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THE ADULT AND THE CINEMA
manager. This Happy Breed does not raise the problem of unem ployment at all. We are made familiar with the happy and unhappy moments of a 'typical employee family' — so that we may see our image in their lives. (Remember what we said above about self-identification and participation mystique.) Happiness and contentment— on the whole — are meant to prevail in this film. 'Revolution' or radical social change is in a kindly and persuasive spirit rejected. Political and social adjustments come by themselves. It is this kind of drug which we mean when we indicate the general tendency of contemporary British and American films to create the employee mentality. Even in a film like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn the laissez-faire society which to-day exists only in Professor Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom is suggested as the only legitimate method of correcting social adjustment.
I am, of course, not unaware of the fact that films like Of Mice and Men or Grapes of Wrath do exist, but their existence is outweighed by those films which glorify the status quo of the Western type of society.
This tendency to make films with, as it were, an ideology in bottles is strengthened by the scarcity with which — for the time being — Russian and French films are shown. If foreign films come to be included in the circuit systems, a real international ideology or rather common world outlook could easily be created. Such an outlook might provide the necessary cement for treaties which, after all, are only written on paper. I would suggest that a State corporation for film distribution might fulfil a most vital function. What such a corporation might lose on films, if there were any loss, the State might win by one battleship less to build.
The middle and professional classes and the upper strata of our society are naturally less open to film influence. Here the factor of better education is telling. I do not think I need say much on this point. To any reader who compares the secondary schoolgirl essays with the essays I have given as counter-examples by proletarian children, the importance and urgency of a sensible sociological film appreciation is evident. It is perhaps not yet too late to introduce film appreciation in the regular curriculum of primary and secondary schools (see Chapter i of this book).
The sociological meaning of films and their interpretation can naturally not be separated from the influence of films on our instincts and emotions. In this respect our document No. 6 is of particular relevance. (The authoress, a member of the medical profession, was kind enough to grant me a lengthy interview in
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