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MOVIES AND CONDUCT
ments should be willing to write freely of every aspect of their film experiences, it was arranged that their work should be submitted anonymously, and it was further impressed on them that a full, frank and unexaggerated account was necessary if the scheme were to show any valid results.
In some 60 or 70 cases male university students were interviewed six months after sending in their papers, and additional material obtained in this way was useful as a check on the earlier written statements. In no case was any important discrepancy revealed.
The writers were not required to answer specific questions, and so the material produced was likely to be more spontaneous than if it had been solicited by means of a formal questionnaire. The recurrence of certain attitudes is very marked and has provided a basis for the division of the material into sections each dealing with an outstanding theme. No attempt was made to discover whether there is any significant difference between the reactions of the different economic levels of society, and this may possibly be regarded as a deficiency in the book.
In the groups which are represented there is, however, a very great uniformity of response, and this is particularly interesting in view of the fact that the districts from which the collegiate writers were drawn were as diverse as New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Illinois.
There are, of course, reservations which must be made in applying the conclusions which may be drawn from Professor Blumer's evidence to audiences of British children and adolescents. In some respects the average American child seems to be considerably more sophisticated in its reactions than the average British child, and there is perhaps a greater tendency in America for children from different social groups to conform to certain standardised patterns of behaviour.
This can be illustrated by the similarity of response to films in persons as socially distinct as the negro schoolboy and the white college student. Such a degree of common ground would not be found in a comparison between the attitudes of, say, an English Council School child and one educated at an expensive public school.
Yet there is little doubt that a considerable amount of Professor Blumer's findings are true of all children irrespective of material background, and it is these parts of his work that are of the greatest interest for the British reader.
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