Social guidance film
Social guidance films constitute a genre of educational
History
Social guidance films were produced by corporations such as
While many of the films were merely instructional (like 1941's Posture and Exercise, 1949's Posture and Personality and 1952's Duck and Cover), others ended with an invitation for a classroom discussion of the topic (1956's What About Alcoholism?; 1959's What About Prejudice?), whereas others were presented as striking cautionary tales (1959's Signal 30; 1961's Seduction of the Innocent; 1967's Narcotics: Pit of Despair).
Although sometimes viewed as conservative or reactionary by today's standards, Smith points out that these films were not made by
Appearances in other media
As films in this genre are largely in public domain, they have been used in modern productions outside of their intended purpose, usually as a means of unintentional comedy. A number of short social guidance films, such as Posture Pals (1952) and Are You Ready for Marriage? (1950), were featured and lampooned on the television comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 to provide padding for episodes in which the featured movie segments did not fill out the program's roughly 90-minute running time. On The Weird Al Show, clips from still other films were taken and edited together with new voiceovers to make parodies.
The 1999 feature film The Iron Giant, set in 1957, features a social guidance film-within-a-film titled Atomic Holocaust, the style and tone of which emulate 1952's Duck and Cover.[citation needed]
A fifth season episode of the
See also
References
- Our Secret Century, a collection of 12 CD-ROMs compiled by film archivist Rick Prelinger