MOVIES AND MORALS
Sir-In his review of Mayer’s Sociology of Film, G.M. quotes a passage which among other things says: "Films (to be more precise, feature films) exert the most powerful influence in our lives." After making allowance for what "may be unconsciously assimilated and though I have not myself seen a film for seven years, I just don’t believe that statement. People go to the movies as an entertainment and to escape from their humdrum lives into the realm of make-believe. They "may wistfully think it would be grand if things happened to them like they do to the heroes and heroines,. but they know very well that it is not at all likely. Adults are’ no more inclined to base their actions on what they see in films than they are to take their opinions from editorial writers. They know that the film has been concocted for their amusement just as the leader is written for the purpose of trying to influence minds, and they don’t let either count for much in their daily lives. The emergence of the schoolboy murderer makes one think that children ought not to be exposed to the cumulative effects of gangster and crime films and that their movie mental food should be intelligently selected. But there is the problem of parents who take their
children with them when seeing films not beneficial to young minds in the formative stage. The universal prevalence of "pitiful imitations" of screen glamour-girls need not worry us. This is just today’s aspect of woman’s ageold instinct for attracting attention, and it is aided and abetted by the cosmetic merchants. ‘There are probably some who mar their lives-and perhaps the lives of others-by over-indulgence in this vanity, but by and large it makes for a bigger percentage of attractive females in any crowd. I am by no means blind to the possible insidious influence of calculated propaganda on weak natures subjected to continuous suggestion and emotional attack through films, but I don’t think we should become unduly alarmed about _ what everybody knows to be a moneymaking branch of entertainment, because this knowledge greatly reduces the possibilitv of vital moral influence.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 5
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366MOVIES AND MORALS New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 5
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