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THE ADULT AND THE CINEMA I may be unaware of investigations either already made or in progress.
The vistas of a sociology of film are indeed immense. I deliberately ask only questions which I feel incompetent to answer. In these fields an expert knowledge is required which definitely goes beyond the mental compass of one single individual. Never have I felt so clearly the urgent need of more intimate co-operation in the social sciences as now, since my 'naivete' and curiosity led me to undertake these film investigations. I can only wish that this book may be taken as the most urgent and sincere plea for an energetic co-operative research into some of the problems raised here.
As I have tried to explain in the Foreword of this book, I came to be interested in film reactions from sociological studies on the organisational structure of political parties, studies which I intend to continue, once I have brought these volumes on film reactions to a preliminary conclusion. The example of pre-Nazi Germany made me inclined to believe that even so-called non-political films can become an instrument for shaping political opinions. Consequently I am less interested in the intricate psychological mechanisms which seem to underlie film reactions than in those structural features which may help us to explain the sociological implications of films.
In this connection it is interesting to note that various of our contributors speak of films as vehicles to their becoming aware of their own personalities (No. 7 is in this respect of particular importance, but see also Nos. 26, 28, 30, 40, 49, 65). What strikes me is the fact that the plot-consciousness is hardly developed at all. Plots are introduced only to explain an attitude or a character, perhaps rather a type. This, of course, presupposes a fairly low educational level. To the careful reader of our Secondary Schoolgirls' essays, it will be obvious that, as compared with the latter, the present documents are nearer to our children's essays of North Paddington. The average filmgoer with the educational equipment of most of our contributors identifies himself either with certain actors or actresses, or with certain sequences of the plot (more rarely with a film as a whole). If this interpretation is correct, it would explain the relatively stereotyped or rather typified character of our documents. What may appear to the contributors as self-realisation is in fact a process of conforming to a type: Greer Garson, Bette Davis, Robert Taylor, Laurence Olivier, etc. It is, therefore, not surprising that films tend to become the most effective weapon of levelling down individual differences of human beings.
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