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MOVIES AND CONDUCT self-conscious, less sophisticated, less detached, and less wellinformed the effects must be still more marked. In trying to form any estimate of how far, and in what ways, a particular type of film will affect a particular class or section of society, it would clearly be necessary to know something of this general background, social code, and degree of experience. But it can be said that though the types and intensity of influence may perhaps vary from class to class, age group to age group, in men and women, and so on, yet in one way or another films may do a great deal to provide patterns of behaviour, to stimulate the imagination, and to determine conceptions of life. They are a much more important factor in the contemporary social scene than is implied by those who regard them merely as a means of temporary escape from the harshness or drabness of everyday existence. To many people the film appears to be an authentic reflection of life, and to question the values which are implicit in its presentations would never occur to them. These values are, moreover, strangely confused, and it is very rarely that a film attempts to provide a consistent outlook: in any case, the guiding principles of conduct implicit in one picture will be replaced by a different code of behaviour in another picture, and the impressionable spectator becomes more and more bewildered.
It must here be admitted that since the publication of Professor Blumer's study in 1933 there has been a considerable sprinkling of films which do present a more or less adequate picture of aspects of contemporary society. In this category fall films such as Mr Deeds goes to Town, The Little Foxes, Grapes of Wrath, and of course recent British films like Good-bye Mr. Chips, The Way Ahead, This Happy Breed, The Gentle Sex, and The Lamp Still Burns. But the fact remains that a very big proportion of the current output still has as its primary aim some form of emotional stimulation. This in itself must inevitably lead to a degree of emotional exhaustion in the child or adolescent, irrespective of whether the kind of stimulation involved is of a harmful kind or not.
It may eventually so blunt the individual's powers of emotional response that he is incapable of any sensitive reactions in real life. In any case, regular over-stimulation of the more violent feelings and impulses cannot be of any positive value and may in many instances be definitely harmful.
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