WHERE IS THE CENSOR?

Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1921, Page 1

WHERE IS THE CENSOR?

I'N'-AMEKK'AX A.M KRICAN KILJIS.

(By Arthur Weigall)

By means of a certain class of filmdramas from abroad the people of this country are being steadily familiarised with an un-British point of view in regard to honesty, honour, fair-play, and the like; and so increasingly wide is the influence of the kinenia that very soon, by force of habit, the nation may lie accepting that point of view as its own.

Actually, .however, it is not- the standpoint of Americans in general to which we are being introduced: it is that of the very specialised group of scenariowriters and producers, picture-palace managers and financiers, in whose hands the less scrupulous bulk of the film trade abroad is concentrated. The criminal who, to our way of thinking, commits some peculiarly dastardly act which for ever brands him is often regarded in these dramas merely as one who has had the misfortune to fall fould of a tyrannical set of cutthroats known as the police. A girl, lot us say, has a father whom she .has discovered to he a mean thief. To the better-class British mind thieving is so unthinkable that the girl would act much as though she had learnt that her breed were tainted by madness or some terrible disease; but in these films the police would be “squared,” all would be forgiven, am] she would marry the hero who had caught the old gentleman out, and live happily ever after. (')i' again, a young man, impelled by poverty, becomes a blackmailer, but falls in love with the daughter of one of his victims, turns over a new leaf, and becomes a respected member of New York’s most exclusive set. These un-American American films lower our. conception of Amreican ideals. With us honesty is regarded as inherent ; with the makers of these films it is thought to he a very nice quality, dependent on circumstances. In our stories honour is taken for granted ; in theirs it is something exceptional, a thing which has to be encou raged by lo ml praise anc] high reward.

'With us crime is treated rather like a disease; and the question of heredity comes at onoe into our thoughts. With them heredity is usually ignored and tradition ia not understood.

Without being strait-laced, let us keep our eyes open to “the efleets which this alien point of view will produce upon the kinoma-going public, if it ho not counterbalanced by some good honest British .stuff. It presents law ns arbitrary, and not fundamental; it negates the idea of the police being the servants of the public; it indicates that honesty should not go without saying, but should be received with fulsome apple use; it submits crime to us, not as a horror and a taint, but as an exigency or a more scrape; and it suggests that what we in Britain call the common instincts of a gentleman mo there regarded as the exceptional peculiarities qf rare heroic, characters.