old tale of the stagehand who had always felt that, if chance would ever
give him even the smallest of rôles, he would show these actors where
their shortcomings were. He would not drone out even the least important
and most perfunctory of speeches. Not he. Into every syllable he would
pour real meaning, real conviction. At last, after twenty years of
yearning from the wings, chance did rush him on as an understudy.
Unfortunately, he was assigned to the role of the page in "King John,"
who must march into the throne-room and announce the approach of Philip
the Bastard.
So, it seems apparent that any real supervision of the theatre must
function with relation to produced plays and cannot deal with mere
unembodied and undetermined manuscripts.
Our playwright's suspicion that such supervision, if managed by a
politically appointed censor, would work foolishly, are justified by all
he has heard of such functionaries as they have worked in other fields
and in other lands. This was true of the gag which the doughty Brieux
finally pried off the mouth of the French playwright. It has certainly
been true of the mild and intermittent discipline to which the remote
and slightly puzzled Lord Chamberlain has subjected the English
dramatists. Indeed, when their mutinous mutterings finally jogged
Parliament into inspecting his activities, the Lord Chamberlain was
somewhat taken aback by the tactics of Shaw, who, instead of hissing
him for forbidding public performances of certain Shaw and Ibsen plays,
derided and denounced him instead for the plays he had _not_ suppressed.
And indeed, for every play which the Lord Chamberlain has suppressed,
the old playgoer of London could point to five which, had he been more
intelligent, he might more reasonably have suppressed in its place.
But after all those scuffles on the Strand do seem part of the strange
customs of a fusty-dusty never-never land. So our American playwright
turns, instead, to the purifications effected nearer home. He looks
apprehensively into the matter of the movies. As an occasional scenario
writer, he has been instructed by bulletins sent out for his guidance,
little watch-your-step leaflets which list the alterations ordered in
earlier pictures by the august Motion Picture Commission of the State of
New York. Most of them are fussy little disapprovals of language used in
the titles. You mustn't say: "I shall kill Lester Crope." Better say:
"I shall destroy the false Lester Crope" or something like that. You
mustn't say "roué." You mustn't say: "I don't like that rich old roué
hanging around you." Better say: "I don't like that rich old sport." And
when, in a moment of self-indulgence, a title-writer allowed himself
the luxury of writing "In a moment of madness, I wronged a woman," the
Censor seems to have turned scarlet and issued the following order:
"Substitute for 'wronged' the word 'offended' or something similar."
"Or something similar." Somehow, that seems to recall an old "Spanish
for Beginners" textbook which bade me not bother with the "tutoyer"
business as it would not be needed during my travels in Spain, unless I
married there "or something similar."
At all events, no playwright can be scoffed at as an alarmist who
ventures to fear that a censorship of the drama will, in practice, be
foolish. At the thought of such frivolous and fatuous blue-pencillings
of his next drama (which is to be his master-piece, by the way) our
playwright becomes profoundly depressed and every time he goes out to
dinner or finds himself with a small, cornered audience at the club, he
winds up the talk on this bugaboo of his.
Out of the resulting prattle, two widespread impressions always come
to the top, two familiar comments on the subject which, whenever
questionable plays are mentioned, seem to emerge as regularly and as
automatically as does the applause which follows the rendition of Dixie
by any restaurant orchestra in New York. Both comments are absurd.
One comes from the man who can be counted on to say: "They tell me that
show at the Eltinge--What's it called? 'Tickling Tottie's Tummy?'--well,
they say it's pretty raw. Certainly does beat all how there are some
men who just have to see a show soon's they hear it's smutty. I can't
understand it."
This might be called the Comment Ingenuous. A man who never fails to
edge into any group whence the bent head and the hoarse chuckle tells
him that a shady story is on, a man who would have to think hard to name
a friend of his to whom he would not rush with the latest scandalous
anecdote brought in by the drummers from Utica--such a man will,
nevertheless, express a pious surprise when the crowds flock to see the
latest Hopwood farce just because it is advertised as indecorous. It is
not known why he is surprised.
