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| 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 Source: Motion Picture News, 28 February 1914, pgs. 17-18. 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. |
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Page authored: 18
February 2000 -
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