Flickering Empire by Smith Michael Glover; Selzer Adam;

Flickering Empire by Smith Michael Glover; Selzer Adam;

Author:Smith, Michael Glover; Selzer, Adam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, PER004020, Performing Arts/Film & Video/Guides & Reviews
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-01-19T16:00:00+00:00


The Count of Monte Cristo, 1908. Directed by Francis Boggs and Thomas Persons.

Back in Chicago, Colonel Selig had begun a massive publicity campaign in an attempt to make motion pictures a more acceptable form of entertainment for people other than just the working class. As of 1907, the Daily Tribune was still vociferously against movies, fearing that they would lead children down a path to degradation. “There is no voice raised to defend the great majority of the five cent theatres,” one Daily Tribune staffer opined, “because they cannot be defended. They are hopelessly bad.”1

Selig eventually fired back with a five-page advertisement in the Chicago Daily News Almanac, “What Moving Pictures Are Giving the World: A Moral and Educational Tonic for the Young and Old Alike,” in which he spoke in a voice like that of Professor Harold Hill to tout the educational virtues of movies: “The decision of the Supreme Court affirming the right of the mayor to censor the films and pictures exhibited in the cheaper as well as the more pretentious theaters,” he wrote, “cannot fail to gratify those of us who belive that the five-cent moving-picture shows are possibilities for a great deal of good in the community. … Hours unemployed are the devil’s opportunity … hours of relaxation are beset with perils. If not properly utilized, they are apt to breed and to encourage vicious indulgence. The moving picture show with immoral films eliminated is a valuable member of the company of modern devices to so direct the leisure hours of the young and old alike as to prevent their being wasted in frivolous and pernicious excitement of demoralizing entertainments … the five- and ten-cent theater with its cinematographic plays is a most powerful rival of the saloon. … Saloonkeepers have reported that their transient trade has fallen off in districts well supplied with these shows.”

According to the ad, movies could even become the cure for society’s ills: “they will develop into agencies of great value in the domain of education and culture.” After all, most men could not afford to travel far or often, and movies could take them anywhere for a dime. Slide shows were already used in schools, but “even the lantern slide lacks the element of vitality which motion alone can supply.”

Towards the end of the ad, Selig becomes nearly rapturous. “Soon a new president will be inaugurated. Yesterday King George paid a visit to Emperor William. Soon our fleet will sail through the great Panama Canal on its voyage around the world. Sicily devastated by earthquake calls for sympathy. These and many more happenings will fill the columns of the newspapers. Their descriptions convey information, but for all that they are deprived of the breath of life. The cinematograph has mastered the secret of power. It invites us to cheer the pageant or to shudder at the catastrophe as though we had been standing in the very street over which the procession passed or which the disaster overturned. It supplements the newspaper.



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