September 14 movie: AV Geeks: Schoolhouse Scandal. Our friend Walt was there, as well as Jason! and his wife. And another couple, some friends of theirs, brought cupcakes. I think this is one of the best AV Geeks I've seen. (Not just because of the cupcakes!) It was all short films from the 50s from one company that addressed various interpersonal problems high school students might face. First was "The Outsider," about a girl who didn't fit in. This one I actually didn't enjoy. Watching a lonely girl stand in the hall by herself looking sad while the other kids make plans to do fun things that don't include her, well to be honest it made me a little queasy. Not that my life was ever like that or anything. Surely not!
The rest of the films didn't hit home like that, & were much easier for me to relax and enjoy. There was one about a bully, one about a disruptive class clown, and one about a school full of prejudiced snots. That one was interesting because they never show the object of the prejudice, or explain what it is the other kids hate about him. It could be race, religion or class. At the end, the victim of the prejudice heroically saves the life of two of the kids who hate him, and is injured in the process. (Prompting Georg and I to whisper to each other, Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life.) Most of the kids realize the error of their bigoted little ways and rush to the hospital to give blood. But two of the kids decide that it doesn't change anything and they still hate him. That was more subtlety than I would expect from a fifty year old short educational film.
Each film ended with questions for the audience: what can you do to make an outsider feel more welcome? How can you prevent a class clown from getting out of hand and disrupting your school? Did the students make the right choice in dealing with the bully? It was interesting that they put responsibility for how to handle these situations on the kids. In some cases (like a vicious bully) I don't think there is much other students really can do. Still it reflected the different world view of 50 years ago, the expectation that children could deal with these problems without adult intervention.
As usual Skip saved the best for last: Dance, Little Children, a short film about the evils of premarital sex. Skip said this one had been chosen in honor of Jason! who had seen it when he was in high school. (Which made me wonder: I thought Jason! was about the same age as me, which would have put him in high school in the early 80s. Why was his school showing 30-year old educational films about sex?) Jason! described the movie as, "It was supposed to scare us off sex forever, but it actually made us feel like everyone else was having much more fun than we were." The movie follows a Health Department investigator in a small town as he tracks and stops the spread of syphilis among the teen population. Who were, according to the movie, having sex constantly, everywhere and with everyone. Structurally the movie was kind of like the Dragnet of teen sex. Except that unlike Joe Friday, the health department guy was completely nonjudgmental. Plus, like every doctor in the movie, he smoked constantly. There were a lot of awesome things about this movie, and the best was the title song. That's right, a movie about syphilis featuring a catchy rock-n-roll tune called "Dance Little Children." It really doesn't get better.
I almost forgot, the film strip at the beginning was also one of the best I've seen. It was all about how the skills in conformity and complaisance that you learn in school will help you in your future career, whatever it may be. Hi-larious.
3 Comments
I might have actually seen Dance, Little Children myself, and you think of me as the same age as you (though I'm, what, five years older?). But I'm not sure.
I think you're a bit less than 5 years older than me because you were still at Duke when I got there. Maybe 3-4 years? In any case, that would put you in highschool in the late 70s - early 80s. Which would still make Dance, Little Children about 20 years out of date. Did it seem ridiculously old fashioned when you saw it?
I was in high school from 1980 to 1982 (ninth graders were "middle school" in Chapel Hill).
I know that I saw several absurdly out of date documentaries in school, though actually the only sex ed documentary I remember was much less insane--the 1964 short film "Phoebe", about teen pregnancy. It actually had filmic virtues--acting and story and sets!