INDUSTRIAL & SPONSORED FILM & TELEVISION
H72.1605 • section 001 • call no. 75573 • 4.0 credit hours
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 10:00 pm, in Cantor 102
Professors &
Office hours: McCarthy, Tues. 12:00-2:00 pm (room 311E, 719 Broadway)
Streible, Thurs. 10-12 (721 Broadway, room 626)
Required readings:
• Rick Prelinger, The Field Guide to Sponsored Films (San Francisco: National Film Preservation Foundation, 2006).
• Articles (in .pdf form) on the course Blackboard site. Physical items will be on reserve at Bobst Library’s Course Reserves Desk (Lower Level 2), or, for videos on reserve, at the Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media on the 2nd floor.
• Select web site material, as assigned.
Required screenings:
Most are presented in class, but there is also required viewing on your own time (on-line and otherwise). Familiarize yourself with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and its Moving Image ‘wing’ (www.moviearchive.org). You are required to visit throughout the semester to view film/video outside of class time. Identify the file formats that afford you the best viewing and listening experience. A list of URLs for 37 of the required films is available to you on the Blackboard site.
Description: This course examines the history of sponsored and industrial film and broadcasting. According to one estimate, more than 300,000 such films were produced in the U.S. in the 20th century. Encompassing a range of forms and purposes, from government to sales, the category of the sponsored film poses complex questions for historians, critics and theorists of the moving image. Often didactic, composed in audiovisual languages that were foreign to mainstream media vernaculars, and originating within an ancillary industry that was both marginal and central to the development of commercial and nonprofit media throughout the 20th century, these nontheatrical works cause us to re-examine the orthodox versions of film and television histories.
What was the ideological impact of this parallel industry and its exhibition practices? What interpretive challenges are posed by the 'obviousness' of propaganda and sponsorship as modes of address? How does the challenge of locating sponsored media materials place limits on what we can study and learn from the form? What methods best allow us to historicize and theorize sponsored film and television in its cultural context? Students complete short archival research projects and a final research paper on a topic developed in consultation with the instructors.
Requirements: Course grades will be determined by performance on:
• Participation and attendance. NB: If you miss more than 3 classes, your final course grade will be lowered by one letter. Participation may include short written assignments. (10%)
•Midterm exam dossier: Select one entry in The Field Guide to Sponsored Films; research and write a dossier on that film. Posted on Blackboard + paper copy to instructors. Due October 16. (40%)
• Research proposal (with annotated bibliography): Due October 30.
• Final research paper (12-15 pages): Due December 11. (50%)
COURSE SCHEDULE
Sept 4 Intro to Sponsored History: why? how?
Ø The [Your Name Here] Story (ca. 1960) Calvin Communications
Ø Kodak Pageant promo reel (196?, Kodak)
Ø Powers of Ten (1977, IBM) Charles and Ray Eames
Ø Panorama Ephemera (2004) Rick Prelinger
Ø Phantom of the Operator (2005) Caroline Martel artifactproductions.ca/fantome >
(1) Rick Prelinger, “Introduction” and “How to Use This Guide,” The Field Guide to Sponsored Films (National Film Preservation Foundation, 2006): vi-xii; (“Film Entries”), 1-16.
(2) Edward Brunner, “Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary,” Postmodern Culture 8.2 (January 1998): <www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc>. Take a preliminary look at this review essay about the Prelinger collection; we will discuss it more thoroughly on Sept. 25.
* * * *
Sept 11 Social Problem Films: Progressivism, Industrialization, Immigration
Ø Land beyond the Sunset (1912, the Fresh Air Fund) Edison
Ø Hope, A Red Cross Seal Story (1912, National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis) Edison
Ø An American in the Making (1913, U.S. Steel; Bureau of Mines) Thanhauser
Ø The Making of an American (1920, Connecticut Dept. of Americanization)
Ø Madison News Reel (ca. 1932) ?? < oldfilm.org >
Ø Uncle Sam: Insurance Agent (1919, U.S. Veterans Administration)
Ø Pomona Uses ‘White Magic’ (1926, Chilean Nitrate of Soda Education Bureau)
(1) Rick Prelinger and Raegan Kelly, “Panorama Ephemera,” Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular 2.1 (Spring 2006), the “Ephemera” issue. (View the interactive AV and read the texts.)
(2) Daniel J. Perkins, “The Sponsored Film: A New Dimension in American Film Research?” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2.2 (1982): 133-40.
(3) Ronald Walter Greene, “Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral Power,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2.1 (March 2005): 19-36.
(4) Stuart Ewen, “House of Truth,” in PR! A Social History of Spin (BasicBooks, 1996), 102-27.
(5) Sean Savage, “The Eye Beholds: Silent-Era Industrial Film and the Bureau of Commercial Economics,” (master’s thesis, New York University, 2006), 1-65.
