We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
MOVIES AND CONDUCT
Play and Imitation by Children
One way in which the cinema has influenced children in this country as unmistakably as in the U.S.A. is in determining the form of many of their games. All children delight in make-believe and impersonation, and they find in films a wealth of material which they can use in this kind of play. Obvious examples are the imitation of cowboy, Red Indian and gangster situations. Professor Blumer quotes a schoolboy who, after seeing a film of the violent action type, would regularly re-enact the picture with a group of playmates who also had seen it. A schoolgirl of sixteen writes that she would frequently dress up as the heroine of a film she had visited, and try to persuade her brothers to play the role of her admirers. Re-enaction of love scenes is common among girls, even those of twelve or thirteen years, whereas boys tend to prefer scenes of fighting and police arrests, shootings, escapes, etc. It was noticed, too, that the roles of gangster, robber, etc., were as popular in areas with a low rate of delinquency as in areas where the rate was high. The numerous examples quoted by Professor Blumer of film influence on children's play indicate a very wide variety in the forms which it takes, and that the influence is very generally felt is shown by the fact that, out of 200 boys under twelve, 75 per cent admitted playing at impersonation of film stories, and, out of 70 boys aged twelve to fourteen years, 60 per cent made a similar admission.
This raises the complicated problem of the significance of play in the life of the child and in the formation of the adult. Although children appear often to be entirely absorbed in whatever they are playing at the moment, they can, however, change from one role to another with the greatest ease, and this may indicate that the play-acting does not make a very deep impression on the personality. On the other hand it is likely that the continual imitation of the stereotyped characters of the screen will produce somewhat standardised conceptions of life in the mind of the imitator. This will apply particularly in cases where information gleaned from the cinema is not supplemented by other kinds of knowledge — for instance from reputable literature, conversation of intelligent adults, etc.
Since the publication of Professor Blumer's book in 1933, many studies have appeared on the subject of children's play, one of the most important being Play in Childhood by Margaret Lowenfeld (Gollancz, 1935). On the question of whether the behaviour of the child influences the conduct of the adult, Dr. Lowenfeld writes:
H7