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

近年来，对非戏剧电影或“有用的电影”的研究在学术研究中有所增长，其中一些研究开始关注政府和企业在塑造人口行为方面使用短片。第二次世界大战后的一段时期见证了旨在教育美国青年的电影制作的繁荣，因为新技术，意识形态需求和商业机会的融合导致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。教室电影业吸引了独立制片人及其公司客户的注意，其中包括世界上最强大的工业公司，包括通用电气、通用汽车和杜邦蓬特，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、社会一致性、美国霸权和资本主义的道德确定性。由于这些媒体形式的功利性质，它们最终作为一种媒体形式被淘汰，以及直到最近几年才正式保存下来，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。这个研究项目将建立在现有的理论工作的工业，教育和短暂的电影，其中包括我的UCL主管李Grieveson和克莱尔汤姆森的工作，以及海迪沃森，帕特里克Vonderau，里克Prelinger和凯利里特的作品，探索课堂电影与文化，冷战政治经济和人口治理的互动方式。这项研究是由三个关键的想法：第一，参与企业赞助的课堂电影的制作可视化一个模型的公民主要是在维持工业资本的利益。第二，这促进了进步的新政教育努力的结束。第三，这种塑造民众行为和行动的尝试最好被理解为符合米歇尔·福柯所描述的自由治理过程。本研究旨在实现几个重要的目标：研究课堂电影超越传统的理解教育效用，分析它是如何被用来影响美国青年的思想和行为。探讨企业赞助在课堂电影制作中的历史纠葛，以及各制作方在弥合企业广告与教育电影之间的差距中所扮演的角色。在美国冷战文化的背景下，通过研究政府在外交政策中实施教育举措的动机，并为外交政策的利益，来审视课堂电影。因此，研究将解决以下问题：如何二战宣传电影制作的经验和冷战的必要性通知战后教育电影繁荣？企业、政府和电影制作人以何种方式和出于何种目的影响了战后美国教育的风格和范围，并使一套新的理想和价值观形象化？这些价值观与后来在美国出现的新自由主义有何关联？在探索这些问题时，这项研究将为越来越多的关于非戏剧电影的学术工作增添内容。通过关注塑造这种媒体的经济和政治逻辑，这项研究将产生新的教育电影，政治经济学和冷战历史的交叉点的关键观点。在这篇论文的核心是一个论点，这些电影的消费主义，保守主义，民族主义，经济自由主义和反共产主义的公开认可，在自由主义的激进化和新自由主义的出现，作为一个社会政治现实在美国的20世纪70年代末。

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.