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NO ONE CAN DOUBT that children are influenced by motion pictures. But there is considerable doubt about why children are sometimes influenced adversely by them. The content of a movie is only part of the problem. All juveniles are not motivated by the same things nor to the same degree. Nor are the after-effects the same for all children. And all children who see anti-social acts in a movie are not negatively influenced.

Why not?

The answer lies in what happens to children before they see their first motion picture, and in what is happening in their lives after they begin to frequent movie theatres. In other words, in the kind of personality, interests, attitudes, and growth patterns each child has and the way these are permitted to develop.

In every human society or culture the young are taught what that society regards as good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. But since most societal codes of conduct are not absolute, each family tends to practice its own version of what is acceptable so long as its variations are not overtly opposed to the sanctioned standards.

Consequently, a child’s knowledge, or feeling, of right and wrong accords with his home conditioning. Through many of his actions, for as long as he lives, run the strands of parental and environmental teachings. These are the primary influences. The acts and attitudes which his parents and neighbors have lived out in front of him are what a child learns from and normally imitates.

It can be assumed, therefore, that long before motion pictures have a chance to instill or arouse negative or anti-social impulses and actions, much of the child’s personality has been formed for better or worse. True, there are hereditary predispositions and innate temperamental factors which affect a child’s behavior. But it is incontestable that a child reared in a secure atmosphere by constructive parents will respond differently to a movie than will one who has been reared in an apathetic or an unstable home. The stamp of a child’s home life, no matter how vague, will be discernible in all the psychological postures he assumes in all the stages of his life.

It is frequently said that a movie is a trigger mechanism which can or cannot initiate an explosion – i.e., positive, indifferent, or negative behavior. Which kind of behavior depends not only on the hammer and pin (the movie), but also on the nature of the combustible in the round (the child).

It is often argued that were the hammer and pin not permitted to function there would be no explosion. But that is like saying if there had been no stick in the hand of a child he would not have cracked it over the head of his playmate. Such reasoning overlooks an important insight into the whole process of cause and effect, especially where humans are concerned. Before any stimulus can affect anyone, that person must be in a state of readiness to respond. It is here that the instilled or learned sense of right and wrong comes into play and determines the behavior pattern.

I do not deny that children pick up all kinds of ideas from movies, tv and comic books. Which ideas they pick up is decided by the kind of rearing they have had. To most children movies are part of their play activities – something to be enjoyed and forgotten in relatively short time. If some children are harmed by them the cause is deeper than the particular pictures they have seen.

Motion pictures, it is said, reinforce our subconscious beliefs and wishes, and because of these predispositions people are able to “identify” with characters and situations on the screen. Be this as it may, the child’s subconscious beliefs and wishes derive from his past, not from the movie that reinforces or excites them.

The majority of children see movies once or twice a week for a total of from two to six or seven hours, and normally the sights and sounds of the screen tend to be pushed out of mind by events of the ensuing week. If any of the content of a movie persists abnormally for undesirable purposes, the cause is due not only to the influence of the film but also to something in the child’s life or psyche.

Individuals do not ordinarily operate in a vacuum – in an atmosphere of isolated thoughts and feelings. We understand what we see, hear or read in the terms of our “funded experience.” Regardless of how innately adventurous a child may be, and regardless of how much information he may accumulate from motion pictures, books or whatnot, his background will influence his automatic responses, choices and judgments.

It is believed that juvenile delinquents frequent motion picture theatres more than non-delinquents. But what should we conclude from this- that movies attract delinquents or that no other recreation is available to them? It is true that the screen serves less as a form of entertainment for some delinquents than as a release of pent-up tensions and aggressions. The juvenile delinquent does not enjoy movies in the accepted way, as a temporary diversion, but as an outlet for his conflicts. However, if these children, to complete the cartharsis, duplicate in life an undesirable scene from a movie, our first concern should be about the dynamic forces seething within them. The child who is impressed by specific examples of violence, cruelty, crime and illicit sex is in rebellion because of a lack of love or affection somewhere. Anti-social behavior is engendered by buried resentments and internal conflicts. Movies, it is true, can bring these resentments and conflicts to the surface and into focus. But movies do not create them.

In most movies there are more socially approved scenes than disapproved ones. Let us not forget the socially positive elements in movies affect children, too. In fact, children can be observed rejecting the less worthwhile scenes in movies. Especially children trained to have a healthy outlook. The child that filters out the unhealthy and the anti-social comes to the movies that way.

It is true that not a few films have transgressed decorum and decency and that some movie producers cater to the lowest tastes and exploit anything they think will excite the susceptible. Such producers are the delinquents of the industry and should be removed for the good of all, for filmmakers have a moral and social responsibility because of the social nature of their product. But to fear that evil will be copied by children because they are exposed to it controverts reality and fact. Children do have a knowledge of right and wrong. All of us have heard them burst forth with cheers when the hero defeats the villain.

To the degree that a child has been constructively oriented, and guided toward the responses consonant with society’s concepts of right and wrong, he will not be harmed by what he sees on the screen. Under ideal conditions of growth, as maturity increases and sophistication grows, the possibility of being negatively influenced by motion pictures lessens, until the full force of “adult discount” neutralizes most undermining forces. In the final analysis, then, pre-movie home training, orientation, guidance and discipline protect children against the evils they may see exploited in motion pictures.

I do not say the movies’ influence on human conduct should be minimized. I say only that the movies should be blamed for the things of which they’re really guilty.

In juvenile delinquency there is more to the problem – and the motion picture – than meets the eye.

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