Hark to Chicago's Censor-Czar!
By His Own Admissions He Convicts the Board of Which He Is the Official Head, of Being an Un-American Institution, a Bigoted Bureaucracy, Which Has No Faith in the People Whom It Pretends to Serve and Protect
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Source: Motion Picture News, 28 February 1914, pgs. 17-18.
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MAJOR M. L. C. FUNKHOUSER, Chicago's Censor-Czar, has made the fatal admission that the Board of Censors, of which he is the official head, is an un-American institution, a bigoted bureaucracy, an organization that has no faith in the people whom it pretends to serve and protect.
Probably Major Funkhouser would be the first to deny that he had ever made such an acknowledgment. Ridiculing "constituted authority" is on e of the things the Major censors most mercilessly. And such an admission is more than ridicule of the authority vested in him.
It will be necessary, therefore, to put Major Funkhouser on the
witness-stand, as it were, and let him convict himself out of his own
mouth.
During an interview with a representative of The Motion Picture
News the Major was asked this question:
"Do you not believe that the people would, of themselves
condemn any theatre that might attempt to show immoral or harmful
pictures?"
The Major's answer should pillory him forever as a reactionary.
"No!" he replied, without an instant's hesitation.
Could any Russian bureaucrat display more real contempt for the
public at large than this man, who imposes his judgment upon two
millions of human beings because he believes they have no judgment of
their own?
BUT to go on with the interview. The
Major's answer was in two parts. How he gets deeper and deeper into the
mire of inconsistency and self-exposure with each fresh endeavor to
justify himself will be plain as he answers each of the questions.
There are three glaring indictments, however, to be brought against
Major Funkhouser as a motion picture censor, and these may as well be
stated as emphatically and as conspicuously as possible.
First: Major Funkhouser has no faith in the people's instinctive
love of decency.
Second: He believes in rigid censorship of motion pictures, but
considers censorship of the stage unnecessary.
Third: He never visits a motion picture theatre.
The attitude of mind implied in any one of these Funkhouser
policies is enough to unfit a man for the delicate and difficult task of
wisely censoring motion pictures. The three, taken in conjunction, form
the best possible basis for impeachment, if such a course could be
pursued against the Major.
Since that is out of the question, the harassed exhibitors of
Chicago can only appeal to a just and self-respecting public opinion
against an individual who is usurping its rightful authority.
No, Major Funkhouser does not believe that the people in general
are innately decent enough to boycott a theatre that chooses to display
insidious pictures.
Why? Let him answer for himself.
"BECAUSE," says the worthy
censor, "there is a class of people whose morals are loose; who
would take delight in visiting these places."
There are only two conclusions to be drawn from this.
Either Major Funkhouser believes that the majority of Chicago's
inhabitants are guilty of loose morals--
Or he fails to realize that the will of the majority is as powerful
a law in business as in government.
What the majority of the people want they will have, in spite of
Major Funkhouser and his kind. And what they do not want, they need no
guardian such as Major Funkhouser to defend them from.
By his own confession the Major's position is either hopeless or
superfluous.
"Why do you not censor the legitimate stage?" he was
asked.
"We do not censor the stage attractions because the people
know what they are going to see beforehand."
Would it not be well for the Major to pause and consider whether
the motion picture screen has ever been the scene of such shameless and
frankly debased productions as have from time to time been flaunted on
the boards?
Is he not "barking up the wrong tree"?
Did he ever suspect that while he is waiting for the mouse at one
crack in the floor, it has already escaped by another?
And how can he be so reckless as to leave a people whom, so he
says, do not know good from evil in motion pictures, to choose for
themselves between the attractions of the legitimate stage?
The Major, be it repeated, never visits the motion picture
theatres.
IF any man is ex-officio a critic, it is a
censor. Would an art critic presume to pass upon pictures if he never
attended an exhibition? Would a dramatic critic establish the rule for
himself of never entering a theatre?
Is the Major so all-knowing that he can learn nothing by mingling
with the audiences in whose behalf he is exercising his authority as a
censor?
He will probably reply that his seventy-four associates on the
board attend so thoroughly to this that he does not need to make the
round of the various theatres.
One moment, however.
"Is it in your personal power, Major Funkhouser, to pass or
reject a film?" he was asked by his visitor.
"It is," said the head censor. "The duties of my
office give me this power."
If this does not constitute a moral obligation of the most vital
sort upon the Major to acquaint himself as fully and accurately as
possible with the conditions at the motion picture theatres, what kind
of a moral obligation would Major Funkhouser recognize?
Instead of which, he relies upon the members of the board, some of
whom are cranks, many of whom are prejudiced, none of whom is infallible
and all of whom have no sympathy with or understanding of the
exhibitor's point of view, to furnish him second-hand with the valuable
data to be collected from a study of the theatres and their patrons.
IS this just?
