Cinema on Trial.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 21 August 1914, Page 2

Cinema on Trial.

ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST

" I spoke to a boy about 12 years old who attended a cinematograph show in a little country town a week or two ago, and he positively trembled as he reported what he had seen. He said, ' I shall never go again. It was horrible.' 1 said, ' What was horrible.' He said, ' I saw a. man cut his throat." The incident is one of a number related by Canon Rawnslev in a startling article on " The Child and the Cinematograph .Show" which he contributed to. the " Hibbert Journal." There appears, so the canon states, to be passing over the, land a real craving- for scenes of horror. SAMPLES OF RECENT TITLES. Among the titles of films which are being, or have recently been, exhibited, he instances the following : —"Massacre : A Terrific Tragedy," " The Wheel of Destruction.'' •'The Motor Car Race. The car when going at a prodigious rate overturns and buries its living occupants." '• Dogs Killing Hats in a Rat Pit." " Champion Prize Fight." "A Public Execution in the East." To those cinematograph proprietors who maintain that their exhibitions are for the moral improvement and amusement of the masses, Canon Rawnsley replies : —" Look at your posters and the items of horror or Pierce excitement or degrading sensationalism which, in spite of Mr. Hedford and his censorship, are still being exhibited up and down the country to the detriment and discouragement of the nobler feelings of gentleness and compassion." TRAINED INSPECTORS NEEDED. The worst of it is, he finds, that neither the police nor the agents of the cinematograph firms who are sent out as exhibitors, are sufficiently educated to know what is horrible and what is not. " What the public really need," the canon remarks, "is that in every town where cinematograph halls are springing up like mushrooms there should be trained inspectors, men or women, .who should know at a glance a downgrade or demoralising film, and should at once report it to headquarters." An appended note by Canon Lyttelton (head master of Eton) on the educational influence of the cinematograph, is equally vigorous in tone. PREJUDICIAL TO LEARNING. | Canon Lyttelton thinks that the influence of the moving pictures as I-rejudicial to learning exactly in the same way as the reading of snip-; pets of information "in half-penny.' newspapers," only to a much greater degree. "If," he adds, " the English people wish to commit race suicide they can do it by overtaxing the brain energy of the very young ; and never has human ingvnuity invented a device more, edcarious for this sinister end tha., the moving pictures. THE MOVING-PICTURE EYE. "Further, I have seen it stated by a scientific expert that one of the rei suits we must look forward to is a I development of a disease of the j eye, already known as the moving- , picture eye ; and he incidentally ; mentions that one of the symptoms 101 this pleasing complaint is an in- | creased activity of the lachrymal ; glands. If this is true-and it is j quite credible-let us contemplate I the England of the next generatio. ;as peopled by men and women w'-i' ; have had their nervous systei* spoilt, their imaginations ru- J. their curiosity crushed, in O >^rto learn one thing only—-hr- to weep at nothing pt all."