“IMMORAL WHITE RACE”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16339, 13 May 1927, Page 12

“IMMORAL WHITE RACE”

U.S.A. FILMS AND THE CHINESE TROUBLE MELBOURNE, May 2. Colonel Pottinger told the Federal Parliamentary Committee to-day that American films were the cause of a great deal of the present trouble in China to-day. These films conveyed the impression that the w'hite race was the most immoral on earth. He said that he lias been touring Australian with British films. Concerning these, he stated that film exchanges in Australia insisted upon the most rigorous examination of British, French, or Italian films, yet accepted American films without seeing them.

If the Americans did not have a grip upon the Australian exchanges, why were not more European films screened here? he asked.

Titles, he thought, should be censored more rigidly, and an attempt made to cut out the American slang, and the horrible American spelling, which the children were beginning to follow.

Mrs. Edith .Tones, president of the Victorian Citizenship Movement, said that there was need for women on the Censorship Board. Degraded American pictures pandered to the unformed minds of children.

Witness also objected to picture theatres in Melbourne showing off girls in bathing costumes. Chaiman: It is coming back to the days of the decline of Rome, when women were auctioned.