Or, if he is not surprised, then he falls over backward and makes the
Comment Cynical. When he hears that "Under Betty's Bolster" is making
a fortune while "The Grey Iconoclast" is playing to empty benches next
door, he gives a sardonic little laugh (which he reserves for just such
occasions) and says: "Of course. You might have known. Old Channing
Pollock was right when he said: 'Nothing risqué, nothing gained.'
Don't the smutty shows always make money? Doesn't the public invariably
stampede to the most bedridden plays? Isn't the pornographic play the
most valuable of all theatrical properties?"
To which rhetorical questions, the answer in each case, as it happens,
is "No." The blush is not, of course, a bad sign in the box-office. But
the chuckle of recognition is a better one. So is the glow of sentiment.
So is the tear of sympathy. The smutty and the scandalous have a smaller
and less active market than homely humor, for instance, or melodramatic
excitement or pretty sentiment. When "Aphrodite" was brought here from
Paris, it was, for various reasons, impossible to recapture for the
translated dramatization the flavor of abnormal eroticism which lent the
book a certain phosphorescent glow at home. So its producers relied
on lots and lots of nudity to give it réclame here. At this the Hearst
papers did some rather pointed blushing and the next morning, there
was a grand scrimmage at the box-office and seats were hawked about for
grotesque prices. Whereupon the Comment Cynical could be heard on all
sides. But when at the end of the season or so later, "Aphrodite" was
withdrawn with a shortage of a hundred and ninety thousand dollars or
so on its books, the Cynics were too engrossed with some other play to
mention the fact. To be sure that shortage was more than made up next
season on the road, but it ought to be mentioned that "Aphrodite" knew
the indignity of many and many an empty row in New York.
The great fortunes, as a matter of fact, are made with plays like "Peg
o' My Heart" and "The First Year," both as pure as the driven snow. It
is true that Avery Hopwood has grown rich on his royalties. But not so
rich as Winchell Smith, who has dealt exclusively with sweetness and
light. Also those who laugh most caustically over the Hopwood estate
usually find it convenient to ignore the fact that the greatest single
contribution to it has been made by "The Bat," at which Dr. Straton
might conceivably faint from excitement but at which he would have to
work pretty hard to do any blushing.
So much for the familiar catch-words and their validity. A little
discouraged by the fatuity of all lay discussion, our playwright may be
pictured as retreating to the clubrooms of the American Dramatists
and there finding his fellow-craftsmen all busy as bees on scenarios
overflowing with not particularly original sin. They are turning them
out hurriedly with an "After-me-the-deluge" gleam in their haunted eyes.
Some such despairing courtship of disaster may be needed to explain the
jostling procession of harlots which marked the American Drama in the
season of 1921-1922. An unprecedentedly large percentage of the heroines
had either just been ruined (or were just about to be ruined) as the
first curtain rose. Also the plays wallowed in a defiant squalor of
language which, five years before, would have called out the reserves.
The privilege to indulge in such didos is not, as a matter of fact,
especially dear to them. They do not really prize unduly the right to
use the word "slut" once in every act. They can even bear up whenever a
law forbids disrobing on the stage. They know that most pruriency in the
theatre derives from the old frustrations sealed up and festering in
the mind of the onlooker who detects it. They suspect, from what little
reading they have managed in the psychology of outlets, that the more
mock-raping there is done on the stage of the local opera house, the
less real raping will be done on the greensward of the nearest park. But
they know, too, that the force of modesty is one of the strongest and
most ancient instincts of civilized man, that probably it is a sound
and healthy one, inextricably involved in the race's instinct of
self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Anyway, they feel that the
discussion draws them into matters unarguable.
They dread a Censor most for fear his appetite will grow by what it
feeds on. They know that the Lord Chamberlain began by exorcising
obscenity from the English theatre and ended by banning so fiercely
Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted
the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such
innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend
the (at the moment) dear Japanese.
