A hundred million movie-goers must be right... (1938)

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Of course the foregoing pursuits contain more nonappeal than any of the potentially non-appealing pursuits we have reviewed in plays like Street Scene, Holiaay, The Miracle Man and The Three Smart Girls, non-appealing pursuits such as extra-marital activities, social and business careers, picking pockets and falling lor a lovely fortune hunter. But how much dislike, aversion or loathing can one feel for any of those pursuits? To what extent are they actually or potentially non-appealing; inherently malevolent, noxious, menacing, oppressive or execrable? To what extent are they automatically hated ? Hatred is an expression of extreme dislike, rarely spontaneous, really a climactic reaction, invariably the result of a cumulative loathing. For example: Not until the crisis was reached in Over the Hill, not until relentless greed had taken complete possession of one of the sons, not until that son had chiseled his mother out of her home and had sent her packing off to the poorhouse was any real hatred or desire for vengeance engendered in the audience. Therefore, we can safely say that none of the potentially non-appealing pursuits we have reviewed are inherently hateful to the majorities. All emotional reaction to a movie being vicarious at its best, then the best a movie can hope to get in the way of a non-sympathetic reaction is dislike, disapprobation, fear or envy, reactions in the main produced by luxurious, repulsive or awesome backgrounds, and an arrogant, cold, haughty, ugly or brutal type of menace, or types and backgrounds that are menacing because they are remote from average experience. Even then inherent hatefulness is a question. Mary Astor in the role of the career-hungry fiancee — she was the villainess in Holiday — was altogether too lovely and desirable for outright dislike. Perhaps some of the ladies were envious of her advantages but there was no loathing, and her father — the villain — Wall Street type if ever there was one, manifestly a power in the most feared financial canyon in the world, drew respect, admiration, a mixture of awe and envy, and his background was anything but provocative of hatred. No one could feel any genuine loathing for that fam 46