NERVES And The TALKIES

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17976, 22 March 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

NERVES And The TALKIES

The London Daily Mail recently mvited a famous London car specialist lo visit a number of picture houses for tire purpose of informing readers of the effect of talking films on the ear. The following arc liis observations : The coming of talking films has created an entirely new set/ of problems for medicine lo solve. The ear is only the first stage of the process of hearing. It is a sound- ■ trap, or, if you prefer it, a telephone mouthpiece, through which sounds are passed on to the brain. It is the brain, not the 'ear, that sorts out the different sounds as they arrive. And because it has become delicately attuned through centuries f of evolution to receiving messages confined within the limits of certain wave-lengths, unusual or dissonant sounds throw it out of gear. Cause of Nervous Irritation. It cannot “ t/une in ” to them, and the futile effort to do so is the cause of the nervous irritation and discomfort from which many people suffer

when they are compelled to listen to discordant or untuneful sounds. Even the smallest alteration means that the voice “ grates on ” the ear, and this effect is far more marked when, as in the case of the usual American intonation of the talking film, the words are (hose to which we are accustomed but the form in which they appear is a new oneThe effect is precisely that of seeing a familiar face in a fantastic disguise. It produces a hervous 'shock which is none the less real because it is unconscious. The American Voice. I can say definitely that the American voice which we hear on the talking films is of a quality which would

SPECIALIST STATES TALKIES ARE PRODUCING A NEW PHASE IN NERVOUS DISORDERS.

cause definite irritation to a norma] British ear, or rather to a normal British nervous system. Musically it is not comparable to the ordinary speaking tones to which we are habituated in this country, its ionc-s do noL conform to the ordinary rules cf music (which are, after all, framed upan the accumulated experience of ages) as to which type ol' sound gives pleasure or otherwise. Tinned music, however good the apparatus employed, cannot expect to produce the purity and clarity of tono given by a first-class performer or orchestra. Extraneous sounds are bound to creep in, and it is the most highly sensative type of brain which feels them most.