Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

272 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. VI, No. 6. head, has actually purged the stream of its worst impurities. Another of the earlier evils was the eye-strain, induced by the flickering of the pictures. Better machines have greatly alleviated this difficulty. Curiously the first move to remedy the situation introduced what is now the worst feature of the popular "show." To protect the eyes a law was passed in Massachusetts prohibiting the continuous exhibition of moving pictures for more than twenty minutes, and requiring an interval of not less than five minutes after such periods. Of necessity the managers had to introduce some form of entertainment to fill up these five-minute spaces. Many of them were men of extremely limited capital, who had originally intended to show pictures only, with the least possible outlay, and the largest possible income. So the moving picture show was flooded with that strange hodge podge of anything that can be done on the stage in five or ten minutes to interest an audience, which goes under the name of vaudeville. It is this miscellany which is at the present time the danger point and the hardest to regulate. All the crudity and bold effrontery of what is called the "vaudeville and burlesque" stage has been let loose in these thousands of popular picture houses where children by the thousand are drinking it in. No municipal censorship seems to have yet been devised to regulate the vaudeville stage. And yet a miscellaneous popular entertainment of healthy song, picturesque folk dancing, clean wit, skilful acrobatics, and pure humor is not only perfectly possible,, but of infinitely greater drawing power in the long run. If this stream like the other could be cleansed at the fountain-head further regulation of the popular show, except in the technical matters of fire protection and sanitation, would hardly be necessary. The vital concern today is the present effect of the theater upon the child. The so-called legitimate drama is almost negligible in this connection, as so little of it is planned for children and comparatively few boys and girls witness it. Cheap melodrama, with its much shooting, its miraculous escapes of the heroine, and its superficial tributes to patriotism and virtue always finds its gallery gods. This seems to be the street boy's especial delight. Occasionally he shows its effect in an attempted hold-up or a temporary escape from parental control. Too much of this sort of theater-going undoubtedly takes many a boy out of school too soon,' makes him eager for the sensational and unfit for normal sport, and puts him permanently into the ranks of unskilled labor with little possibility of ever earning in any honest manner more than a bare living wage. School girls are more apt to be fascinated by the gaily dressed dancers and singers of the vaudeville stage. When home and cultural influences are weak many a girl has been dazzled by the glitter of the footlights and the possibility of applause gained apparently with but little effort. Unscrupulous managers have ingeniously devised a means of turning this fascination to account with prizes offered for amateur nights have lured many a young girl into a painful revelation of her own incapacity for genuine achievement. A coarsening of manner and breaking down of fine moral distinctions, lessened power of continuous application to study, vulgarity of speech and laugh, disappearance of respect for age, inability to detect and acknowledge real values in character — these are some of the results only too apparent among great numbers of boys and girls, who too frequently and undiscriminatingly attend the cheap melodramitic and vaudeville theaters. Moving pictures in themselves do not produce these results. They may be and in most instances are both informing or wholesomely entertaining. But no popular show, however wholesome in itself, is necessary to normal children as often as once a week. Excess beyond all bounds of prudence is characteristic of the present time. Late evening hours with the attendant excitements of the crowds and the emotional appeal of the show itself are, even under the best conditions, injurious to the health and habits of children. The chief question which invariably arises after a study of present conditions is : Why can't it all be made better? With so much possibility of influencing young life in this newer way is there not a failure somewhere to seize an opportunity? In New England certainly, possibly in other parts of the land, the constructive work of making the theater and the popular entertainment serve their true purpose, in molding character and in strengthening and sweetening life, has been almost utterly neglected. In the field of genuine dramatic art there has been until very rcently a dearth of production largely because of a lack of public appreciation. The ban against the theater which has been inherited from Puritanism was never really a ban against real dramatic art. It was a protest against certain crudities and immoralities which became associated with the stage and the public udience. But these can be and to some extent have been largely eliminated. Now when there are genuine attempts both on the part of play-writers and managers to make the stage serve high ends, ethical as well as artistic, the pity of it is that the trained audience is disappointingly small. The bearing of this fact in reference to the child is simply in its suggestion that there are two serious needs today; on the part of the people, a determination to allow children to witness only such plays as are adapted to their natures and not to blunt their finer sensibilities by exposing them to the deadening influence of a drama decadent in both matter and manner ; and on the part of the theater itself, a more earnest desire to meet children on their own ground and present to them plays that will enhance the joy of childhood and youth without destroying its visions. The rarity of plays like Barrie's "Peter Pan" and Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" only emphasizes the more the barrenness of the present-day drama for children. As for the popular show, in all its forms, vaudeville, circus, moving pictures, it is after all the main problem, for the great majority of children go to no other. Like that heterogeneous collection of truth and falsehool, real art and hideous caricature of art, genuine characterization of life and pitiful misrepresentation of life, familiar to us as the sensational Sunday newspaper, the cheap show is the only thing that is at present offered to meet the great human need for entertainment and emotional thrills. Like the same newspaper it might be infinitely better adapted to those who feed on it. And the encouragement in the