THE MOVIES
By Claude Bragdon
I must protest against the movies, though I be stoned to death for it in the middle of Longacre Square.
My sight is either jaundiced or clairvoyant: which, I leave the reader to decide.
Strip life of its color, mystery, infinitude; make it stale, make it grey, make it flat; rob the human being of his aura, deny him speech, quicken his movements into galvanic action; people a glaring parallelogram with these gigantic simulacra of men and women moved by sub-human motives; drug the tormented nerves with music, so that the audience shall not go mad—this is the movie as it is to me.
The other day I read a panagyric on the most beautiful of all moving pictures. I forced myself to sit through it though I could scarcely forbear shrieking aloud. It was an amusement seemingly devised for devils in hell.
Only degradation of the soul and a vast despondency result from this seeking joy in the pictured suffering wickedness, weakness of others; in this orgy of sex-sentimentality, silliness, meaningless violence. Such amusement either depraves the mind or arrests its action, and makes of the heart a mechanical toy which must be shaken violently before it will act.
Why do people go to the movies? Because their caged souls seek forgetfulness and joy as insistently as blind eyes yearn for light. But joy is such a stranger to them that they ignorantly mistake this owl-eyed Monster of Darkness for the Blue Bird of Happiness, I have asked many why they go to
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