Movies Corrupting Young People, Should Be Used to Teach Bible, 1916

“The Moving Picture Situation,” from the June 16, 1916 issue of The Monroe Journal.

A study of the moving picture shows, from the standpoint of their influence upon our young people, and of what the harvest will be in five or 10 years from now, is not only an intensely human and interesting study, but one of very vital importance upon the immediate future of this city and country, because the people’s ideas and tastes and standards of life are affected, or even sometimes formed by them. Fifty per cent of all films now deal with marital infidelity or illicit love.

The president of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, the largest in the universe, has recently announced in the Motion Picture Weekly of Nov. 2, 1915, that he published a talk entitled, “What Do You Want,” asking the exhibitors to state whether they preferred clean, wholesome pictures or smutty ones. He says more than half of the motion picture exhibitors of the country want smutty films.

Shall we allow this to be so? Shall we allow the moving pictures to be prostituted to such use when their possibilities for good are so great, and their entertainment so refreshing, and their instructive power so wonderful?

In her report at the recent biennial in New York, Mrs. Pennybaker, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of America, said “We realize this institution has come to stay; that it can be made a great educational force; that no one is wholly to blame for the state of affairs that now confronts us; but we realize also that the average motion picture tends to degrade rather than to uplift the moral status of the spectator.” If any moving picture proprietor in Monroe would undertake to run an absolutely clean and wholesome show and only that, I believe that he would have the hearty support and patronage, not only of parents, but also of the vast majority of all the decent citizens of our city.

Bishop James Atkins says: “The time has come for the organization of a great church syndicate—interdenominational and national—for making effective this form of Bible teaching.