Cold War Classrooms: Educational Film and the Construction of Post-War American Culture.

近年来，对非戏剧电影或“有用电影”的研究在学术研究中有所增长，其中一些研究已经开始关注政府和企业在塑造民众行为方面对短片的使用。第二次世界大战后的一段时间见证了旨在教育美国年轻人的电影制作的繁荣，因为新技术、意识形态需求和商业机会的融合使得学校董事会和地方政府转向电影，以帮助缓解不断扩大的教育系统的压力。课堂电影产业吸引了独立制片人及其企业客户的注意，其中包括世界上最强大的工业公司，包括通用电气、通用汽车和杜邦公司，其中许多公司已经从事赞助电影和广告的制作。电影的制作支持情感上的自我控制、社会的一致性、美国的霸权和资本主义的道德确定性。由于这些媒体形式的功利主义性质，它们作为一种媒体形式的最终过时，以及直到近年来缺乏正式的保存，课堂电影的社会历史和文化意义在很大程度上仍然没有得到研究。本研究项目将以现有的关于工业、教育和短暂电影效用的理论工作为基础，其中包括我在伦敦大学学院的导师李·格里弗森和克莱尔·汤姆森的作品，以及海德·沃森、帕特里克·冯德劳、里克·普林杰和凯利·里特的作品，以探索课堂电影与文化、冷战政治经济和人口治理相互作用的方式。这项研究基于三个关键观点：首先，企业赞助参与课堂电影的制作，在很大程度上有利于维持工业资本，从而使模范公民形象化。第二，这促进了进步的新政教育努力的结束。第三，这种塑造人群行为和行动的尝试可以被最好地理解为符合米歇尔·福柯所描述的自由治理过程。本研究旨在实现几个重要目标：超越对教育效用的传统理解来审视课堂电影，分析它是如何被用来影响美国青年的思想和行为的。探讨企业赞助在课堂影片制作中的历史纠葛，以及各制作方在弥合企业广告与教育片之间的鸿沟中所扮演的角色。通过考察政府将教育举措与外交政策相结合并为外交政策服务的动机，将课堂电影置于美国冷战文化的背景下。因此，本研究将探讨以下问题：二战宣传电影制作的经验和冷战的需要如何影响战后教育电影的繁荣？企业、政府和电影制作人以何种方式、出于何种目的影响了战后美国教育的风格和范围，并塑造了一套新的理想和价值观？这些价值观与后来美国新自由主义的出现有何关联？在探索这些问题的过程中，这项研究将增加非戏剧电影的学术工作。通过关注塑造这种媒体的经济和政治逻辑，本研究将对教育片、政治经济学和冷战历史的交叉点产生新的批判视角。本文的核心论点是，这些电影对消费主义、保守主义、民族主义、经济自由主义和反共主义的公开支持，有助于自由主义的激进化，并在20世纪70年代末成为美国社会政治现实的新自由主义的出现。

The study of non-theatrical film or "useful cinema", has seen a growth in scholarly research in recent years, some of which has begun to look at the use of short film by governments and business in shaping the conduct of populations. The immediate period following WWII witnessed a boom in the production of films intended to educate the American youth as a confluence of new technologies, ideological imperatives, and business opportunities led school boards and local government to turn to film to help ease the strain on the expanding education system. The classroom film industry attracted the attention of independent producers and their corporate clients, among them, the most powerful industrial corporations in the world including General Electric, General Motors and du Pont, many of whom were already engaged in the production of sponsored film and advertising. Films were produced that endorsed emotional self-control, social conformity, American supremacy and the moral certitude of capitalism. Owing to a combination of the utilitarian nature of these media forms, their eventual obsolescence as a media format, and a lack of formal preservation until recent years, the social history and cultural significance of classroom films has remained largely unstudied. This research project will build from a body of existing theoretical work on the utility of industrial, educational, and ephemeral films that includes work by my UCL supervisors Lee Grieveson and Claire Thomson, as well as works by Haidee Wasson, Patrick Vonderau, Rick Prelinger, and Kelly Ritter to explore the ways in which classroom films have interacted with culture, Cold War political economy, and the governance of populations. The research is informed by three key ideas: firstly, that the involvement of corporate sponsorship in the production of classroom films visualised a model citizenry largely in the interests of sustaining industrial capital. Secondly, that this facilitated in the closure of progressive New Deal educational endeavours. Thirdly, that this attempt to shape the behaviours and actions of populations can be best understood as conforming to what Michel Foucault described as the process of liberal governmentality. This research aims to achieve several significant objectives: To examine classroom film beyond conventional understanding of educational utility to analyse how it was being used to influence the thoughts and behaviours of American youth. To explore the historical entanglement of corporate sponsorship in the production of classroom film, and the role that various producers played in bridging the gap between corporate advertising and educational film. To situate classroom films within the context of America's Cold War culture by examining the motivations of government in dovetailing educational initiatives with and for the benefit of foreign policy. Accordingly, the research will address the following questions: How did the experience of the WWII propaganda filmmaking and the imperatives of the Cold War inform the post-war educational film boom? In what ways and for what purposes have corporations, government, and film makers influenced the style and scope of post-war American education and visualised a new set of ideals and values? How do these values correlate with the later emergence of neoliberalism in America? In exploring these questions, this research will add to a growing body of scholarly work on non-theatrical film. By focussing on the economic and political logics that have shaped this media, this research will generate new critical perspectives on the intersection of educational film, political economy, and Cold War history. At the core of this thesis is an argument that the overt endorsement by these films of consumerism, conservatism, nationalism, economic liberalism, and anti-communism, aided in the radicalisation of liberalism and the emergence of neoliberalism as a socio-political reality in America by the late 1970s.