Motion Pictures
As the moving-picture “show” creeps into every crossroads village and multiplies in the cities, it becomes the people’s theater. In proportion as a theater is educational or demoralizing in its influence, the “movie” becomes the people’s school. What lessons do the people learn there or is the influence of the movie negative?
“What kind of motion pictures do you like best and why?” was put recently to more than 2,000 school children in the grammar grades of Providence, Rhode Island. Mrs. Dwight K. Bartlett, who conducted this investigation for the Rhode Island Congress of Mothers, classified the replies as follows:
| Grade | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Totals. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 85 | 90 | 99 | 100 | 374 |
| Western or cowboy | 192 | 211 | 186 | 146 | 735 |
| Educational | 95 | 183 | 317 | 312 | 907 |
| Drama | 25 | 34 | 36 | 44 | 139 |
| Do not attend | 20 | 44 | 47 | 45 | 156 |
| Crime | 5 | 19 | 19 | 29 | 72 |
| 2383 |
The influence exercised by certain pictures is exemplified by some of the answers Mrs. Bartlett received.
A sixth-grade child said, “A child that goes in and sees exciting pictures comes out excited and starts playing what we saw and becomes wild.”
“Western pictures sometimes make youths go out West to become cowboys and run away from home.”
“I like where men has a wife and three children and the wife has a fellow.”
“I like where the husbun’s go an play pool and then when there money is gone they go home and take their wife jewels and leave them and never come back again.”
“If a person goes to a show he goes to laugh and not to cry, for he has so many troubles at his home.”
“I like love-making picture best. It is exciting when two men want to marry the same girl.”[[23]]
A study of moving pictures has been made in other cities by women, and all over the country they are giving serious attention to the problem of securing the exhibition of high grade films only. Upon the suggestion of club women, the Board of Education of Parsons, Kansas, has undertaken to give two free moving-picture exhibits each month to the school children. The films are selected by the superintendent of schools assisted by the manager of the theaters and the subjects are confined to history, geography and science.
The Mayor of Wichita, Kansas, has asked the club women to appoint a board of three members to serve without pay as censors of moving-picture shows, inspectors of theaters, reading rooms and street cars. Suggestions for correction of evils will be received and acted upon by the Mayor. The board is to be permanent.[[24]]
In Pittsburg, Kansas, the club women are working out a censorship plan for moving-picture shows, which is proving successful. Mayor Graves appointed a commission of women, headed by Mrs. Harvey Grandle, president of the Pittsburg Federation of Clubs, which confers with the managers of all five- and ten-cent vaudeville and moving-picture shows. A most cordial spirit of coöperation is reported upon the part of these managers, in eliminating all films depicting scenes of crime, drinking scenes, and suggestive “love scenes.” If all mayors would appoint similar commissions, whose work would be as successful, it would not be long before the manufacturers of moving-picture films would take the hint, and cease to put out films of the tabooed classes. Wichita is working out a similar plan through a commission, and this seems the most practical plan. A commission, being clothed with authority, is received with courtesy and acting in coöperative not antagonistic spirit, receives the assistance of the managers. Local federations or clubs should make it a point to bring this work before their city council or city commission.[[24]]
The American Club Woman declares that “women’s clubs are wisely deciding to coöperate with the film companies to make them a good influence upon the millions of young people who patronize them. The censorship plan is proving successful in many cities. Volunteer boards of club women who serve without a salary, find that it is not difficult to secure the rejection of pictures which create a bad impression. Some tact is useful in persuading the managers of moving-picture shows to use the right kind of films. Censorship is rather a formidable term, but is robbed of many of its terrors to managers, when they find that the approval of the censors means increased business for clean shows.”
The women do not always agree, however, as to the kind of film that should be shown. New York last winter witnessed a quarrel among women and also among men as to whether white slave films should be exhibited or prohibited. “Do they suggest or do they warn?” is the issue that must be settled by the stronger combatants, for this is destined to be an issue of increasing insistence.
That the municipality cannot be oblivious to the fact that its restrictive measures may increase evils elsewhere, is shown by Mrs. Bowen, of Chicago, who says in a report:
There should be a state or national censorship committee for motion pictures. The motion pictures of Chicago are very well censored, and something like one hundred and twenty-six miles of films have been condemned and permission to exhibit them refused. In consequence, they have been sent outside the city, all over the state, and many of the pictures exhibited in the small towns are bad—the rest of the state suffering for the virtues of Chicago! A state law should be enacted providing that all moving pictures should be shown in well-lighted halls, and the posters and advertisements outside all theaters and throughout the city should be censored and passed upon by the same committee which censors the moving pictures.
Women play a large part in the work of the National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures established by the People’s Institute of New York. In addition to the members of the Censoring Committee which includes many women, the National Board has some 300 correspondents in different parts of the country who are more or less officially identified with it and who work with women’s clubs, civic and social organizations, in addition to mayors, license bureaus, and others. The work of the national association is, therefore, fairly equally distributed between men and women.
It is not the pictures themselves that are necessarily the worst feature of the motion-picture theater, as the Board brings out and as social workers generally emphasize. The lack of ventilation, the fire hazard, the lack of protection for boys and girls are evils comparable with indecent films. On all those aspects of the problem of the people’s theater, groups of earnest men and women are working, securing ordinances, acting as inspectors and policewomen, and seeking to educate the patrons to demand decencies.
The standard for censorship set up by the Board is thus stated: “Broad problems, such as the effect of scenes of violence on the juvenile mind, still rest in an astonishing obscurity. It is impossible to get either from the lips of psychologists or from the penal statistics of the country, any conclusive verdict on this subject. In the same way, it is hard to distinguish between the immediate effect of a vulgar picture on the audience, which may be presumed to be degrading, and the ultimate effect which may, through reaction, be that of exciting the audience to a permanent disgust with vulgarity in all forms. In matters of this kind, the Board acts on the general assumption of all its members, which are general assumptions of people at large.”
The National Board does not and cannot relieve any community of its local responsibility. As “the motion-picture theater is essentially a form of public service which is licensed by the community for public welfare, the same kind of scrutiny should be applied to it that is applied to any public service monopoly, news-stand privilege or park concession.”
A compilation of material from all parts of the country as to existing laws and the methods used in regulating motion-picture theaters in America and Europe has been made by the National Board and these form a partial basis for general facts and principles set forth in a Model Ordinance devised by it with detailed suggestions applicable in all the cities of the country. This work of securing adequate legislation is often taken up locally by women’s clubs. For example, the Wisconsin Federation of Women’s Clubs vigorously supported a bill in the legislature, providing for a censorship of moving-picture films throughout the state.
Charlotte Rumbold is the intermediary between the National Board of Censorship of Picture Films and the St. Louis Police Court. A volunteer committee of which she was chairman made the St. Louis inspection of picture shows and dance halls. Officers of the Good Citizenship Club of Boise, Idaho, a women’s association, act as an advisory committee with the Law Enforcement League and Ministerial Association in censoring movies.
Private enterprise joins with public-spirited women in securing model motion-picture shows. In Boston, Josephine Clement is the manager of the Bijou Dream Motion Picture Theater and has had five years’ experience in providing the public with a model theater. Plans for similar theaters are afoot in two cities. Mrs. Clement declares from her experience that they are self-supporting and a great deal more satisfactory to the owner than those which invite constant interference.
Motion-picture films are really receiving more attention than the plays and comic operas and vaudeville shows which are supported by people who care less for the movies. Thus the percentage of innocuous films probably is lower or is becoming lower than the percentage of innocuous plays in other theaters.