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)

164 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION". tional Government has also recognized that the care of the children is an important part of its duty. Mr. ToAvner has asked me this question: Whether it is right to reduce the standard of the pictures that are being shown to the standard of the young child and to require that no other pictures should be shown throughout the country other than pictures that would be fit to show to a yoiuig child. That matter, it seems to me, is the meat of the coconut. It is really the most important thing that is before us, how to solve that problem. My reply to it is that if in your wisdom you saw fit I should be very glad to see added to this bill this requirement: That when a pictiu-e was licensed it should bear the statement " Approved for adults " or "Approved for adults and children." Thus a suggestion would be made to the States and cities of the country to provide motion-picture shows for the chil- dren, as is done in Berlin. States, cities, and villages would be likely to enact laws providing that on holidays and from -k to 8 in the afternoon only these pictures approved for children could be shown. These films approved for children would also be the pictures which the State or city might require to be shown i>i\ Sunday wherever the people of the country decide to permit Sunday exhibitions of motion pictures. Is it not an abominatirn that in this land where, as Daniel Webster said, Christianity is the (Simmon law of the people, that Sunday should be taken as the day on whi<'h pictures of the ordinary weekday are shown freely, without any deference whatever to the educational or worshipful features of that day of rest i It seems to me that such a provision would have great merit in protecting the Sunday, because pictures which were absolutely pure and absolutely harmless would almost certainly be the pictures which would be shown on Sunday, if any such shows were permitted on Sunday. Waiving that matter, my contention is, and I desire to ask the com- mittee to consider this fact, that we are not asking that these pictures be censored on the basis of the child's intellect, but to protect the morality of the child. To reduce all pictures to the comprehension of the child's mind would seem unreasonable, although we would be willing to do almost anything for the protection of the children. But all we are asking is that the j^ictures shall be made pure for the adult, morally pure for the adult, because of the welfare of the adult himself, with the added consideration that the child will be injured 25 times as much as the adult by a picture which is bad for the adult. Jesus's method of saving adtdts was to tell them that they must become as little children. " for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." It is true that the bill, in section 5, forbids the commission to license any film " which tends to corrupt the morals of children or adults." But the underlying thought is that pictures which corrupt the morals, of adults also corrupt the morals of children, but in larger degree. Pictures which incite adults to theft, arson, gambling, suicide, prostitution, revenge, cruelty to rhihlren. ov uiurde?" will do the same in larger degi'ee to childi-eu. Pictures which take for "-ranted that marital infidelitv is univer- sal, that represent lying and deceit as t'vidences of cleverness, that justify evasion of the law, that suggest gambling and speculation as proper ways to get easy money, ne+^d to be eliminated, not only for the welfare of children but also for the l)enefit of a<bdts, many of whom are in reality little more than children.