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)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 151 ways, but who have hitherto, through their innocence or ignorance, played into the hands of unscrupulous exploiters. If this were all that were involved, we should have a comparatively simple question to deal with. It is doubtful if among experienced workers there would be found any serious difference of opinion as to the advisability of letting in light on dark places, nor even of the advisability, trying as it may be, of calling things by their names, and no longer glossing over fearful diseases of the social body. Granting all these facts, we still protest against an exhibition to young, im- mature, and easily influenced minds of pictures which suggest a life which, though it may apparently end tragically, is extremely alluring to the youthful mind. Let us take, for example, the analogous case of films showing holdups, railway wrecks, cowboy fights, etc.. the heroes of which are occasionally led even to the electric chair. But their final destination does not in the smallest degree discourage their would-be imitators among the boys of the community. Hardly a week passes that some enterprising boys are not arrested as runaways, having started out to capture and annihilate the wild Indians with the some- what inadequate equipment of $2.40 and a rusty revolver. Did their activities end there, the amusing interest might be the one most obvious; but these same children have been known to tie younger and weaker comrades to the stake and light bonfires, which have so injured the victims that several deaths are the record of this species of entertainment. Now, these boys are not neces- sarily either foolish and simple, as shown by the rusty revolver; nor are they inherently bloodthirsty and wicked, as might be indicated by the fire and stake. They are simply normal adventurous boys on whose minds the films made no impression except such as they chose to have made upon them. The human mind, even at a very early period of life, is intensely selective. There is much psychology in the Bible text, "What went ye forth to see?" For what we go forth to see is what we do see; and what impression we take from pictures, from plays, from books, and even from music, is the impression that we choose to take. While this is true with normal, active-minded children of either sex, the sub- normal child is necessarily infinitely more susceptible to such influences as have been described. No one can have been for any number of years in the work of helping unfortunate young women without realizing very forcibly what a very large percentage of them are what we used to call " not just right," or, as they say in New England, "not all there." While this has been an accepted fact among workers for some time, it is only recently that science has come forward and justified such impressions with proper terminology. We are now told that a very large percentage of wayward girls are " border-line cases." A smaller, but still sufficiently large, number go beyond this and may be properly classed as neurasthenics. The border-line class comprises girls who have verv little active mentality. They are weak and unmoral rather than im- moral; they show their lack of mental grasp by their inability to put cause and effect together. That is to say, the act at the moment is all that appeals to them, the unavoidable consequence appearing not to exist for them until it has come to pass. The neurasthenic, or what we used to call the hysterical person, needs no explanation, although it is beginning to be recognized that it is a disease requiring as much patience and skill in controlling as it would were the malady active mania. WHERE THE DANGER LIES. Bearing these two cases in mind, it is not difficult to see where the danger lies in exhibiting films such as were recently censored out of Washington, but are freely exhibited in other cities, and the untold harm they can do. The girl of the border-line type, the type first named, goes to see these films. To her untrained, unbalanced, and extremely susceptible mentality the only appeal made by such pictures is one of allurement. Vanity, love of luxury, and craving for excitement are almost always present in this class of women. They there- fore feel, if they can be said to think so far ahead, that they are willing to run any risks to attain the immediate result. Consequently what the psychologists call suggestion plays a much larger part in the lives of the border-line class than it is easy for ordinary people to comprehend. As to the effect on the neurasthenic, it is perhaps not best to go into it here. Suffice it to say that any physician with experience among such cases will testify to the immediate and serious physical results of this autosuggestion.