Plainly, it is a "benevolent despotism," "an
enlightened tyranny" that Major Funkhouser has set up in Chicago.
He has power as absolute in his own field as that of a czar. And, like
the Czar, he knows nothing of the millions in whose behalf (?) he is
exercising this power, except as it comes to him through his advisers.
A despotism and a tyranny it undoubtedly is. The enlightenment and
benevolence behind it is not by any means so free from doubt.
Yet, despite the gulf that separates the autocratic Major from the
humble motion picture theatres, he can quote figures regarding them as
glibly as if he were a nightly visitant to every house in Chicago.
"We are censoring from the standpoint that eighty-five per
cent of the audiences consist of women and children," says he. "Forty
per cent of the audiences are fifteen years of age or under. I make no
attempt to censor for adults, but for children. That is the reason I
have ladies on the board."
If the Major had a little more consideration for adults, for grown
men and women, in his censoring, his reputation for wisdom and
far-sightedness might not be so completely eclipsed as it is at present.
EVERYBODY agrees with the Major that the
children should be protected. But does that mean that the whole world
should be run solely for the convenience of children?
Trolley cars, taxicabs and railroad trains are a menace to children
outside their homes. Would Major Funkhouser abolish these methods of
transportation, or curb them to the point where they could not possibly
threaten the life of a child?
Hundreds of books now on the market and scores that are issued
every season cannot safely be put into the hands of children, though
they are innocuous to grown persons. Would Major Funkhouser expurgate
the publishers' catalogues until not a volume remained that a child
might misunderstand?
Newspapers are admittedly not edited and published for the purpose
of teaching "the young idea how to shoot." Would Major
Funkhouser sterilize the press until he had produced a series of
journals that might safely be left in the nursery or the schoolroom?
Motion pictures, whether Major Funkhouser know it or not, are
adding hundreds of men and women every day to their armies of followers.
Is it not high time that the Major, in all his obedience to the "vox
populi," strained his ear a bit to catch the increasingly
dominating narrowness for breadth, theories for common sense, petty
distrust of human nature for a noble faith in the people to distinguish
good and extinguish evil?
Is it not time that Major Funkhouser ceased to censor for a part of
the people at the expense of the rest, and began to censor in the
interest of everybody?
CAN Major Funkhouser give a single good
reason why he should censor according to the prejudices and theories of
seventy-four men and women, none of whom would attend a motion picture
show except as a painful duty, and ignore the hundreds of thousands to
whom the motion pictures are both recreation and instruction, an
education and an entertainment?
Major Funkhouser and his bodyguard of women have succeeded in
robbing the motion picture interests of Chicago of all the fruits of the
victory the latter won when they defeated the "sixteen-year-old"
ordinance some years ago.
For, significantly enough, many of the women who championed the
bill at that time are now members of the board. The bias given to their
views on motion pictures during that campaign, and the bitterness left
by the defeat, should have been enough to disqualify all such persons
for a place on such a board.
Since Major Funkhouser neglected to exercise care in this respect,
it is hardly surprising that charges of prejudice, animosity and
persecution are made against the censors.
If the Board of Censors followed its inclinations to their logical
conclusion, no one over sixteen, and very few under sixteen, would care
to enter a motion picture theatre in Chicago.
They are destructionists, not constructionists. They are harming
the motion picture exhibitors, and helping no one, with the possible
exception of themselves.
They are representative of nothing and nobody, save their own
pedagogic and pedantic dogmas. That they represent the views of the
broad-minded men and women is incredible. That they represent the views
of any majority of the citizens of Chicago is inconceivable.
ALREADY the exhibitors have begun to rebel
against this unjust condition of affairs. But there is much to be done
before the rebellion can become an effective revolution, that will sweep
this relic of medievalism and the Dark Ages from the city.
Some of the theatres are running slides during their programs which
read as follows:
"If the stories in our films seem to be disconnected or short,
blame the censor board appointed by the present city administration.
Remember this the next time you vote and demand your right to see
interesting pictures. Take it up with your alderman.
"If our program seems poorly balanced and you are compelled to
look at repeaters, it is because certain interesting films have been
eliminated by the present city administration's censor board. Remember
this the next time you vote. See your alderman."
But concerted and organized effort is essential if any headway is
to be made against this oppressive system. If censorship there must be,
let it be censorship of the twentieth century, a censorship that has
American ideals and beliefs as its foundation, not censorship of the
fifteenth century, with obsolete superstitions and hypocritical nonsense
as its basis.
The motion picture interests must awaken the people of Chicago to a
realization of what censorship has become in the hands of Major M. L. C.
Funkhouser and his associates.
When that has been done, they may rely, with more faith in the
people than Major Funkhouser has shown, upon the people to provide
themselves with censors who are capable of filling the high and
responsible positions which that name signifies.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 18 February 2000
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