FILM CENSORSHIP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17529, 12 July 1917, Page 8

FILM CENSORSHIP.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —As I read the column in your issue of to-day, on tho above, 1 was wondering whether the importance of the following consideration had been irecognised by the speakers: What kind oi film is it that-is especially objected to? The Rev J. J. North speaks of <f criminal and erotic representations.” Theso also are probably the plays to which his phrase “ films of a certain character ” refers. Am I wrong in assuming that it is especially films that deal with sex problems that are judged specially injurious? If so, then I think the remedy lies elsewhere than in mere censorship. This, in my opinion, passes over the question why these plays are so interesting to young people and hence does not get at the root of the trouble. One has only to teach bops in a secondary school to see how interesting the question of sex gradually becomes for them, how an allusion thereto immediately evokes their interest. But what chance is there for a healthy satisfying of this, in my opinion, perfectly legitimate curiosity with the present policy of silence adopted in regard to the sex question in our schools and polite conversation generally? If the most natural and most interesting question to a human being (and how the sexual penetrates the life of the individual and the race may best be seen in tho writings of the Freud-Jung school) is passed over in discreet silence as a subject on which tho least said and thought the better, something is bound to happen. Let us satisrv healthy curiosity in a healthy, scientific way in our schools and homes, and then there will be less need for erotic films to do our duty for us in a more imperfect

and hence, probably, more harmful way. —I am, etc. N. M. BELL.