Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

140 MUSINGS OF "THE PHOTOPLAY PHILOSOPHER" The educational possibilities of the Motion Picture can hardly be exaggerated. We have only a vague shadow of the future. As in all branches of discovery and invention, what has gone before is soon eclipsed by the wonders that come after. Little did Franklin dream, when he plucked electricity from the clouds, of the multitude of electric devices that his discovery would unfold. And, when Newton revealed the law of gravitation, when Columbus reasoned that the world was round, when Archimedes discovered the law of specific gravity, when Aristotle formulated the process of deductive reasoning, when Faraday invented the electric dynamo, when Pasteur discovered the germ theory, when Copernicus made up his system of astronomy and when Samuel S. B. Morse became the father of American photography and of the electric telegraph, little did these pioneers of thought think of the wonders to come from their mere beginnings. As has been said a thousand times, the Motion Picture is yet in its infancy. What is to follow in the next decade of an educational nature is only wild conjecture, but there is every reason to believe that it will not be less wonderful than the great movements just mentioned. The Photoplay has the advantage of being a labor-saving device. A teacher may only speak once at the same time : the Motion Picture may address millions, in all parts of the world, at one and the same time. The stage actor may appear before only one audience at a time : the Photoplay actor may appear before tens of thousands assembled in as many cities, all in a night. Eeal joy does not proceed from transient things: Only that which points to a future yields perfect happiness. a? Literature has made heroes of such desperadoes as Robin Hood, Captain Kidd, Henry Morgan and Jesse James, and, in the past, Motion Pictures have helped to heroize these characters. All writers of history, fiction and scenarios should bear in mind that thousands of susceptible, impressionable boys will read their productions or see them pictured. In telling the story of a desperado, it is not necessary to make him a picturesque, martyred hero. About 3,380 different films are released every year. The number of vaudeville acts and regular dramas and comedies must be much less, but the probabilities are that there are twice as many objectionable plays and acts as there are films. It would be strange indeed if 3,380 Photoplays could be produced by numerous manufacturers, some of whom are irresponsible, without an objectionable scene. Sometimes a Photoplay is shown that never should have been shown, and the newspapers and preachers rise in their might and denounce the whole Motion Picture business. Of course this is unfair, but the moral is, let each manufacturer constitute himself a censor and let him exert his influence to the end that not one single objectionable scene shall ever get into the films. They now see what harm one little scene may do, hence they should take every precaution to see that the films are kept pure and clean. We are a luxury-loving and novelty-worshiping people. Poor men now expect to own a phonograph, or a self -playing piano, or even an automobile ! No wonder that the cost of living is constantly increasing when we spend half our incomes on luxuries. If we keep labor employed making luxuries, there will be less labor employed on the farms and in making necessaries: and if there are less people employed making necessaries, there will be less necessaries ; and if there are less necessaries, the prices of necessaries will be higher.