Most American playwrights would derive a certain enjoyment from watching
a posse of citizens in wrathful pursuit of one of those theatrical
managers who are big brothers to the trembling crones that totter up to
you on the _Boulevard des Italiens_ and try to sell you a few obscene
postal-cards. But most American playwrights would feel a genuine
apprehension lest such a posse, confused in its values and its mission,
might then turn and lock up Eugene O'Neill because of the rough talk
that lends veracity to "The Hairy Ape" or because of the steady scrutiny
which has the effect of stripping naked the unhappy creatures of his
play called "Diff'rent."
They would be perfectly willing to co-operate with a State official
appointed to prevent the use of naughty words on the American stage, but
they darkly suspect that he would then require every heroine to bring a
letter from her pastor and would end by interfering with all plays which
suggested, for instance, that government had been known, from time to
time, to prove corrupt, wealth to become oppressive and law, on rare
occasions, to seem just a wee bit unjust. They are minded to resist any
supervision of the theatre's manners for fear it might shackle in time
the theatre's thought. Today or tomorrow they may be seen temporizing
or at least negotiating with the forces of suppression in any community,
but they are really seeking all the time to frustrate those forces.
And will so seek ever and always, law or no law. It was just such
frustration they were seeking when after a season of ruined heroines
(and ruined managers) they all gravely sat down in April, 1922, and drew
up a panel of 300 pure-minded citizens from which a jury could be called
to pass on any play complained of.
And they have the comfort of knowing that any such supervision, today
or tomorrow, legalized or roundabout, mild or incessant, is bound to be
superficial, spasmodic and largely formal. They know that in the long
run the theatre in each day and community, will manage somehow to
express the taste of that day and community. They know that it is among
the sweet revenges of life that the o'er-leaping censor always defeats
himself.
They derive a curious comfort from the story of the reviewer for a
Boston journal who once described a musician as remaining seated through
a concert in the pensive attitude of Buddha contemplating his navel. It
is a story within whose implications lies all that has ever been said,
or ever will be said, about censorship. The copy-readers and make-up
men, it seems, could see nothing especially infamous in their reviewer's
little simile. As poor George Sampson said of the outraged Mrs. Wilfer's
under-petticoat: "We know it's there." At all events, the offending word
passed all the sentries and was printed as written, when, too late, it
caught the horrified eye of the proprietor. At the sight of so crassly
physical a term in the chaste columns of his own paper, he rushed to the
telephone at the club and called up the managing editor. That word must
come out. But the paper was already on the presses. Even as they spoke,
these were whirling out copy after copy. Too late to reset? Yes, much
too late. But was there not still some remedy which would keep at
least part of the edition free from that dreadful word? Wasn't it still
possible to rout out the type at that point, to chisel the word away and
leave a blank? Yes, that was possible. So the presses were halted, the
one word was scraped out, the presses whirred again and the review, with
a gape in the line, went up and down Beacon Street. Whereat Boston
that night shook with a mighty laughter--the contented laughter of the
unregenerate.
THE ORACLE THAT ALWAYS SAYS "NO"
[Illustration: The Periscope of the Author of the Mirrors of Washington
is turned toward the Great Negative Oracle.]
THE AUTHOR OF "THE MIRRORS OF WASHINGTON"
Has anyone ever stopped to think what the nonsenseorship would do to our
suppressed desires? A little while ago suppressed desires were one's own
affair. One fondled them in the skeleton closet of his consciousness
and was as proud of them as anyone with a haunted house is of his right,
title and interest in a ghost.
They proved to him that though he went to church on Sunday and was
respectably married to only one woman, he was really beneath his correct
exterior a whale of a fellow, who might have been, had he but let
himself go, a Casanova or at least a Byron. He patted himself on the
back for keeping unruly instincts in subjection. He applauded himself
for what he might be and for what he was. He got it coming and going. It
was a pleasant age.
But now is he permitted to have his own secret museum of virility? I
speak only of the sex which has my deepest sympathy.
