https://en.bharatpedia.org/w/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Social_guidance_filmSocial guidance film - Revision history2026-11-07T01:03:30ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.43.6https://en.bharatpedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_guidance_film&diff=416437&oldid=prevAjay Kumar: Created a new article2023-08-20T13:10:24Z<p>Created a new article</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>'''Social guidance films''' constitute a genre of educational [[film]]s attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Originally produced by the U.S. government as "attitude-building films" during [[World War II]],<ref name="Cripps">{{cite book<br />
| last1 = Cripps | first1 = Thomas<br />
| title = Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era<br />
| url = https://archive.org/details/makingmoviesblac0000crip | url-access = registration | location = USA<br />
| publisher = [[Oxford University Press]]<br />
| pages = [https://archive.org/details/makingmoviesblac0000crip/page/161 161]<br />
| year = 1993<br />
| isbn = 0195076699 }}</ref> the genre grew to be a common source of instruction in elementary and high [[school]] classrooms in the [[United States]] from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The films covered topics including [[courtesy]], grammar, social etiquette and dating, personal hygiene and grooming, health and fitness, [[Moral responsibility|civic and moral responsibility]], [[human sexuality|sexuality]], [[Child protection|child safety]], national loyalty, racial and social prejudice, juvenile delinquency, [[Recreational drug use|drug use]], and [[driver's ed|driver safety]]; the genre also includes films for adults, covering topics such as [[marriage]], business etiquette, general safety, home economics, career counseling and how to balance budgets.<ref name="Smith">{{cite book<br />
| last1 = Smith | first1 = Ken<br />
| title = Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945 - 1970<br />
| location = New York City<br />
| publisher = [[Blast Books]]<br />
| pages = 238<br />
| year = 1999<br />
| isbn = 0-922233-21-7 }}</ref> A subset is known as '''hygiene films''' addressing mental hygiene and sexual hygiene.<ref>{{Cite web| url=http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/hygiene-films.html| title=`Mental Hygiene': The Dos and Don'ts of the Doo-Wop Age}}</ref><br />
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==History==<br />
Social guidance films were produced by corporations such as [[Coronet Films|Coronet Instructional Films]], [[Centron Corporation|Centron Corporation for Young America Films]], [[Encyclopædia Britannica Films]], and occasionally by better-known companies such as [[Ford Motor Company]] and [[Crawley Films]] for [[McGraw-Hill Book Company]]. Many were made by independent producers, most notably the prolific maverick independent filmmaker [[Sid Davis]]. Few of these films featured notable actors, and only a few were produced by a major Hollywood studio, such as the films made by Walt Disney Productions and Warner Bros. In rare instances, the films were sponsored by a major company such as [[Kotex]] or [[General Motors]]. Ken Smith, in his seminal 1999 book on the genre, ''Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945 - 1970'', estimates that there were "around three thousand" films made that fall into the "social guidance" film genre.<ref name="Smith" /><br />
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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 (film)|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 tale]]s (1959's ''[[Signal 30]]''; 1961's ''Seduction of the Innocent''; 1967's ''Narcotics: Pit of Despair'').<br />
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Although sometimes viewed as conservative or reactionary by today's standards, Smith points out that these films were not made by [[conservatives]] or [[reactionaries]] but instead "by some of the most [[Liberalism|liberal]] and progressive-minded people of their time."<ref name="Smith" /><br />
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==Appearances in other media==<br />
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 [[filler (media)|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.<br />
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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 (film)|Duck and Cover]]''.{{cn|date=October 2022}}<br />
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A fifth season episode of the [[AMC (TV channel)|AMC]] series ''[[Mad Men (season 5)|Mad Men]],'' which takes place between July 1966 and August 1966, uses the title of 1959's ''Signal 30'' [[Signal 30 (Mad Men)|as the episode title]].<br />
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==See also==<br />
*[[Social problem film]]<br />
*[[Trigger film]]<br />
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==References==<br />
{{Reflist}}<br />
*''[[Our Secret Century]]'', a collection of 12 [[CD-ROM]]s compiled by film archivist [[Rick Prelinger]]<br />
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==External links==<br />
{{Commons category|Social guidance films}}<br />
*''[https://archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&collectionid=19069 Duck and Cover]''<br />
*[https://archive.org/details/prelinger The Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive]<br />
*[https://archive.org/details/avgeeks AV Geeks at the Internet Archive]<br />
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{{Film genres}}<br />
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[[Category:Film genres]]<br />
[[Category:Social guidance films| ]]</div>Ajay Kumar