Memorandum for His Excellency, the Governor of New York, in opposition to an act entitled "To regulate the exhibition of motion pictures, creating a commission therefor, and making an appropriation therefor." (1921)

Record Details:

Title:
Memorandum for His Excellency, the Governor of New York, in opposition to an act entitled "To regulate the exhibition of motion pictures, creating a commission therefor, and making an appropriation therefor."
Date:
1921
Publisher:
New York
Volume:
Memorandum for His Excellency, the Governor of New York, in opposition to an act entitled "To regulate the exhibition of motion pictures, creating a commission therefor, and making an appropriation therefor."
Leaf #:
00011
Language:
English
Collection:
Books and Government & Law
Format:
Books
Contributor:
University of California Libraries
Sponsor:
MSN
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
July 19, 2022
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So far as our examination shows, not a statute in any other state—Ohio, Kansas or Pennsylvania—author- izes the censors to excise a film, in order to determine from a part whether the whole film may tend to corrupt morals or incite to crime. The Supreme Court had before it the Ohio statute. But the Ohio board is authorized to pass such films as are moral, educational or amusing and harmless. The test, therefore, is a very broad one. It is safe to assume that if the film as a whole is moral, although there may be parts that are inhuman, parts that are sacrilegious, parts that might be said to be incentive of crime, it may be approved by the Ohio board. It is clear that the Ohio statute does not require that tjie villain of the piece be always humane, be always religious or that his criminal methods be consistently unattractive. It is sufficient that the picture as a whole be moral, that virtue is rewarded, that vice does not prosper. Sec. 10744 of the Gen. Statutes. We reiterate that under this New York Act, however, if a part of the film depict an inhuman deed, though it be subsequently punished, or a sacrifgious act, that is suf- ficiently condemned, or a fall fiom grace that is even- tually atoned for, the license may be unattainable, or at- tained only at the price of robbing the picture of all meaning, all value and all truth. It is the whole film that sh(p©fld be judged—the whole life that affords the lesson. Milton, in his "Areopagitica," says: "Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her follow- ers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental white- ness ; which was the reason why our sage and se-