The Times News

JIMMY'S TASTES ARE UNIVERSAL
(By BRUCE CATTON)

Whenever there is nothing else to worry about, good people can always get themselves into a state of alarm by meditating on the kind of movies little Jimmy goes to see on Saturday afternoons.

Jimmy knows little about the finer points of the cinematic arts, but he indisputably knows what he wants. So do the movie-makers, who see that he gets it. The result is a wealth of blood-and-thunder stuff, G-men epics, cowboy escapades, mining town shooting scrapes and highly improbable bits of adventure and action in the South Seas.

All of which, to many of us whose childhood is long gone, is pretty disturbing. It looks like strong meat for delicate stomachs. We are easily persuaded that little Jimmy ought to be protected against his own desires.

But when the topic of Jimmy and his movie fare came up for discussion at a conference of elementary school teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University, the other day, very little alarm was manifest. On the contrary, the teachers were urged to go out and attend a few of these Saturday afternoon thriller-specials themselves once in a while and find out how and why those things hit Jimmy where he lives.

For little Jimmy is perfectly direct and simple about it all. He likes rapid-fire action, bold adventure and the certainty of right's ultimate triumph over wrong; and these likes are not at all bad or unnatural traits for him to have. On the contrary they are universal, rooted in the deepest stratum of human nature.

And it is up to us adults to understand that--and to understand, at the same time, that these youngsters of ours are no simpletons and are not in the least fooled by the kind of life they see in the Saturday afternoon movie houses.

They know, after all, that real life seldom has a moving picture finish. The hero doesn't always come galloping out of the sunset just in time; the dauntless young man doesn't always foil the evil designs of the villain; virtue does not always reap its rich reward in the final reel. The everyday life of schoolyard and playground teaches that, unmistakably.

Yet it is human nature to wish that things were different; and in their own way the youngsters who cheer and stamp their feet at the holiday thrillers are simply testifying to the fact that they wish life were a little bit nearer to the ideal.

That is a wish which, however it may find expression, is worth understanding and fostering.

Which doesn't at all mean that we should never exercise the right of censorship over little Jimmy's entertainment program. It does mean that if we just take the trouble to see things the way he sees them, and share in his vibrant young emotional life, we can do an infinitely better job of bringing him up to adulthood prepared to do his part toward making this a better world.