AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 227, 25 September 1929, Page 12

AROUND THE TEA TABLE.

MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

{By SHIRLEY.)

The censorship of talkies is much in the air at present, though more for the purity of the English tongue than for purity of another sort. It is of the old type of movie, however, that this story is told. A boy was describing his evening at the pictures, where he was accompanied by chum George and his younger brother. "I didn't think much of it," he said. "Well, I thought it 0.K./' said George. "Two murders and a police chase." "And how did the little brother like it?" was asked. "Oh, he didn't like it at all. He fainted." However, the adult audience also experiences the same sensitiveness, if we recall the ambulances parked at the theatre door in Australia, to take away the several persons bound to be overcome by the representation of a play which, in book form, was read without a quiver by a former generation. If this continues, we shall want audiences for Shakespeare. Sometimes one wishes one could censor the audience instead of the drama, as when at a flying machine war movie filmed lately, yahoos burst into laughter at the quite reverent representation of a young flyer saying one line of a prayer before mounting to some war reconnoitring which was almost certain to be fatal!

An electrical surgical knife has been invented. It cuts without shedding one drop of blood, and if Shylock had had it up his ample sleeve, he could have claimed his forfeit without allowing Portia the success of her famous quibble. Most of Shakespeare's plays, in any case, ; seem unnecessarily tragic. One is struck by the readiness of everyone on the stage to believe that the hero or the villain is dead. They merely lift his head, and when that bumps back, they begin, somewhat pessimistically, the usually rhyming eulogium or disagreeable remarks. One feels, knowing modern methods, that Othello's occupation, instead of being gone, should have been to move Desdemona's arms rhythmically as taught in first aid for the drowning or the suffocated. Something could have been done also for Ophelia in this line, while vigorous, if unromantic, proceedings might even have been attempted in the case of Romeo and Juliet. One's general impression of those times is that it was a rather dangerous thing to get into a deeper swoon than customary, much more a trance, for one was just taken off right away, everyone very sorry, but nobody trying to do much about it, which perhaps explains that characters that died, one by "swallowing fire" (one wonders how she could contrive this), the other by poison poured into his ear! Botli those characters could be reasonably supposed dead.

Novelty dances have been with us this season, ghost dances, which, however, have rather a Ku Klux Klan effect; Cinderella dances, which have nothing to do with twelve o'clock, but consist in choosing the right shoe; and posy dances, wherein you choose as your partner the lady-who has chanced to select the twin of the flower adornments bestowed on yourself. As .favoured as any is the "spot" dance, wherein, when the music stops, you win a prize if you happen to be on a spot chosen beforehand by some uninterested party. Our young people would scarcely like to be in Japan, where mixed dancing is still in its infancy, and therefore is as guarded

by formality as was bathing in England a hundred years ago. First of all, before you may dance at all, your name and address must be on a list-on the wall. Then, if under twenty-one, whether man or maid, you must produce a written permission from parent or guardian. No dancing is allowed after half-past ten, and no eating or drinking whatever. Many are the suggestions made at present for the regulating of our own amuse, ment places, but we have not got quite so far as this, even in theory.

We are not to have women police after all. There is something about an. oath that we cannot take. And if we can't, we can't. Perhaps the real argument against the women police is that we have them already. Every woman, by virtue of her sex, is really a woman police. If a woman sees an injustice going on in mode of transport, park, or place of amusement, her appeal on the matter will be received with deference, and even a sense of shock that she should need to come forward on the matter. We don't really need to show a little insignia inside our coat, or to wear a special uniform, nor to take mysterious oaths to have our own way. We get it. Take a minor street accident, for instance, such as a faint. Let a purposeful woman ask her way into the group, and every man in it has the mother complex at once. She orders, and they obey. Even though the wish many women have is still denied, we can still do something in putting our towns to rights. But what about women jurors? The common man is represented in the jury box, but not the common woman, and we- want the common, everyday woman there. Then there is the woman magistrate, in England not confined to the- purdah children's courts. It is true that a. man in England objected very strongly lately to being tried by a woman. Ho said, "Take that woman out." He did not have the mother-complex at all about her, but possibly his feelings calmed when the kindly lady let him off for his particular offence, and said nothing about contempt of court.