MOVING PICTURES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1942, Page 4

MOVING PICTURES

CALLED AMERICA’S WORST PROPAGANDA GREAT PART OF WORLD MISLED. BY FANTASTIC DEPARTURE FROM REALITIES. (From “The Outpost” published by Americans in Britain.) Every night of the year, in cities as widely scattered as Istanbul and Johannesburg, Caracas and Coventry, millions of men, women and children flock into motion picture houses for entertainment and (quite incidentally) enlightenment about the world in which they live. Black men, yellow men, white men. Men in turbans, men in fezzes, men in flowing silk gowns. People who ‘speak a Babel of langu- i ages. Yet all of them are about to be entertained by movies made in Hollywood.

Here in England millions of people who have never seen a live American have acquired most of their knowledge of the United States from what they call "the flicks.” What impressions of America these Hollywood films have left must "be of concern to anyone interested in Anglo-American relations. Two comments on the subject have recently come to the attention of the American Outpost. One is from a magazine article by Harold Nicolson, a member of Parliament and a former official of the British Ministry of Information. He writes: Mr Nicolson Puzzled. ‘‘l have never- understood why the Americans (who, as individuals are) more sensitive to criticism than most people) should allow their film industry to distribute throughout the world an endless travesty of the American character. “I read recently in the newspapers a statement of the salaries paid to the 'refugees, immigrants, aliens or citizens who at Hollywood or elsewhere produce American films. These salaries amount to figures such as in the whole history of philanthropy or finance have neved been paid to any public benefactor. Yet the American public, with scarcely a murmur of protest permit these eminent satirists to tell the world what America is really like, and to flood the cinema theaters of Chile or China with pictures which convey and leave the impression that the typical American is either a criminal, a sob sister or a campus zany. “As one who loves the Americans, and who knows them to be in the mass the most warmhearted, simple, sensible and peace-loving people on this earth, I must raise my foreign voice in protest against this qontinued falsification of the true American values. “Anglo-American relations have always been, and always will be, relations of great complexity; and if cooperation is to be secured in the future, it is not only necessary that our principles and purposes should be understood by the Americans, but that the young men and women of this country should be taught that American principles and purposes bear no relation to the smash-and-swagger nonsense which reaches us from Hollywood.”

Barrier to Understanding. The other comment is contained in a letter to an American over here from a resident of London who considers himself as typical middle-class English. He writes: “You say you are trying to get the common people of Britain to understand the common people of the United States. Well, I assure you it is hopeless. because the films have a long start on you.

“Before the coming of United States films we in Britain knew little about the United States, but we imagined you were people much like ourselves'. Since the coming of the films we know better. “Your films have rubbed into us that you admire cheats; that your men are obsessed with women; that your women! have beauty and sex attraction but no character. “In sports and fights #t is the cheat who wins and is admired for winning. “In stories about college life, the boys are swamped with girls, while your expeditionary forces appear to contain as many women as men. • “Your women horrify us by handing themselves from man to man under a legal process of marriage. After these transfers the children take the name of the mother (not that of the father). This raises doubts as to their legitimacy. Do not fathers in the United States keep any track of their sons? “The extraordinary insensibility of a country which can send abroad films showing itself in an odious light is a constant amazement to us. “If the United States should ever want our respect it will have to revise its export of films.” • Strong, bitter words, to be sure, packed with strange misinterpretations of America, And yet that bitter letter and the intelligent magazine article both throw the spotlight on a serious barrier in the way of perfect Anglo-American relations.