CINEMA ITS USES AND ABUSES

Cinema is the popular name for motion-picture which is made of a integrated series of innumerable photographs projected with the help of light on a celluloid screen. When sound is introduced along with the projection, the pictures reflected on the screen are found  to talk and sing. Such pictures are called talkies. Cinema is, in fact, the result of optic delusion.

No other invention of science has evoked so sharp difference of opinion than cinema because nothing else is so evenly divided between good and evil. Cinema is useful immensely useful to all classes of people, young and old, rich and poor, duffer and intellectual. But cinema also cam be immensely harmful and lead a whole generation of man to the dogs. It all depends, however, on how it is organized and for what purposes motion-pictures are utilized.

A right kind of motion picture with an edifying theme is an invaluable source of delight and recreation which is so essential for mental and physical health. We get recreation also from other sources-books, radio and the stage. But none else can give it so thoroughly. nor can absorb the mind so completely. That is why thousands and thousands throng around the cinema halls every day.

Cinema has also great educative value. Only the literate section of the people has access into books and papers. But all without exception can enjoy a cinema show and learn therefore. Besides, as the motion-pictures teach through entertainment, the mind receives the lessons quickly and easily.

They turn up for sheer recreation and return unknowingly with a lot of instruction too. What an admirable method of teaching indeed. If properly organized, films can yet become more perfect agencies of teaching all subjects of human study-literature, philosophy, science and economics and so on. He who has once seen the picture of Macbeth by Shakespeare or Caesar and Cleopatra by Shaw know much better of both the books than he who has read them even twice or thrice. Fall of Berlin” is a better history of the Russo-German fight during the World War II then any book needing days together to read. Similarly, if a government want to propagate a scheme or even to inculcate a lesson of health, there is nothing on which it can depend more than the screen.

But the cinema has as well a dark side as it has a bright side. At times and not infrequently, cinemas ignore higher and motives in order to appeal to the vulgar taste of the multitude. Designed primarily to return the investment several times, producers often make their pictures too vulgar for any man of taste to see-throwing in silly romances, absurd situations, corrupting songs and vulgar dances. Such pictures demoralize society as a whole, particularly the young. Censor Boards are always there and exist in all countries. But their scissors have so far failed to cope with the producers crafty brains.

In order to prevent the evils of cinema and to harness it to the higher needs of society, every country should have a board of cultured men with high powers to cheek the production of unhealthy pictures. Instead of subjecting pictures to post-production censor, the story, the sceneries and the outlines of songs and dances should be got approved by that board. In short, every conceivable measure should be taken to ensure that the power of the cinema may not be used to used to reap individual profit at the cost of social morality.