(6) Jennifer Horne, “Book Bait: Motion Pictures, Public Libraries, and the Better Films Movement,” ms. (pp. 1-20) in Useful Cinema (Duke U Press, forthcoming).
(7) Dan Streible, “The Nontheatricality of Nontheatrical Film,” ms. (2007), adapted from editor’s introduction to an issue of Film History devoted to Small-Gauge and Nontheatrical Film in Europe (in press).
(8) Julius Klein (U.S. Bureau Foreign and Domestic Commerce), “What Are Motion Pictures Doing for Industry?” in “The Motion Picture in Its Economic and Social Aspects,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 128 (November 1926:): 79-83.
* * * *
Sept 18 Labor and industry / Communication technologies [modernity]
Itinerant filmmaking / Nontheatrical exhibition [non-modernity]
Ø [Tribune-American Dream Picture] (1924, Oakland Tribune & the American Theatre)
Ø From Southern Fields to Europe’s Idle Mills (ca. 1922, Warrant Export Co.)
Ø Anderson ‘Our Gang’ (1926, Egyptian Theatre) Sammy Fox [!?]
Ø Anderson on Parade (1935, Carolina Theatre) H. C. Kunkleman
Ø [Great Falls, SC] (1936-38) H. Lee Waters
Ø Kannapolis, NC (1941) H. Lee Waters
Ø [Dedication of Washington (NJ) High School] (1932, St. Cloud Theatre Circuit)
Ø Hackettstown, NJ: A Civic and Educational Romance (1933) Dan Dorn
Ø The Passaic Textile Strike (1926, International Workers Aid)
Ø Now You’re Talking (1927, AT&T) Max Fleischer
Ø From Stump to Ship (1930, Machias Lumber Co.)
Ø The “Local Gang” in Kidnappers Foil (ca. 1936-37, Sanitary Bakery and Gate City Creameries, Childress, TX) Melton Barker
Ø Birth of a Baby (1937, American Committee on Maternal Welfare)
(1) Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton U Press, 1998), 81-83; Ch. 6, “The Revival of the Worker Film Movement,” 143-72.
(2) Eric Schaefer, “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959 (Duke U Press, 1999): Ch. 3, “Distribution, Advertising and Exhibition of Exploitation Films,” 96-135;
(3) Eric Schaefer, Ch. 5, “The Sex Hygiene Film,” 165-208.
(4) Gregory A. Waller, “Robert Southard and the History of Traveling Film Exhibition,” Film Quarterly 57.2 (Winter 2003-04): 2-14.
(5) Dan Streible, “Itinerant Filmmakers and Amateur Casts: A Homemade ‘Our Gang,’ 1926,” Film History 15.2 (2003): 177-92.
(6) Janna Jones, “From Forgotten Film to a Film Archive: The Curious History of From Stump to Ship,” Film History 15.2 (2003): 193-202.
(7) [Caroline Frick and Dwight Swanson] < MeltonBarker.com >
* * * *
Sept 25 Mechanical Bodies and Capitalist Realism
Ø Master Hands (1936, Chevrolet) Jam Handy Organization
Ø Röntgenstrahlen (1937) Ufa
Ø Back of the Mike (1938, Chevrolet/GM)
Ø The Children Must Learn (1940, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; NYU Educational Film Institute; University of Kentucky) Willard Van Dyke
Ø Valley Town: A Study of Machines and Men (1940, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; NYU Educational Film Institute) Willard Van Dyke
Ø Know for Sure (1944, U.S. Public Health Service)
(1) Jean-Louis Comolli, “Mechanical Bodies, Ever More Heavenly,” tr. Annette Michelson, October 83 (Winter 1998): 19-24.
(2) William Alexander, “Van Dyke and Valley Town,” in Film on the Left: American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942 (Princeton U Press, 1981), 257–70.
(3) Willard van Dyke, “The Interpretive Camera in Documentary Films,” Hollywood Quarterly 1.4 (July 1946): 405-09.
(4) Harrison Engle, "Thirty Years of Social Inquiry: An Interview with Willard van Dyke," originally in Film Comment 3.2 (Spring 1965); abridged version in The Documentary Tradition, ed. Lewis Jacobs (W.W. Norton, 1971, 1979), 343-60.
(5) “Willard Van Dyke,” filmography and interview [1970], in G. Roy Levin, Documentary Explorations (Doubleday, 1971), 175-93.
(6) Thomas J. Brandon, “Irving Lerner: A Filmography and Bibliography,” Cinema Journal 18.1 (Autumn 1978): 53-60.
(7) Edward Brunner, “Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary,” Postmodern Culture 8.2 (January 1998): especially parts 3-12.
(8) Henry Habley, “Industrially Sponsored Films: Telephone Film Distribution,” in Ideas on Film, ed. Cecile Starr (Funk & Wagnalls, 1951/1971), 123-25.
(9) Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (Verso, 1997), 51-122.
