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MOVIES AND CONDUCT
positive action of this kind, it may have the effect of strengthening the individual's ideals and arousing praiseworthy ambitions, but it may also have the effect of making him ready to give way to antisocial temptations, if by so doing he can achieve his aim.
Among children it is evident that motion pictures play a big part in stocking their minds with certain types of imagery, often of a stereotyped kind, which they use automatically to interpret situations in real life. This is illustrated by the appearance of film motives in children's games, which has been discussed already, and also in their school essays and short stories. Older children, particularly high school girls, often appear to think entirely in terms of the cinema world. They read avidly the magazines devoted to film gossip and decorate their lockers with cuttings from these publications. Many keep scrapbooks, and in general devote much time, thought and conversation to film topics. This attitude can become so engrained that the reading of fiction is accompanied by visualisation of the story as it might be screened.
One very important aspect of film influence on ideas is the way in which individuals form stereotyped and sometimes false conceptions of certain nationalities, occupations, social groups, and so on. Thus many children acquire a horror of the Chinese as a race, as a result of seeing mystery films in which the villain is a Chinaman. Similarly, strong notions may be developed about subjects like war, the life of the wealthy, and other aspects of society commonly presented in films.
The power of such conceptions lies in the fact that the original presentation is of a highly convincing and persuasive kind. The images are, moreover, simple and unequivocal and therefore all the more readily assimilated.
It sometimes happens that institutions of other aspects of social life, whose prestige is generally unquestioned, may be treated in a film in a manner which may weaken the spectator's respect for them — an example of this is the way in which certain films depict the police force as amusingly inefficient. The result may be to set up a confusion or conflict in the mind of the observer between his habitual attitudes and those implicit in the film, and if this happens often enough and over a wide range of subjects, his whole system of values will be shaken or distorted.
Many pictures are concerned with the activities of modern youth: these are generally presented in a highly coloured way which may well teach the young members of the audience to wish to do likewise. One of the most conspicuous examples of this effect
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