Photoplay (May 1921)

Photoplay Maovzine— AD^'ERTI.SI^•G Section lOQ T' On Censorship. iHE censorship situation now existing in Chicago is typical of the origin, growth and the carrj-ing on of censorship agitation throughout the nation, says Martin T. Quigiey, in Exhibitors Herald. An understanding of the Chicago matter sheds considerable light on the problem the industr>' is facing here and elsewhere. An outstanding feature of the Chicago situation which is characteristic of the agitation wherever it exists is that the entire matter is a product not of public thought and opinion but due wholly and directly to the zealous interference of a little group of professional agitators who are practically without standing or influence in the various professions and vocations with which they are identified. Individually they are the vag^rant atoms of humanity that mean little to the community with which they are identified but banded together in the common cause of minding someone else's business they find themselves in a flattering position of superficial prominence which appeals very much to their own idea of their importance. It is this type of petty agitator who believes that his individual thought is public opinion. When he discovers by some process of clear thinking, unusual to him, that his notions are at variance with those of the general public he immediately concludes that the public is deluded and forthwith his activities take a spurt with the idea that the benighted public is dependent upon him to lead it out of darkness. The writer has more than the ordinary observer's information concerning the calibre and the activities of the group that has been engaged for some time in censorship agitation in Chicago. At the outset of the work which was represented to be intended to follow lines of sanity and intelligence he was identified with the matter as secretary of the commission which had the inquiry in hand and continued in that :apacity until the proceedings took on a 'arcical aspect and the meeting hall became nothing more than an echo chamber for >^pid and bigoted mouthings from persons jlinded to any true understanding of the jroblem by prejudice and misimderstandng and impelled largely by an egotistical lesire to dictate to the industry. After many months of this son of thing he commission just naturally died. But a ittle coterie not content with the natural lemise, after many futiie effoits to put life )ack in the body as a whole took it upon hemselves to function for the commission hat had passed awav and proceeded to vrite a report and prepare a proposed irdinance. The resulting rcpwrt is an odd locument. It is a queer miscellany of andom views of many persons who did lOt even claim to know motion pictures or ensorship. Represented in the symposium re such tj'pps as Arthur Burrage Farwell, rhicago's ghost of Anthony Comstock, and pecialists on children's diseases. Careful eading of the report can only cause the ?ader to wonder what it is all about. There is but one weapon with which to ombat censorship agitation. It is valid ubiic opinion. The public does not want ensorship. If it was dissatisfied with the roduct as a whole that producers are jrning out it would not be necessary for to await the enactment of any laws beluse merely by the withdrawal of its atronage at the box office it could effect T immediate and decisive change. If the idustry did not have the public's endorselent there would still be no need of censorlip laws because there would be no picires to censor. 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