No. The nonsenseorship regards him with suspicion. He must go and have
even that part of him which lies below the level of his consciousness
dragged forth by experts in the interests of society, and if there
is anything hidden in him which might not be exhibited on the movie
screens, he must have it sublimated. He cannot even have suppressed
desires. He cannot be a devil of a fellow even to himself. He cannot be
his own censor any longer, he must submit himself to outside censoring,
to the nonsenseorship.
It all came about this way. First to establish divine right somewhere
in modern government, the doctrine was set up that the public mind was
infallible. Thereafter, naturally, attention centered on the public
mind. What was it that it had this wonderful quality of always being
right? Experience showed that it was not a thinking mind. Since it was
not, then the thinking mind was anti-social.
Then our very best American philosophers, and some French ones, for the
support of mass opinion, developed a system which set forth that reason
always led you into traps and that the only mind to trust was the
irrational, instinctive or intuitional mind. Thus the nonsenseorship,
with excellent philosophic support put the ban upon thinking. Now, I do
not contend that many suffer seriously from this restriction. For, after
all, thinking is hard work and may cheerfully be foregone in the general
interest.
But does the nonsenseorship rest content with its achievement? If the
instinctive part of us is so important, let us have a look at it,
says society; perhaps something anti-social may be unearthed there. A
Viennese explores this area of the mind. He discovers what society would
forbid, merely hidden away. Civilization has merely pressed it into dark
corners, as the law has crowded the blackjack artist into alleys and
dens of thieves. The psychic police are put on our trail. They must
nab every suppressed desire and send it to the reform school for
re-education into something beautiful and serviceable. We may not
be unhappy, neurotic, mad; our complexes must be inspected. We must
suppress our reason, we may not suppress our desire; the nonsenseorship
says so, and to persuade us, its experts offer us the reward of health
and greater usefulness if we make this further surrender.
Now, although as I have said we let reason go at the behest of the
nonsenseorship without so much as a word of protest, we do not give up
our suppressed desires so easily and without a fight.
As a result we see the nonsenseorship in a new light. We feel it more
keenly now than ever before. It is revealed as the Procrustean bed which
cramps us up until we ache inside. If there is anything the matter with
us, if we are introverted, introspective, neurotic, complicated, have
too much ego or too little ego, are dyspeptic, sick, sore, inhibited,
regressive, defeated or too successful, unhappy, cruel or too kind,
if we differ ever so slightly from the enforced average, it is because
censorship presses upon us. And the cure for censorship is more
censorship. Have your psychic insides censored; if you would be a
perfect 36 mentally and morally, with the Hart, Schaffner & Marxed soul
which modern society wills that you shall have, conform not only
without but within, and be "splendidly null"! I think it is the sudden
realization that just a little more of individuality, our hidden
individuality, is threatened, which makes the nonsenseorship irk us now
as it never did before.
The race has always had it, but in the beginning it was a crude and
simple thing, troubling itself only with externals. A woman whose
official duty it is to look after the virtue of the movies in
Pennsylvania or Ohio, will not permit on the screen any suggestion that
there is a physiological relation between a mother and a child. This
method of protecting the race has its roots back in the primitive mind
of mankind. When men really did not understand how children came about,
births were catastrophic. A woman at a certain moment had to disappear
into the wilderness; she came back having found a baby under a cabbage
leaf. Any contact with her while she was making her discovery might
bring pestilence and death to the tribe.
We still believe in the pestilence even if we no longer have faith in
the cabbage leaf. The lady censor of Ohio or Pennsylvania is the tribe
driving the pregnant woman into the wilderness. On the whole the tribe
did it better than we do; it only removed the offender and the mental
life of the little community went on just as before. We keep the
offender amongst us and close our minds. Our simple ancestors covered no
more with the fig leaf than they thought it necessary to hide; we wear
the fig leaf over our eyes: that is the nonsenseorship.
Mr. Griffith recently brought out a cinema spectacle called "Orphans in
the Storm," which presented many scenes from the French Revolution.
Now it was not long ago that we Americans were all rather proud of the
French Revolution. We had had a revolution of our own and we thought
with satisfaction that the French had caught theirs from us. We were
as pleased about it as the little boy is when the neighbor's little boy
catches the mumps from him. He sees an enlargement of his ego in the
swollen neck of his playmate.
