FilmIndia (Jan-Jul 1943)

July 1943 FILMINDIA ultimate outcome of the story, the moral that honesty is the best policy, the assumption that the way of the sinner is hard, are adult generalisations and belong to what may be called the 'adult discount'. Even if the picture clearly depicts this outcome, it very seldom strikes the attention of the younger generation with anything like the force that it does the adult mind." What have the producers of crime pictures to say about this? Even when there is a moral at the end of the picture, it has little influence over the young. When there isn't one, as in "Kismet", where the thief is not only allowed to go scotfree, but secures a social status and is given a charming wife in the end, the effect on young minds can be easily imagined. REPETITION DEEPENS IMPRESSION Now comes the question, how do movies influence children? By dint of careful experiments, the American investigators have discovered that films have excellent propaganda value and that they can effectively influence the minds of children, especially, for good or for bad. They found that not only do motion pictures leave a definite imprint on the minds of children who see them, but that this effect or mental influence is cumulative, growing with each picture of a particular type they see. Thu^, the investigators discovered that if children were shown, for instance, a series of antiNegro pictures, they became antiNegro and vice-versa. Repetition only deepens the effect. Arguing on this basis, the investigators ventured the view that, if children were shown gangster pictures continuously, they might come to love and adore gangsters! Let us now see if the movies go so far as to influence conduct. Imitation, as we all know, comes natural to children. In fact, they get their early education mostly through imitation. The movies, because of their dramatic quality, their vividness and glamour, become inevitably a very powerful factor in such imitation. In fact, the investigators found "that imitation of the movies was wide-spread among the young, not only in such harmless matters as dress and beautification but in such other particulars as love-technique, flirtation, kissing, caressing, etc." Some of these things enter into the day-dreams of adolescents, which as the investigators put it, "may stimulate impulses and whet appetites." SOME STARTLING CONFESSIONS Here are a few juvenile confessions which they came across in the course of their investigations in this particular sphere. "I have learned from the movies," said a High School girl, "how to be a flirt, and I found out that at parties and elsewhere the coquette is the one who enjoys herself the most." From among 500 students examined on the subject, nearly thirty-three per cent admitted that they learnt the technique of love-making from the pictures. One of them said, "It was directly through the movies that I learned to kiss on her (his girl friend's) ears, neck and cheeks as well as on her mouth." In fact, movies were described by most young people as "a liberal education in the art of lovemaking." And then about the day-dreaming that follows picture-seeing. A young girl confessed to the investigators, "How often I have wasted time daydreaming, picturing myself as the heroine of those wonderful pictures." A college girl was franker: "I always put myself in the place of the heroine. If the hero was some man by whom I should enjoy being kissed (as he invariably was), my evening was a success, and I went home in a dreamy state of mind, my heart beating fast and my usually pale cheeks flushed." Another said, "I picture myself as the recipient of Gilbert's kisses (in a certain picture). Folded in his arms, I could forget all my school worries." This is not something typically American. We know how our own dreamy-eyed college boys and girls go crazy over pictures, dream of them by the hour and waste their substance on unattainable longings. They might even became neurotic. The large number of letters received by the Editor of 'filmindia' provides ample proof of this. Apart from that, there is no denying the fact that films have, as we have seen, tremendous influence over the young. It was this discovery which made Author Forman declare in his book, "The screen is an open book, a school, a system of education, amounting often to Fast and furious, Baburao Pendharkar approaches with his usual impetuosity, but Leela Desai takes guard in "Nagad Narayan", a social comedy of New Huns. 37