JUVENILE CRIME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12761, 3 October 1919, Page 6

JUVENILE CRIME.

A BISHOP’S OUTLOOK.

“SOCIETY” PICTURES STRONGLY CONDEMNED.

__ Christchurch is not the only city m Now Zealand where tho prevalence of juvenile crime has attracted attention outside official circles as well as in them. In ,! Tho Month,” a magazine published in Auckland, and edited oy Bishop Cleary, some remarks upon the subject are published. They make an interesting addition to the views published in the “Star” on Tuesday and yesterday.

PICTURE CENSORSHIP. Unsettled political questions show” no mercy to the peace of nations, says the writer. And tho unsettled problems .of picture-film censorship have an uneasy habit of suddenly jumping at us, like so many Spring-bed Jacks, and dealing us knock-out blows in our moral solar plexus. This recurrent surprise was recently aired in the Supreme Court, in Auckland, with much wagging of be-vrigged heads. Two youths were “up” on charges of breaking and entering. The evidence showed that the offence -was committed in an aping spirit of bravado: it was an imitative escapade, tho result of pernicious literature and sensational moving pictures °f the type described by Spaniards as the, “gusto picaresco”—in which tho “crook” and the “ magsman ” are tho noble-hearted heroes of swift and picturesque adventures that lift unreligious and imaginative boys off their feet, the prosecuting counsel remarked: If the pictures were found to have a mischievous, suggestive tendency, one of two courses of action would have to bo taken—either a more drastic censorship, or legislative measures to prevent boys under eighteen or nineteen years of age being allowed into tho picture shows.” Mr Justice Chapman, in reply, considered that, “ under nrcper conditions, the pictures ought to be a source of edification and wholes*ome amusement, and not a source of corruption. . . . And that it would oe a great mistake to condemn pictures that might be made a most valuable means of instruction and amusement.” An even more serious case of picture mischief to a number of boys is reported from Wellington.

THE MOST SERIOUS DANGER. Unfortunately, the phase of picturofum influence considered in the Court proceedings, does not constitute the most serious danger of this popular form of amusement. The more real and pressing evil is not revealed—nor is it likely to do estimated—by these occasional incursions of ill-trained youth along the ~®rious trails of the ** crib-cracker ” or the “ gunman.” A much more serious matter is the insidious influence of a class of “ society ” play that is so plausible in its presentation as to evade censorship, hut whoso tone and atmosphere and suggested teaching are calculated to undermine youthful morality beyond reckoning. These pic-ture-plays include the too familiar, risky adventures of school girls and country-house and seaside “ misses,” the stories in which infidelity on the part of married couples is treated as a “ good ” joke or gilded over with a nauseous and unwholesome sentimentality ; and many of those which are "featured” by brazen females with' much jewellery and inadequate clothes. 'There flows through such “society” plays a tainted atmosphere of loose paganism, and of revolt against Christian moral standards and restraints. These plays are a liberal education in low ideas, and in the moral tone of the jungle or of the zoological pardons. They make the mind of youth complacently familiar with risky or improper situations and unmoral relationships, which the theme of the play too oft;n treats with flippant lightness, or dmectly or implicitly glorifies into an ideal. The child in his or her " teens” may not always be directly .conscious of R; yet often his (or her) fundamental ideas of morality may have been brought tumbling down in ruin; and there is no assurance that they will ever be thoroughly restored. Parity, innocence, moral wholcsomoness, ‘ are precious jewels set in frail caskets of human clay. They may, previously, have been inculcated and guarded, in Christian homes, with much thought and anxious care. Then they are, perEaps, suddenly exposed (at a child’s most critical and impressionable period) to the demon’s poison-gas, the inverted morality, of a coarse but plausible “society ” play, which may infect or prejudice in an hour the thought and caro >of years. And who can estimate the ultimate effect of the excitement stimulated by those semi-nudities whose further “ propressiveness ” is only snatched up from sheer catastrophe by a sudden fading into suggestive gloom, or by the shnttinp-off of the filmr What is the effect likely to be, if (as, unfortunately, so often happens), the child is being brought up equipped with a miscalled standard of morality from which all reference to Divine law and Christian teaching hag been banished, and when ho has received no more cogent or binding reasons for self-re-straint than certain considerations of sex hygiene, or the fear of “ tho'huttend of the law,” or a va.gue and shadowy sentiment of social obligation? Is it conceivable that.when there is no higher ideal than this—no Diving Person to love and serve—the impatient spirit of growing youth will bo disposed to offer strong, sustained and conscious resistance to such appeals to the senses?

THE GLAMOUR OF THE ROAD. AU will, perhaps, agree that the immoral and suggestive play could well oe censored into oblivion; but the “ dreadful ” typo of picture is more difficult to approach. There is a vast difference between plays that appeal to the natural passions, and those that appeal to high-spiritedness and love of mischief. Admittedly, there is an unhealthy type of boy, whose desire to emulate the deeds of highwaymen and burglars springs from a certain morbid mentality. But this type is exceptional; and it would be impracticable to reduce the average picture-play to such utter tameness as to be shorn of every feature that might offer an inducement to mischievous imitation. It should not bo necessary, in this sense to wrap our boys “ in pink cotton-wool and put them away, to be taken out only on Sundays ”; and surely some happy medium could be found whereby a satisfactory moral tone could be maintained, without implying the sacrifice of essential robustness of character. Probably the question largely depends on the light in which virile characters are depicted It is unfortunate that lawlessness should so often bo associated in picture-plays, with noble, dashing fearlessness, instead of with the sordid furtiveness that properly belongs to and generally accompanies it. Where the bushranger is a modem Robin Hood, where the burglar is a bewildering exquisite of the “ Raffles ” type, there is every incentive to hero worsnip, and any attempt at practical imitation could only be regarded as, to some extent, a matter of logical sequence. But let burglar or bushranger bo presented as a “ Dad man,” a bully, and a coward, who ends his part in the play, certain of prison walls or of the sheriff’s slip-knot—there is then less danger of emulation. In any case. “ picturesque ” detail could be modified with advantage. It should be possible, generally, to arrive at some suitaide compromise regarding tome and colour. Such local expedients would, of course (so far as they go), have a useful effect. Another and more radical remedy is suggested by", the

‘library of clean films” now made available for Catholic halls and institutions in the United States. The National Secretary of the Catholic Federation there, has the following note thereon, which we reproduce from “America” of July 12, 1919: “Realising that 20,000,000 people in the United States attend motion picture shows every day, and that from twenty-two to forty per cent of the film shows portray' illicit love and adultery, twenty per cent murdors and suicides, ten per cent drunkenness, and twenty-seven per cent tneft, gambling ami roohenes. it will bo relreshing to learn that a number of Catholic gentlemen, headed by Mr Anthony Alette, K -SG.. have undeitakcn the task of reviewing motion pictures with the object oi recommending the. same to Catnolic churches and institutions.”

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER. The whole question reverts inevitably and irresistibly to the character ot the moral training of the young. And it only serves to prove more conclusively the necessity for clearly defined, inexorable standards of morality, and for an explicit knowledge of he laws that should govern human conduct as based on Christian principles. And thus wo'naturally reach this practical conclusion: There is no practical remedy for the picture film problem that does not give the place of first importance to real Chritian training in the home and the school.