All that is changed now. Mr. Griffith picturing the triumphant mob in
Paris had to fill his screens with preachments against Bolshevism, which
had as much to do with his subject as captions about the rape of the
Sabine woman would have had to do with it. It is as if the little boy
had been taught to believe that by never saying the word mumps, he could
save his playmate from tumefying glands.
Soon some committee of morons which attends to the keeping of our
intellects on the level with their own will exclude from the schools
all histories which contain the words "the American Revolution." We must
call it the War for American Independence. That is putting the fig leaf
over our eyes. That is the nonsenseorship.
But before we decide whether or not we shall refuse to yield up our
suppressed desires as we have surrendered our reason to it, with the
approval of our leading philosopher, Mr. William James, let us consider
some of the advantages of the nonsenseorship. Perhaps it will prove
worth while to give up this little internal privilege.
First there is the simplicity of consulting the so-called public mind.
The favorite aphorism of the politician and his friend and spokesman the
editor is: "The public is always right upon a moral issue." This means
that if the politician or the propagandist can present a question to
the people in such a way that he can win his end by having the public
respond in the negative, he is sure of success. It is as if society
depended for its guidance upon the word of an oracle, a great stone
image, out of which the priests had only succeeded in producing one
response, a sound very much like, "No." The trick would consist of so
framing your question that the word "no" would give you approval for
your designs. That is the art of laying before the public a "moral
issue" upon which it is inevitably right.
Suppose, in a society ruled by the stone image, you wanted to make war
upon your neighbor. You would frame your question thus: "Shall we stand
by idly and pusillanimously while our neighbor invades our land and
rapes our women?" This is a moral issue of the deepest sanctity. You
would present it. The priests would do their little something somewhere
out of sight. From the great stone image would come a bellow which
resembled "No." You would have won on a moral issue and would then be
licensed to invade your neighbor's territory and rape his women.
Now you will perceive certain advantages in an oracle which can only say
one word. You know in advance what its answer will be. Suppose the great
stone image could have said either "yes" or "no." Suppose its answer had
been "yes" to your righteous question? It would have been embarrassing.
You could no longer say with such perfect confidence, "It is always
right upon a moral issue."
Suppose you were capital and you desired to reduce wages. You would not
go to the temple and say, "Shall we reduce wages?" That would not be a
moral issue upon which the answer would be right. You would ask, "Shall
we tamely acquiesce while the labor unions import the Russian revolution
into our very midst?" The great stone voice always to be trusted on
moral issues would thunder, "No."
Or suppose you were labor; for my oracle is even-handed--and you wished
to extend your organization--you would go to the temple and propound
the inquiry, "Shall we be eaten alive by the war profiteers?" The always
moral voice would at least whisper "No!"
It will be observed that in consulting the oracle whose answer is known
in advance, the only skill required consists in so framing the question
that you will get a louder roar of "no" than the other side can with its
question. If you can always do this you can say with perfect confidence
that old granite lungs "is always right upon a moral issue."
That is the art of being a great popular leader.
Would anyone exchange a voice like that as a ruler for the wisdom of
the world's ten wisest men? We laugh at the Greeks for their practice of
consulting the oracle at Delphi and rightly, for our oracle beats theirs
which used to hedge in its answers and leave them in doubt. Ours never
equivocates; we know its answer beforehand, for the public mind is
compounded of prejudices, fears, herd instincts, youthful hatred of
novelty, all easily calculable.
It has been my duty for many years to tell what public opinion is on
many subjects. My method, more or less unconscious, has been to say to
myself, "The public is made up largely of the unthinking. Such and such
misinformation has been presented to it. Such and such prejudices and
fears have been aroused. Its answer is invariably negative. The result
is so and so." It is thus that judges of public opinion invariably
proceed. They do not find the popular will reflected in the newspapers.
They know it as a chemist knows a reaction, from familiarity with the
elements combined. At least such a mind is highly convenient.