his production, and when no manager left in a position to protect either the erstwhile good )ute of his house or the discriminating tasle of his patrons an the offensive and the immoilest. ^lore and n^.ore, it pears, the programs in even the higher class of theaters 5 coming to be a bizarre and unwholesome commingling the noblest virtues with the basest vices. One moment ! strength and beauty of a human soul is unwinding he- re the eyes: the next, the coarsest and most unseemly Igarities flash before one; and there is no guarantee It when a program is headed by the most wholesome tors and actresses there will not be injected somewhere tween times a reel or two which will take away the good ite left bv the feature pictures and leave a bitter in its ad. ]-)R LAWRENCE AUGUSTUS AVERILL is or.c ■^-^ of the youngest men who have occupied such an important chair as that of Professor of Psyscho- logy. On the first day of May he was 29 years old. When his alma mater was known as Clark College he was instructor in modern languages there from 1912 to 1914, In 1913 he was a traveling student in Europe, Two years later he received from Clark University both the M,A. and the Ph,D. degrees, a striking testimonial to his scholarship. Since 1915 Dr, .\verill has been the head of the Department of School Hygiene and Educational and Child Psycho- logy at the Massachusetts State Normal School. Worcester, Mass, He is the founder and editor of ''The American Journal of School Hygiene" and an authoritative writer on various phases of educational and child psychology and educational hygiene. The L.\uch Without the Blush Now when comedies started off it was different. They actually created humorous situations without making clowns their mouthpieces; they actually made their optiences laugh- without making them blush the next moment. Thev were exciting, dazzling, silly, if you will, but they did not ex- ploit faithlessness, fickleness and indecency. They were at worst neutral so far as moral effect went. Men and women—and children—laughed im- moderately at the impossible and ab- surd experiences of their film enter- tainers, and then went away none the poorer mentally or morally. It is, however, only the occasional film nowadays that is content with comedy merely: with it must needs be the blase, the suggestive and the ques- tionable. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not a prude, and would not vote to do away with good comedy. Rather. I should like to see more of it. There is no question as to the relaxational value of a few hours spent in the standard moving picture theater. I am writing this article, however, from the viewpoint of an humble offii ial who would like to seek after truth and, when it has been discovered, spread it broadcast. Let our task here be, then, to de- termine if possible what situations, what relationships, what suggestions make undesirable impressions in the minds of the juveniles. I think I am safe in believing that if there is any portrayal in a motion picture reel, or for that matter anywhere else on the stage or off. which is going to be detrimental to the gro^rth in children of the finest qualities and the noblest aspirations and the highest impulses of youth, then the curtain should be drawn over such por- trayal. The child mind is a keenly activi mind, weaving the most imaginative and diverse fabric from the material which is given it. The child mind is a highly impressionable mind, reacting freely and uniestrainedly to the forces which play upon it. The child mind is a very omnivorous mind, turning over within its secret recesses the good as well as the bad which it encounters. The child mind is a highly riagnijying mind, immediately and for long afterward en- larging upon the situations and their possibilities which their senses have encountered. The child mind is a very illogical mind, thus raising at once the trivial experience to the major experience, and relegating the major to the trivial. Applied to the moving picture situation, the mind of the child is tremendously open to every sort of influence and suggestion which appean before his eyes upon the screen. Good and bad are drunk in with equal relish, or at least wth equal vividness, and the whole mental life is thenceforward colored to a greater or less degree bv