THE CULTURE OF TO-DAY

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21175, 28 May 1934, Page 6

THE CULTURE OF TO-DAY

♦ Real Values Lost A LACK OF STANDARDS "Relaxation we all need, but if we are going to lead a life of re* laxation the marrow in our bones will turn to jelly," said Mr Winstone Rhodes in addressing a meeting of the Workers' Educational Association on Saturday evening. Mr Rhodes's subject was "Culture and Society To-day." True culture was losing ground, he declared, because too much attention was paid to forms of relaxation which had no real relation to life. The tendency to standardise everything was removing the necessity for people to think or create, and the lost joy of creativeness was being replaced by the excitement supplied by motion pictures and similar things. The definite standards of the past were being lost. Defining culture, Mr Rhodes said that culture was not a university degree, the attainment of knowledge along any one line or a thousand lines. It was simply an awareness of value. The cultured man was not a man who knew Shakespeare and could quote him, but the man who knew the place of Shakespeare in modern life. Culture as it was usually regarded by people was "remembering Shakespeare like .anything." A cultured man was a man who valued all things and was careful to try to relate them to the requirements 01 man Kind. Modem civilisation was man's civilisation, and everything was measured by magnitude and not value. The whole world had gone mad on magnitude and was producing standardised men; it was coming nearer and nearer to standardisation. Men were becoming more and more like the beetle that pushed a ball of dirt ahead of it without knowing why it did so. Man was looking ahead for magnitude and had no time to look back or round him at the beauties of nature. A Changed Outlook In old England the culture and amusements of the poor had been found on the village green, but the village green had got mislaid and had turned up in Hollywood. The old-time villager had never been described as a bored individual, but boredom was part 01 modern life. People lived in a whirl of excitement. They tried to be cultured but only succeeded in being bored. In the past the village schoolmaster might have been a "Squeers, but he did his best for the community. The church might have persecuted, but it set certain standards and enforced them. In modern times culture had passed into the hands of the people • who controlled the press, the motion pictures, and advertising. These people admitted that they were not there to set standards but to give the people what they wanted. Culture was being provided from irresponsible sources and people were being "de-educated." There had been a complete turnover in standards of values. The people who controlled the press might have very high principles but the press was a monopoly and thought was consequently standardised. People did not think for themselves and in time they would get their thoughts ready made if the press remained in a state of monopoly. Referring to motion pictures. MiRhodes said films were not dangerous to children. Their reaction to the average film was a healthy excitement. However, the time came when childish things should be put aside; but people still went to pictures. Motion picture proprietors showed that they realised their audiences must not be allowed to think for a moment and provided something to. keep .the brain "in a whiz" all the, time. Influence of Pictures Notice was taken of the moral values put forward by the pictures, and motion pictures and novels provided the morals of the community. True art should present the high-lights of human life, but the films-cheapened all those things by presenting cheap emotion and cheap melodrama. The effect of advertisements was the next point touched on by the ' speaker. "I wonder if any of you !. .have really examined an advertisement or know the effect they have on your minds," Mr Rhodes said. Most advertisements appealed to the baser emotions. Patent medicine advertisements appealed to fear, others appealed to the sense of exclusiveness, others to those who wanted to be "one of the boys." Advertisements screamed things that would get an individual arrested. The child was given a modern education and was then cast forth into a world with a thousand and one forms of culture that had never been touched on in his school, Mr Rhodes continued: Was it any wonder that he took refuge in cynicism, or in having a good time? The schools were doing their best but could not keep up with mass civilisation with so many pseudocultures abroad. Education had advanced by leaps and bounds in the last 30 years, but it could not keep up with the wholesale deterioration that was going on. Was it any wonder that the young people after looking back upon those who had made the war possible wondered what culture was? he asked. People were comp'etely at sea; blown about everywhere. Consequently there was universal cynicism. The way of creativeness was almost completely lost. There was a certain excitement in creating, but that excitement was being lost because the whole world was being standardised. In place of that excitement was the excitement of substitute living—the excitement obtained by living through the experiences of someone else at the motion pictures. That excitement led to boredom, and until the excitement of creativeness was restored suicides would increase. "A Minority Cult" The world did not have even a minority culture, it had a minority cult, Mr Rhodes declared. Wherever, one went little societies would be found. The members of these societies bowed down to culture. There was an intense amount of fussiness about small matters, and an intolerable amount of side-stepping of real issues. To remedy the culture v/ould have to be brought into con-