28th Flanders International Film Festival-GhentPRESENTS:
Mental Hygiene: American Classroom Guidance Films 1947-1961
program 1 "Manners, Menstruation, and The American Way"
program 2 "Dating, Delinquency, and Diversity"
program 3 "Conformity, Safety, and The Bomb"
Host: Ken Smith
in association with Prelinger Archives
The 28th Flanders International Film Festival-Ghent presents the MENTAL HYGIENE film series, hosted by KEN SMITH, author of Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945-1970. Ken will field questions from the audience and screen some of the most mind-boggling American educational films of all time, including Are You Popular?, Seduction Of The Innocent, and Last Date.
For generations of American schoolchildren, 16mm classroom films served as a break in classroom tedium and a chance for the teacher to drink coffee or sneak a smoke in the hall. But for the quarter century that followed World War II -- the years 1945 to 1970 -- a special kind of classroom film received wide circulation. These were "mental hygiene" films, specifically designed to shape the behavior of their young viewers.
Mental hygiene films thrived in a confused and nervous America. Young people routinely challenged and disobeyed social norms in these years. This rebellious behavior struck fear in the hearts of parents and educators, who foresaw dark futures for teens who broke the rules and refused to fit in with adult society. To scotch this rebellion, adults sought help from Ph.D.s and social scientists and embraced a new technology to deliver social guidance: the classroom mental hygiene film. These short movies covered a broad swath of everyday behavior, including party etiquette, personal hygiene, substance abuse, venereal disease, juvenile delinquency, and the awful things that always happened to kids who drove fast on prom night.
Mental hygiene films did not represent pinnacles of film artistry, nor were they expected to. Instead, they took their cues from the widely successful training and propaganda films of World War II and sought to portray everyday life as "realistically" as possible. A classroom audience was not supposed to watch a mental hygiene film and be enthralled by its direction, cinematography, acting, or editing. They were supposed to believe that what they saw was real and embrace the film's point of view as their own.
Those who created these films were for the most part anonymous, valued more for their ability to grind out product than their talents as filmmakers. Crews were small, sets were improvised, equipment was minimal, actors were often just kids from the neighborhood. Despite these obstacles distinct filmmaking styles emerged among the major producers: the merciless optimism of Coronet, the smoldering doom of Centron, the sledgehammer morality of Sid Davis. Viewing mental hygiene films as a genre reveals something unexpected: a range of competence and technique in a class of filmmaking that is generally thought to have had none.
Thousands of mental hygiene films were produced during their twenty-five year reign, but only a handful made it to our time. Schools got their money's worth by screening prints until they were spliced and shredded. Prints that escaped destruction on the job were thrown in the garbage when their message became unfashionable or when school AV departments shifted to video. When mental hygiene production companies went out of business, as they all eventually did, their master reels were thrown away, along with almost all information about the films' creators, casts, and costs. Preservationists, historians, and film scholars showed little interest in saving what remained. At least half of all mental hygiene titles have vanished forever, and many survive as only a single, battered print.
All films in these screenings are from the book Mental Hygiene. With over 400 photos, interviews with surviving filmmakers, and nearly 300 capsule reviews, Mental Hygiene is the result of ten years worth of research, the first book to take an in-depth look at forgotten films such as Dating Do's And Don'ts, Lunchroom Manners, Highways of Agony, and Girls Beware.
Ken Smith's other books include Junk English, The New Roadside America, Ken's Guide To The Bible, and Raw Deal: Horrible And Ironic Stories Of Forgotten Americans.