Movies Once More

An editorial from the periodical, Outlook 108 (October 28, 1914) p.449.

Outlook began as a Christian family magazine, and became an outlet for combating social issues in the early 20th century. The author describes the “vulgarization” of children because of movie spectatorship.

The Americans of the future are going in great numbers to see moving-pictures plays. Night after night, all over the continent, crowds of children and young people are eagerly watching the latest modern dramatic instrument. It has great possibilities for good as The Outlook has often pointed out; it has also great possibilities of mischief. An attempt is now being made to supervise the pictures shown on these stages in the interests of morality. But the supervision ought to go further; it ought to rule out vulgar pictures. At this moment, so far as children can be vulgarized through the eye, American children are in the process of vulgarization. In too many moving-picture theaters many of the scenes which they are invited to look at rob life of its dignity, refinement, and sentiment. The love-making which is seen on a thousand stages is not actually indecent, but is grossly vulgar; and no boy can look at these pictures without thinking more cheaply of women. It is perhaps not too much to say that most of the moving pictures representing love scenes turn love into broad and cheap farce. Many of these pictures, however, are highly offensive because they familiarize children with scenes of cruelty.