Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1914)

THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD ''The Previous Restraint" By W. Stephen Bush AT this moment no greater service can be rendered to the motion picture interests than the raising of a cry of alarm against the evils of censorship which may overwhelm us even before the new year will be well under way. The dangers are no longer theoretical. I have been face to face with a real censorship law, I have examined its effects in the few weeks of its enforcement. Nothing stands now between the industry and its most deadly enemy but the hope of a Federal injunction. If this hope fails, one state in the Union will sufifer incalculable harm, the leak in the bulwark of liberty will grow to a torrent and it will take years before the damage can be repaired. There will be a depression in the motion picture industry the like of which we have never known before. Every man engaged in the industry can well afford to drop for the moment all other concerns and ponder well the menace which is now at our very doors. What do you suppose would happen to the newspapers of the country and to the country itself if the press had to submit to a previous restraint before being allowed to circulate among the people. In less than twenty-four hours the disturbance in our national life would be felt from coast to coast, the value of newspapers would fall like a load of iron dropped from the tower of the Woolworth Building, every avenue of public service would be clogged up. Do you believe that the motion picture will suffer less from this tyrannical curb of previous restraint. Mark the words well. The proposition is not to punish you for displaying a picture which is an offense against the law. Censorship goes very much further : it wants to tell you what picture you can run and what picture you cannot run, and it assumes to dictate to you in advance. That is what "previous restraint" means. What are you producers going to do if a few men and an occasional fanatic in petticoats have it in their power to make your negative practically worthless by forbidding the display of your positives in a dozen states or more. What subjects can you find, what art can you develop if even your best and noblest eft'orts may be suppressed through the whimsical ukase of a censor board ? How do you exchange men exp-ect to sell or lease your prints if a censor board has the power to mutilate a subject beyond recognition and makes a jumble of it which nobody cares to look at and which is neither tish nor flesh nor good red herring, and how do you exhibitors propose to entertain your public with a lot of fanatics constantly interfering with vour entertainment? You cannot get away from this fact, as obvious as it is significant : Censorship in every age and in every countrv has never been anything but an instrument of oppression and bigotry. The entering wedge has come in Ohio. It is quite possible that a little pruning and a little cutting here and there might do the picture some good, and we all believe that two of the censors in Ohio are disposed to be fair and honest. What about their successors and what about the appointees in other states. Even the best of men cannot be entrusted with arbitrary power. It is human nature to abuse such power. If this_ otScial censorship, this blasting "previous restraint," is permitted to exist, the influence of producer, distributor and exhibitor will dwindle to nothing and all the power will pass into the hands of the censor. The man who can say, "Nothing ,«hall go on this screen until I have approved of it." is the man who dominates the situation. He can make or break the producer. He will determine the standards and the ethics of the art, and no one can earn a penny unless he renders obedience to the censoring autocrat. If he is a fanatic, you must try to guess, and suffer every time you guess wrongly, or rather differently, and if he is a corrupt politician you have to buy him. Let us beware of the beginning of this evil ; crush it now or it will crush you later. The very fact that we have forty-eight separate and distinct sovereign jurisdictions in this country increases the horrors of censorship and will strike the whole art and industry like a palsy. It is inconceivable that forty-eight sovereign states will adopt exactly the same legislation. Some of the brightest minds of the nation have for more than five generations endeavored to remedy the evils of conflicting divorce legislation. Congresses have been held for procuring a substantially uniform divorce law and these congresses have been attended by delegates of the various states. They were men and women of the highest type of intelligence and inspired by the noblest of motives — the protection of the family. What is the sum total of all their achievements? Exactly nothing at all. The divorce laws are as different as ever and, humanly speaking, there is no chance that they will ever be uniform. It will be just precisely the same with the state censorships. Ohio will approve what Indiana rejects and vice versa. Chaos and confusion will reign supreme. Capital which is now everywhere anxious to support motion pictures and to affiliate with motion picture enterprises will take the alarm. Where is the producer who can please forty-eight different states and three times fortyeight different censors? What is to become of a subject in which Scene 5 must be cut in Pennsylvania and Scene 9 must be eliminated in Michigan, etc., etc. They might allow kissing in New Jersey, order it out in Delaware, let it stay in while the print is in Maryland, allow . just a flash of it in Virginia and cut it out again in Tennessee. An elopement might be tolerated in Texas, frowned on in Missouri and cause the rejection of the entire picture in Alabama. No need of multiplying examples of the absurdities of censorship. We cannot afford to be supine and indifferent any longer. The men who have started the fight against the common enemy deserve something more than our kind approval and a word or two of encouragement. The whole great moving picture army must be mobilized and face the cohorts of censorship wherever they can be found. The men who have made great fortunes out of the motion pictures ought to be willing to supply the sinews of war wherever and whenever necessary. The exhibitors ought to go on record everywhere against official censorship. Whether the decision in the Federal Court is for us or against us the fight will not be finished, it has just begun. If the Ohio law is declared constitutional, the grafting politicians of every state will follow the motion picture like a pack of hungry wolves. Let us make no compromise. We do not want to depend on the protection of a political bargain. We must insist on nothing less than the freedom of the screen subject to no restraint except such as the laws now on the statute books impose on the press. Not a cent for tribute but the most generous appropriation for defense and the maintenance of our rights. As one exhibitor put it: "We exhibitors do not want to corrupt the public, we need no legal guardian to tell us what to do." Xo previous restraint.