Sociology of film : studies and documents (1946)

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APPENDIX 3 I have pointed out how unsuccessful marriages — and unsuccessful careers in general — are mostly the result of neurotic inhibitions and subconscious tendencies. The 'pictures' dramatically describe the existing tragedies of life — but the only remedy they advise is: intrigue, aggression, and adultery; and all this in a way exceeding the real possibilities for average men and women. Surely the great success of films is indicative of the fact that they do give something substantial to the public. However, they could give more: true life and true solutions, or hints at prevention. I am not thinking of the usual propaganda films, in which the artificiality of the setting and the tendency is so obvious; nor of that type of lukewarm sentimentalism the remoteness of which from true life is manifest to everybody. I mean a more serious type of art produced with the help of the highest institutions of public education and science, supported by the State, and finally in fact appreciated by the wider public. People should learn to live; youth should be given illustrations of why and how to avoid situations that lead inevitably to insoluble difficulties. Above all, the 'pictures' stimulate eroticism undesirably — a process in marked conflict with our actual social need of selfrestraint and sublimation; and they attack the ideal of monogamous love. Though to interfere with such a state of affairs is against the principle of freedom; yet to do so to a certain degree for the sake of the well-being of people, for the sake of their better mental harmony, is to serve at least as important a social need as that of unlimited freedom. After all, there is no total freedom for the consumption of alcohol — scandalous behaviour of the drunkard is opposed by the authorities — and nobody invokes in this respect the principle of freedom. In creating and supporting a really intellectual type of film production,1 and gaining more or less public approval for the more realistic type of 'picture' as suggested above, interference with the other type of film may even prove superfluous. The social process itself may turn the taste and the requirements of the masses into a more desirable direction; and the enjoyment of that other type of film may be limited to the psychopaths, or to exceptional moments in the life of 'normals'. 1 This does not necessarily mean restricting films to the 'serious' type. 300