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)

28 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. her help. A mad dog is running down the street. Children iir<i playing on the pavement. The iK)liceman has a duty in the case as well as the parents. My claim is that every child has a right to be protected by the State, in the most effective way possible, from immoral pictures, precisely as he has a right to be protected from smalli)ox or from criminal assault. My reason for not desiring any pictures to be censored, exci']tt those shown for pay, is that the greed for gain is the motive for showing i)ictures full of evil suggestions to tlie young. No one else will corrupt police for the privilege of degrading children. My opponent errs when he says that I am arguing that "a small number of men and women shall be given the right to decide for the American people what films they shall or shall not see. the right to exclude not only grossly immoral films, but also subjects to which the censors may object merely because of per- sonal idiosyncrasy." or that I want power to be given to the censors to rejecu whatever offends their taste or sense of propriety. I am asking that the board of licensers be given no other power than to reject films which, to trained minds, are clearly immoral. If the board exceetls these powers or makes a mistaken judgment, its decision can be reversed by the courts. It is more American to have a few official censors, under legal control, supervise what is shown in motion picture shows than a few film makers without effei-tiv»' legal restraint. Mr. Dyer says: "If the censors, in their decisions before the exhibition of the picture would go no further than the courts might go in their decision after the exhibition of the picture," then cen.sorship is not necessjiry. I say it is necessary, because of the inefficiency, inex])erience. and ignorance of the police, juries, and judges concerning the moral and psychological effect of bad pictures upon children. By Mr. Dyer's method many bad pictm-es aT'o being shown, but very few are being brought to the atteiitit>n of the court. By my method very few bad pictures could reach the i)ublic. unless the censors were inetficient or bribed. In that case, there is a legal remedy of the remova' of the censors. In replying to my second article. Mr. Dyer claims that demoralizing jtictures can be eliminated by the police, whose duty it is to arrest exhibitors who show- immoral jiictures. He then says that he does not think I can fairly charge any connnunity with the failure to enforce its law.s. I certainly do claim the very general nonenforcement of law as my ])rincipal reason for urging censorship. A conspicuous instance is the failure of New York City to enforce the law which forbids, on Sunday, the sale of liquor as a beverage excei)t in hotels with meals, rolicemen arrest certain saloon keepers ostensibly for breiiking the Sunday law. but really because they do not pay the weekly or monthly contribution to their li<pior organization. Magistrates convict, but the grand jiu'ie.s, before whom these cases are illegally transferred, know such c.ises to be instances of persecution, and refuse to be a party to such rank injustice. They will not indict a man who has refused to pay giaft for n violation which the mayor and police dei)artment are openly ]>ermltting all the other saloon kee])ers to connnit. Motion-picture shows for pay are also open on Sunday, contrary to law, in many f)arts of New York State. The growth of serious crime and lawlessness in the T'nited States is ahirming. In every otli(>r .nireal Christian country, except the T'l^ited States, even in Japan, there is decrease in serious crime. Most authorities declare the United States leads the civilized nations of the world in at least two serious forms of crime, civic corruption and crimes of violence and murder. There were 2(t murders for every 1,(K)0.0(H> of the poi)ulation in the United States in ISSf., und ss murders forevery l.OOO.OOO in 1011. London's T.OOO.OtX) averaged 20 homic'ides each year from 1!K)S to VMO. but New York City's r>,000,000 averaged annually 117 homicides. lu London in inil there were 2.'] mtu'ders, but in New Yoi k City in the same year there were 148 murders. This si)irit of lawlessness and of civic corruption makes it unwise to depend upon the local police to detect bad pictures or to .secure the i)unishment of the exhibitor through the lower courts. If effective work could be done by the police, the result of their work would be to punish an exhibitor who was not resiionsible for the choice of tlu> picture. For it had been sent by the exch:inge to him, as to all the other exhibitors in the same circuit. Censorship brings the punishment for bad pictures where it belongs—upon the m;inufacturers. But even if the local jiolice were absolutely honest and free from temptation to graft upon motioii-i)icture exhibitors, they are not by education or training