Mr. Laemmle, it will be remembered from a former article, said of his company, “The Universal does not pose as a guardian of public morals or of public taste.” This is probably the attitude of other producers, too. But though they avoid any responsibility for taste or morals, they consistently fight all attempts of the state to set up a public guardianship in those regions. A business that frankly brutalizes taste and demoralizes morals should not be permitted to be a law unto itself.
It is very difficult to see how the Jewish leaders of the United States can evade the point that Motion Pictures are Jewish. And with this being true, there is the question of responsibility upon which they cannot very well be either impersonal or silent.
The moral side of the movies’ influence need not be discussed here because it is being discussed everywhere else. Everybody who has an active moral sense is convinced as to what is being done and as to what ought to be done.
But the propaganda side of the movies does not so directly declare itself to the public. That the movies are recognized as a tremendous propagandist institution is proved by the eagerness of all sorts of causes to enlist them. It is also proved by the recent threat of a New York “Gentile front,” that the movies themselves could prevent any progress being made in the attempt to save Sunday to the American people.
But who is the propagandist? Not the individual motion picture exhibitor on your street. He doesn’t make the films. He buys his stuff as your grocer buys his canned goods—and has a far narrower margin of choice. He has hardly any choice in the kind of pictures he shall show. In order to get any good pictures that may be distributed, he must take all of the other kind that may be distributed. He is the “market” of the film producers and he must take the good with the bad, or be cut off from getting any.
As a matter of fact, with the “movie bug” so rampant in the country, it is next to impossible to supply enough good pictures for the stimulated and artificial demand. Some people’s appetite calls for two or more pictures a day. If working people, they see a show at noon, and several at night. If shallow-pated wives, they see several in the afternoon and several at night.
