PERNICIOUS FILMS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 13

PERNICIOUS FILMS.

A TERRIBLE PERIL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 8. Yesterday the Incorporated Association of Headmasters, meeting at the Guildhall, passed a resolution — Viewing with anxiety the influence at present exercised by the kinema on those of school age, and Urging that suitable regulations with regard to performances open to children should be framed and enforced. Mr W. W. Vaughan (Rugby), mover of the resolution, welcomed the recent warning of the film censor regarding “ incidents of prolonged and gross brutality and sordid themes.” All headmasters felt the terrible peril there was in the films for those of school age. The censor had suggested that certain classes of films were nauseating. Mr Vaughan doubted whether school children were sickened by the sights they saw on the screens or by the words they heard. A great deal of the evil that was alluded to passed by them without doing harm for the moment. SLOPPY SENTIMENTALITY. Mr Vaughan was not at all sure that the sloppy sentimentality of the films did not do more harm to the children than their vulgarity. The dangers of the streets were comparatively harmless compared with the “ talkies.” There was no glamour about the streets, but there was about the places where films were seen and “ talkies ” were heard. The child felt that it was escaping from its narrow home and sometimes dull school, to a place where there was an element of magic and mystery, and, with that, the influences which surrounded the child there gained great force. Mr Thorp (Norwich) opposed the resolution on the ground that it could do no good. The subject was too difficult to be dealt with by a pious resolution. Censorship stimulated people to see those things which were censored. The youth who sustained most harm was the adolescent who could pass as an adult. The resolution was carried with two dissentients. STARK REALITIES. Reference to the subject of the films was made in his address as president by Mr L. W. Taylor (Darlington Grammar). “ There is,” said Mr Taylor, “so much that is harmful both in the pictures and in some of the widely advertised literature of the present day, that this association would be lacking in its duty did it not in every way fight against it. There is a tendency to present in the crudent manner the stark realities of life, a tendency even glorified as an expression of truth by a representation which often ends in a picture of bestial sensuality.” We could not shelter our boys from temptation, so we must give them every means and every encouragement to combat it.

“ The hoy of to-day/’ proceeded Mr Taylor, “is probably much the same as his father at heart, but he is certainly subjected to more disturbing influences. The wide world with much of its seamy side is displayed to him for the price of a cheap seat in the picture house. In our schools it is more difficult to interest him by means of illustratio either with picture or word.

“In that sense h e has grown up before his time, but, to use the words of a popular advertisement, he has seen the world from an armchair. The worst of an armchair is that it produces a disinclination to leave it.”