Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

26 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. [April, 1914, Motion Picture Magazine.] THIRD ARTICLE FOR THE NEGATIVE, BY PRESIDENT DYER. Out of the smoke .niid confusion, what is tbe accomplishment? It is not so difficult to state as m:iy be thought, because on both sides simple propositions have been often reiterated and clothed in superHudus trappings. I am sure that Canon Chase will agree that my object, in a broad sense, is the same as his. We both want to keep the standard of morals as high as possible. Moral miasma is the evil we are both fighting. He has a dream that the work can go beyond this, that it may extend to the elimination of pictures that he con- siders merely undesirable, as contrary to his ideas of taste or propriety, or as unnecessarily cruel or sordid (u- unduly suggestive of evil. But I confidently hope, upon careful rellection, that he will see Ihat tl'.is is a mere chimera. No reform can be effective unless it commands public sufiport. unless if submitted to a vote it would be approved by a majority of the voters. Matters of taste and propriety are the subject of too much dissension, too much difference of opinion, too nuich bickering and doubt, to be placidly submitted to the immut- able judgment of a censor or censorship board. As a practical matter we can go no further than subjects which an overwhelming majority would condemn, whether they api)ear in motion pictures or books or on the stage or in photo- graphs or other pictorial representations. Those subjects on the border line, occupying the vague and undefined area between the good and the bad, must each be handled on its merits. A subject apparently may be of questionable propriety, yet it may be s^iown in such a way and to a special audience and be quite unobjectionable. On the other hand, a subject in which the element of doubt is most remote may be so exhibited—it may be advertised luridly and suggestively with questionable posters, all designed to create a false and sug- gestive atmosphere—that it should be forthwith supjiressed. The authorities, civic associations, parents, ministers, and all from wliom the cleansing of moral conditions Is expected should keep evelastingly on the lookout for such exhibitions and see that they are prevented. It will not be riifficult to locate those exhibitors by whom questionable exhibitions are of frequent occuri'ence. They should be kept under surveillance exactly like the man whose habitual practice is the circulation or printing of indecent literature. They should be subjected to the same suspiicion and distrust as other moral criminals. T'uder rigid prosecution the makers of unlawful films and the ex- hibitors thereof will soon find that they are engaging in a business as unde- sirable and unhealthy as counterfeiting (U- the misbranding of food products and that the consequences of detection will be as relatively severe. How shall the moral standard be kept high? Canon Chase says: " T.et me (or what amounts to the same thing, men and women who think'as I do) let me decide what shall be put out. If I think a film is fit and i)roper I will let it be sb.own. If I think it is objec-tionable it nuist be forever suppressed. And iu order that there may be no doubt about the matter, in order that even the most supersensitive child shall not be offended, in oi'der that ev<M-ything may be absolutely and completely mild and sweet and pure and wholesome I will take piirticular pains to exclude every- thing that is suggestive of violence or pain or sin or cruelty. I do not want pictures to show the world as it is, a world of stress and toil, a world in which the weak are crushed and tbe strong exalte<l. of blood and sweat and groans and pains, of justice and injustice, of sorrow and snflering. of sin and retri- bution; no, I want to jiaiut the world of the poet, of fields of daisies, of prattling children and cooing doves, of dreams, of song and nuisic." Ah. Canon Chase, (iod grant that your dream might come true. But not until men and women change, not until human nature itself changes, will it be realized: and until then, as practical men, we naist solve our problems along practical lines. Now, as opi)osed to the worthy cani.n, and with [trecisely the same general objective in view. I say: Let the film producers i)nt out such subjects as they think are worthy of their art. Leave it to them to tell the story, to draw the moral, to uplift or edify or instruct. Their natural aim is to :ippeal to the largest possible au- dience. T'nless Canon Chase as.serts that the Americans as a peoi)le are im- moral and perverted, he must admit that the natural inclination of the film l)roducer, from iturelv selfish reasons, is to make his films decent and elevating. Immoral' and object'ionable films—that is, really immoral and objectionable films—are therefore not to be ordinarily expected: they must be the exception