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.