* * * *
Oct 2 The World of Tomorrow [belongs to Industry]:
Transforming the American family in the ideology of Progress
Ø The City (1939, Amer. Inst. of Planners) Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
Ø Television: An RCA Presentation (1939)
Ø The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair (1939, Westinghouse)
Ø [Amateur film New York World's Fair, 1939-40]
Ø On to Jupiter (1939, GM)
Ø The World of Tomorrow (1984) Lance Bird & Tom Johnson
(1) Charlie Keil, “American Documentary Finds Its Voice: Persuasion and Expression in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The City,” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (Wayne State U Press), 119-35.
(2) Warren I. Susman, “The People’s Fair: Cultural Contradictions of a Consumer Society,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (Pantheon, 1984), 211-29.
(3) Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America: World's Fairs in the United States (Smithsonian, 2000), Ch. 4 “Fairs Between the World Wars,” 72-99.
(4) Daniel J. Perkins, "Sponsored Business Films: An Overview, 1895-1955," Film Reader 6 (1985): 125-32.
(5) Archer Winsten, "’The City’ Goes to the Fair,” New York Post, June 23, 1939 (transcribed by Nicole Huffman, 2001). <virginia.edu/~MA01/Huffman/Frontier/cityreview.html
(6) David E. Nye, The American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 199-224
* * * *
Oct 9 Wartime Persuasion and Training: State-Sponsored Films
Ø Lambeth Walk -- Nazi Style (1942, British Ministry of Information) Charles A. Ridley [editor at British Movietone News]
Ø Tanks (1942, Office of Emergency Management; Chrysler Tank Arsenal)
Ø Why We Fight, part 7: War Comes to America (1945, U.S. Army Pictorial Services) Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak.
Ø The Town (1945, OWI Overseas Motion Picture Bureau) Josef von Sternberg
Ø The House I Live In (1945, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) Mervyn Leroy, Albert Maltz
Ø Victory Is Our Business (1942, General Motors)
Ø It’s Everybody’s War (1945, Office of War Information)
Ø It’s Your America (1945, U.S. Dept. of War)
(1) George C. Stoney, “Documentary in the United States in the Immediate Post-World War II Years; A Supplement to Chapter 11,” in Jack C. Ellis, The Documentary Idea : A Critical History Of English-Language Documentary Film and Video (Prentice Hall, 1989), 302.
(2) Eric Smoodin, “Coercive Viewings: Soldiers and Prisoners Watch Movies,” Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity & American Film Studies, 1930-1960 (Duke U Press, 2004), 160-82.
(3) Walter Wanger, “OWI and Motion Pictures,” Public Opinion Quarterly 7.1 (Spring 1943): 100-10.
(4) Arthur L. Mayer, “Fact into Film,” Public Opinion Quarterly 8.2 (Summer 1944): 206-25.
(5) Fanning Hearon, “The Motion-Picture Program and Policy of the United States Government,” Journal of Educational Sociology 12.3 (November 1938): 147-62.
(6) William Friedman Fagelson, “Fighting Films: The Everyday Tactics of World War II Soldiers,” Cinema Journal 40.3 (Spring 2001): 94-112.
(7) Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),60-84.
(8) David R. Farber, Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002), 186-244
* * * *
Oct 16 Matériel Culture and Postwar Materialism
MIDTERM DUE
Ø Homes for Veterans (1946, National Housing Agency)
Ø Deadline for Action (1946, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers)
Ø The Great Swindle (1948, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers)
Ø An Old Chinese Proverb: One Picture Is Worth 20,000 Words (1946) Jerry Fairbanks
Ø Today’s News, Tomorrow’s Men (1946, Knoxville News Sentinel)
(1) George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (University of Illinois Press, 1994), 100-81.
(2) Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2004), 112-65
(3) Jerry Fairbanks, “On the Making of Films,” Business Screen 8:1 (1947): 60
(4) Nelson Lichtenstein, “Deadline for Action; Our Union; The Great Swindle” Labor (Spring 2005), 140-43.
* * * *
Oct 23 Guest lecture: Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Ø The Atomic Café (1982) Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty
(1) Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (Oxford U Press, 1993), “Promoter,” 213-21.
(2) TBA
* * * *
Oct 30 Postwar Economic Education
RESEARCH PAPER PROPOSAL DUE
Ø Industry on Parade (1950-60, National Association of Manufacturers)
Ø Americans at Work (1958-60, AFL-CIO)
Ø Cavalcade of America (1953, DuPont)
Ø Desert Venture (1958, Aramco)
Ø And Women Must Weep… (1962, National Right to Work Committee)
Ø American Look (1958, Chevrolet, General Motors) Jam Handy Organization
Ø Le Chant du Styrène (1958, Société Pechiney) Alain Resnais
(1) Edward Dimendberg, “‘These Are Not Exercises in Style’: Le Chant du Styrène,” October 112 (Spring 2005): 63-88.
(2) William L. Bird, Jr. “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935–1955 (Northwestern U Press, 1999), 120-205