The Child Goes to the Movie

Alice Miller Mitchell, Children and Movies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929) 17-21.

Mitchell interviewed juvenile delinquents about their movie attendance, and one described how they did not get enough money from their parents to attend the movies. Read Mitchell carefully because she does not wholly condemn the movies.

“If it were not for the children, I should have to close my theater as 85 % of my audience is made up of them.” Thus spoke a movie-theater manager in a crowded neighborhood of Chicago. Other managers have expressed similar opinions, though in terms more conservative.

To what extent movie audiences in a large city are composed of children can only be approximated, as it seems there are no datea available on the number of half-rate or children’s tickets sold. Even if these statistics could be had, they would be of little value in determining to what degree the average movie audience is made up of children, for the half-rate admission fee applies only to those under twelve years of age.

After watching a Saturday- or Sunday-afternoon movie crowd pour out of a neighborhood theater, one would be included to take more seriously the foregoing statement of the mnager. But it must be borne in mind that Saturday and Sunday are especially convenient movie days for children and that there is a greater juvenile attendance at this time than at any other time of the week.

Practically all children of all classes go to the movies. The frequency with which they go is, of course, determined by such factors as home environment, parental supervision, directed interests, and finances. But they go. Some attend only occasionally and when accompanied by parents or other adult members of the familiy. A larger number attend when and how they choose. But they all go as a matter of course.

From the point of view of the average child, it is now his natural right to go to the movies, just as he has always looked upon play as his rightful inheritance. No longer is it a special privilege for him to be allowed the movie. It belongs to him, and to the deprived of it is for him to feel himself the victim of a great injustice. One little fellow at the Juvenile Court in trying to place the blame for his delinquency complained of his mother’s indifference to his welfare; and, listing her shortcomings, added in an aggrieved tone of voice, “And she don’t give me but twenty-five cents a week to go to the movies.” To his child mind this was as great a mistreatment as the other things that he had named in connection with her incompetency. He was being denied something that rightly belonged to him.

That children as a class patronize the movies is an established fact. The extent to which they attend is an important factor in relation to their movie experience. Of the 10,052 children studied there were only 168 or 1.7 per cent of them who reported that they did not go to the movies at all. One little grade-school boy of twelve sighed with all the hopelessness becoming to one of seventy misspent years, “Never in all my life did I go to the movies.” His parents because of their religious beliefs had not permitted him this indulgence. In fact, the majority of the 168 who reported that they did not go to the movies gave religious restrictions as the reason.

There were two children, however, who said that they did not attend the movies because they did not like them. These two frank admissions were made during a group discussion and immediately cast an amazed silence over the other present. It was beyond their companions’ comprehension that anyone did not like the movies. They were confounded, unbelieving, and disgusted. Finally the spokesman of the crowd dismissed the matter with a blunt gesture of the hand and, “Something’s th’ matter wid youse guys.” The affair was settled and the discussion resumed with side-swiping glances of bewilderment and contempt now and then at the two who had heretofore seemed no different from the rest of “the bunch.”

The present research show that 90.6 per cent or 9,014 of the 10,052 children attend the movies at regular intervals. They go from once a month to seven times a week. Isolated cases, especially among the delinquent group, reported as many as eight or nine movies a week, explaining that they went twice on Saturdays and Sundays. Several delinquent boys said that before they were committed to institutions they would spend an entire day going from one show to another. One boys stated that the y “took in” four movies every Sunday as well as one every night of the week.

A high frequency rate of movie attendance was found for the most part among the juvenile offenders. There were a few public-school children who reported that they go to the movies “pretty nearly every night and twice on Sunday,” but less than one-half of 1 per cent of the scouts showed a high frequency rate of attendance.

The majority of the children go to the movies on an average of once or twice a week. Combining the three groups studied there were 64.1 per cent of the entire 10,052 children who reported that they attend that often. A few go less than once a week. A fourth of the Girl Scouts reported that they do not attend the movies more frequently than once or twice a month. Some attend only a few times a year.

If frequency of attendance can be taken as an indication, it appears that boys care more for movies than do girls. It was found that although the percentage of boys who attend once or twice a week is approximately equal to the percentage of girls who go that often, in the matter of a higher frequency rate of attendance the number of boys who attend from three to seven times a week is double that of the girls. There were 15.5 per cent of the boys who reported that they attend movies three to seven times a week as compared with 8.1 per cent of the girls who attend that often.