Our Movie Made Children was written by Henry James Forman and published in May 1933. Commissioned by W.W. Charters, the Chairman of the Committee on Educational Research of the Payne Fund, Forman was "entrusted the task of preparing a popular summary" of the conclusions found by the various scholars who conducted the studies.
Henry James Forman was an author famous for his 1933 book Our Movie Made Children, which was a summary of the Payne Fund Studies. The book has been described as an "alarmist tome", and was responsible for publicizing the study's more negative results.
The Payne Fund Studies were a series of studies conducted to determine the effects of movies on the behavior of children and adolescents. They were paid for by The Payne Fund, a private foundation, and performed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They have been criticized as lacking scientific rigor but were the first attempt to rigorously study the media. They were politically significant and were instrumental in the enforcement of the Hays Code. They are credited with contributing to the demise of Pre-Code film-making in Hollywood.
The investigations were conducted between 1929 and 1933 at the request of the Motion Picture Research Council and include:
Motion Pictures and Youth by W.W. Charters, combined with
Getting Ideas From The Movies by P.W. Holiday and George D. Stoddard
The Content of Motion Pictures and Children's Attendance at Motion Pictures by Edgar Dale
The Emotional Responses of Children to the Motion Picture Situation by W.S. Dysing and Christian A. Ruckmick, combined with
Motion Pictures and Standards of Morality by Charles C. Peters
Motion Pictures and the Social Attitudes of Children by Ruth C. Peterson and L.L. Thurstone, combined with
Relationship of Motion Pictures to the Character and Attitudes of Children by Mark A. May and Frank Shuttleworth
Children's Sleep by Samuel Renshaw, Vernon A. Miller, and Dorothy Marquis
Movie and Conduct by Herbert Blumer
Movies, Delinquency, and Crime by Herbert Blumer and Philip M. Hauser
Boys, Movies and City Streets by Paul G. Cressey and Frederick M. Thrasher
Edgar Dale was an American educator who developed the Cone of Experience. He made several contributions to audio and visual instruction, including a methodology for analyzing the content of motion pictures.
The Payne Fund, an organization "interested in the radio, motion pictures and reading in relation to children and youth", supported these independent studies. Our Movie Made Children, aimed at middle class mothers and religious groups, echoed the pro-censorship attitude behind the Payne Fund, and dramatized the threats movies posted to children. Criticized today as "emotional and inflammatory" the book, in its time was widely read because, although each study and the popular summary was to be an independently written volume of a series, Forman’s book was the first published and therefore often viewed, at the time, as the "authoritative public source". [citation needed]
Although Charters stated he had examined the accuracy of the claims made in Our Movie Made Children in his introduction to the book, he goes on to say that "[his] interpretations of the studies, however, his selection of illustrative material, his literary style, his dramatic and emphatic presentation are of necessity entirely his own". [citation needed]
Despite these loose interpretations and individual style, Forman delivers exactly what the supporters of the studies desired: to show that movies can have a powerful and influential effect on the attitudes, emotions, and behavior of children, to appeal to parents to understand that there must be further study on how to use film to the best advantage of their children, and to put pressure on filmmakers to produce better quality, morally agreeable products. [citation needed]
Sources
Forman, H.J. Our Movie Made Children. The MacMillan Company, New York, New York, May 1933.
Jarvis, Arthur R. The Payne Fund Reports: A Discussion on their Content, Public Reaction and Affect on the Motion Picture Industry, 1930-1940, Journal of Popular Culture; Fall 1991; Vol. 25; Issue 2.
Nichols, John. Countering Censorship: Edgar Dale and the Film Appreciation Movement, Cinema Journal 46; No. 1; Fall 2006
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