Great idea, and high time it turned into a project!
Just a few thoughts about educational films, in no particular order:
1. Social guidance films aren't just creatures of the post-World War II era. They were made as early as the 1910s, flourished in the 1920s and are still being made today. The difference between films then and now isn't so much in the ideas they push on their viewers (though arguments and ideas do evolve), but in their style and appearance.
2. The quote from Ken Smith's delightful book doesn't do justice to his full argument or to the many reasons why these films were produced. Many of the ed films from the 1940s-1950s were made as responses to the emergence of a youth culture that grew out of the wartime period, when kids had a lot of freedom and families underwent great stresses, and were part of a behavior offensive to train newly sophisticated teens how to behave like kids again. The "adults were scared" argument doesn't really explain why several hundred of these films were made. Adults were scared of 1920s flappers, 1930s kids-on-the-run, 1940s Victory Girls, 1950s juvenile delinquents, 1960s hippies, 1970s PCPers, 1980s gangstas, and so on.
3. Many of these films were in fact made in response to moral panics (see definition in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic) that were frequently not based in reality. We have yet to see a serious study of postwar educational films that connects them to real and imagined social conditions.
4. Just as fascinating as educational films, if not more so, are commercially sponsored films aimed to youth and shown widely in classrooms. Again, this is a trend that goes back to the 1910s and continues today in, for example, McDonald's Corporation-sponsored videos on nutrition. Many sponsored films can be seen at the Internet Archive; a good place to begin a search for both sponsored and educational films is http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger.
5. These films do indeed seem to illuminate social attitudes, but whose? And how were they received? We have little real data on reception -- what kids thought of the films they were shown. What we can say is that many of these films reflected the attitudes and agendas of certain elites -- educators, psychologists, the clergy, sociologists and some politicians -- who wished to persuade kids to behave in certain ways. Whether or not they worked is still to be shown. It is hard to get inside the head of a teenager in a dark classroom in the late 1940s.
Just what we need! Another pill pushing puppet politician. I just got through reading Dispensing With the Truth by Alicia Mundy. It is about how pharma KNEW fen-phen caused hideous, torture filled deaths for women whose heart and lungs failed from the drug's use; yet, they pushed it anyway. I have long believed the obesity epidemic is a crock of bull and have always known pockets were being lined. But even I was shocked at the revelations in that book. Like the FDA considers PHARMA and not the American people their clients. That Congress pulls strings at the FDA! Congressman Tom Lantos and even Ted Kennedy intervened to get some of the drugs approved. Meanwhile, obesity "experts" like JoAnn Manson and Blackburn still have credibility although their hands are most definitely dirty. DeFacto murders!!!! And things have only gotten worse since then. Sadly, it seems almost ALL the major contenders will let pharma pull their strings. I can see why people are attracted to Ron Paul. I don't agree with much of what he says, but at least he refuses to sell out!
It seems like the outcome is already decided. Or at least, the field has been narrowed and our choices reduced. If only the average American could stop watching Dancing With the Stars long enough to care about fair elections again!
Great idea, and high time it turned into a project!
Just a few thoughts about educational films, in no particular order:
1. Social guidance films aren't just creatures of the post-World War II era. They were made as early as the 1910s, flourished in the 1920s and are still being made today. The difference between films then and now isn't so much in the ideas they push on their viewers (though arguments and ideas do evolve), but in their style and appearance.
2. The quote from Ken Smith's delightful book doesn't do justice to his full argument or to the many reasons why these films were produced. Many of the ed films from the 1940s-1950s were made as responses to the emergence of a youth culture that grew out of the wartime period, when kids had a lot of freedom and families underwent great stresses, and were part of a behavior offensive to train newly sophisticated teens how to behave like kids again. The "adults were scared" argument doesn't really explain why several hundred of these films were made. Adults were scared of 1920s flappers, 1930s kids-on-the-run, 1940s Victory Girls, 1950s juvenile delinquents, 1960s hippies, 1970s PCPers, 1980s gangstas, and so on.
3. Many of these films were in fact made in response to moral panics (see definition in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic) that were frequently not based in reality. We have yet to see a serious study of postwar educational films that connects them to real and imagined social conditions.
4. Just as fascinating as educational films, if not more so, are commercially sponsored films aimed to youth and shown widely in classrooms. Again, this is a trend that goes back to the 1910s and continues today in, for example, McDonald's Corporation-sponsored videos on nutrition. Many sponsored films can be seen at the Internet Archive; a good place to begin a search for both sponsored and educational films is http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger.
5. These films do indeed seem to illuminate social attitudes, but whose? And how were they received? We have little real data on reception -- what kids thought of the films they were shown. What we can say is that many of these films reflected the attitudes and agendas of certain elites -- educators, psychologists, the clergy, sociologists and some politicians -- who wished to persuade kids to behave in certain ways. Whether or not they worked is still to be shown. It is hard to get inside the head of a teenager in a dark classroom in the late 1940s.
Anyway, a fascinating topic.
Rick
Why don't you just quit smoking now, it won't be long until the price per pack goes way up, and you will only be able to smoke in your own house.
It is time to quit.
You will enjoy life better and longer, and won't stink.
I quit, you can too.
I remember those days as the "Love-the- Nelsons/Fry-the-Rosenbergs '50s." :-(
Just what we need! Another pill pushing puppet politician. I just got through reading Dispensing With the Truth by Alicia Mundy. It is about how pharma KNEW fen-phen caused hideous, torture filled deaths for women whose heart and lungs failed from the drug's use; yet, they pushed it anyway. I have long believed the obesity epidemic is a crock of bull and have always known pockets were being lined. But even I was shocked at the revelations in that book. Like the FDA considers PHARMA and not the American people their clients. That Congress pulls strings at the FDA! Congressman Tom Lantos and even Ted Kennedy intervened to get some of the drugs approved. Meanwhile, obesity "experts" like JoAnn Manson and Blackburn still have credibility although their hands are most definitely dirty. DeFacto murders!!!! And things have only gotten worse since then. Sadly, it seems almost ALL the major contenders will let pharma pull their strings. I can see why people are attracted to Ron Paul. I don't agree with much of what he says, but at least he refuses to sell out!
It seems like the outcome is already decided. Or at least, the field has been narrowed and our choices reduced. If only the average American could stop watching Dancing With the Stars long enough to care about fair elections again!
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