The content of motion pictures

Abstract

Reviews the books, The content of motion pictures by Edgar Dale (1935); and Children's attendance at motion pictures by Edgar Dale (1935). The two studies under review attempt to furnish answers to these questions that ask what things are exhibited in ordinary commercial pictures and how wide-spread is the exposure of children to these commercial pictures. The author subjected a large number of pictures--1500 in all--to varying degrees of analysis in an attempt to find something about the types of theme, locale, characters and the behavior of these characters to be found in commercial films. In general his data suggest that commercial producers tend to emphasize pictures of urban, upper economic classes with perhaps too much attention devoted to problems of shady sexual relations and other types of anti-social behavior. In an attempt to secure some information regarding our second question, an analysis was made of the daily attendance at a selected group of Columbus, Ohio, theatres. This analysis indicates that probably not less than some 37 percent of movie audiences are under 21 years of age and 14 percent are under 13 years of age. There are presented reasons why this estimate may be too low for the country at large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)