The Adolescent and the Cinema—ii

Crying for Flicka: Boys, Young Men, and Emotion at the Cinema in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s

“…121 Walls, struck by the popularity of animal films with both boys and girls aged 13-14, noted how their "emotional effects" were "less striking" among older adolescents, "especially fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys, whose greater experience" seemed "to make them less vulnerable or more blasé." 122 Animal films' declining popularity among boys in the mid-teens was accompanied by decreasing willingness to admit to crying, although the readiness of a substantial minority of older boys to say that they did cry in the cinema not only reveals cultural differences between secondary modern and secondary grammar boys mentioned earlier but also illustrates how different types of peer and social pressure during adolescence constrained potentially embarrassing types of emotional expression.…”

“…47 This "investigation of emotional life" hoped to emulate the Payne Fund investigators but researchers found the subject "more hampered by lack of investigational techniques than almost any department of psychological research." 48 Wall recognised how "vivid" and "varied" cinema experiences could influence adolescents' emotional lives but was frustrated at the lack of "adequate investigational techniques." 49 He considered research during "the impressionable years of the teens," especially after leaving school, to be essential because the cinema was "almost the only source of information about life" to which adolescents could turn.…”

“…In the boys' groups, however, these figures fell to 24 percent for secondary modern boys and 16 percent for secondary grammar boys." 97 Comparative studies make an interesting contrast with these figures. In Le Moal's survey of 1,163 French children aged 10 to 16, published in 1947, 60 percent of boys admitted to crying at the cinema.…”