The proposal contained in a Government measure, which was introduced yesterday in the Lower House, to establish a censorship of kinematograph films is not one that is likely to be resented by the community at large.
Nevertheless the popularity of the picture theatres has become so wide, and the grip that they have secured upon their public so pronounced, that the censorship of their programmes will involve an arresting departure.
Thoughtful people must wonder what is going to be the outcome of this mania - for it deserves the name - for picture entertainments which is finding continuous illustration all around us. Moving pictures constitute the staple diet in the way of entertainment of the rising generation ...
The proprietors of picture theatres seem to have themselves to thank for the fact that the picture-going public has developed an astonishing and apparently insatiable yearning for animated presentments of a particular kind, and a kind, it is regrettable to observe, which represents the exploitation of the marvels of the kinematograph along lines that pander to the tastes of the least intellectual section of the community.
It will be so all over the world, and the picture entertainment programmes which are the rule throughout New Zealand probably maintain a better average standard than is observed in most countries.
But the fact remains that pictures which are really commendable, either educational or reproducing what is most artistic or otherwise admirable in what is best in legitimate drama, are the exception and very far from the rule.
Cheap comedy tainted with vulgarity, and equally cheap and lurid melodrama - a great deal of it of American manufacture - constitute the main feature of the average picture-theatre programme.
As the rising generation has to be considered, it would be absurd to say there is now no use in endeavouring to check the drift of popular taste. It is as valid an argument as ever that there are limits that ought not to be transgressed in the portrayal of scenes that cannot be desirable subjects for screening before audiences in which children and young people are largely represented.
Broadly speaking, picture-theatre managers may be said to have brought upon their own heads a censorship such as the Government proposes.
•The scheme organised by Mr D. Rutherford for sending hares to the Red Cross Hospitals which are dealing with our wounded boys in England has been most successful this season, owing to the keenness displayed by the different districts.
At the present time there are in the various freezing works 11,180 hares and 592 rabbits, made up as follows:- Pukeuri, 674 hares; Fairfield, 1963 hares; Islington, 1542 hares, 132 rabbits; Belfast, 1842 hares, 320 rabbits; Pareora, 1937, and 6 rabbits; Smith-field, 2921 hares, 134 rabbits; Burnside, 311 hares.
Two hundred and fifty-two crates have already been shipped to England. Mr Rutherford has set out to have 15,000 hares sent away this year, and he confidently appeals to sportsmen to help him in getting this done.
•Reliable information has been received by the Otago Acclimatisation Society that native pigeons in the Silverstream Valley and Powder Creek district are being destroyed by men who go out ostensibly after wild pigs.
It may be mentioned that these birds are protected, and that anyone caught shooting them is liable to a heavy penalty, and liable, also, to have his gun confiscated.
- ODT, 28.7.1916.
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