Thursday, February 12, 2009
Public Information Films, Part Two
The films get more shrill as the 70s wear on. The government was faced with a difficult mandate: to reinforce voluntary safety behaviour in the absence of stricter laws. The films began cheerily, with cartoon characters and celebrities admonishing adults and children to look before crossing the street, call the National Rescue Service and wear seatbelts. Though would you trust this man with your children?
And here's Doctor Who's John Pertwee, trying to get kids to memorize the clunkiest acronym I've ever heard:
But these earnest attempts obviously didn't stick, because the nanny state decided to get darker. It started trying to scare citizens with horrific depictions of road and industrial safety accidents:
In Lonely Water, the Grim Reaper decides death is an appropriate punishment for disobeying water safety regulations:
I think the class struggle provides the subtext why filmmakers tried to foster such a climate of fear. Watching these films - there are over 100 - one gets the distinct impression that there is no safe place. Outside are careless drivers, rampaging teenagers and thieves. Inside are crank phone callers, TV license-thieves and flaming grease-pans. The kitsch amusement value of PIFs never falters, but it's weighted by a sense that society is going wrong, and there's nothing anyone can do to help.
1970s Britain looks like a frightened place - caught in a bind of falling profits and rising worker demands, stagflation was setting in and no one knew what the future held. The nanny state sublimated its fears into the day-to-day: it couldn't tell British workers to sit down and shut up - yet - but it could tell them danger was all around. This culminated in perhaps the most famous PIF, the absolutely chilling Protect and Survive, about how to survive a nuclear holocaust.
Artist Peter Kennard responds
Tellingly, this is left off the official PIF archive site; perhaps no one wants to remember how close the world was to war or, more tellingly, the film appears ridiculously naive in its contention that anyone would survive. Artist Raymond Briggs responded with graphic novel When The Wind Blows, later turned into a film about an elderly couple who attempt to follow Protect & Survive's guidelines. I'd recommend it, if you can handle 90 minutes of two pensioners dying of radiation poisoning.
PIFs continue to be made today, though the tone has softened. Is this simply a cultural shift, or a sign that the government itself no longer feels threatened, like it did in the 1970s? The corporatist compromise fell apart under Thatcher's hammer-blows at the unions, and Labour's own witch-hunt of the left; the discourse of participation stopped being wish-fulfillment, and became the grim sign-post of neoliberal triumph over workers' struggle. These films can be read as historical markers of two things: how seriously the welfare state took welfare, and how strident that state became when subjects refused to cooperate.
You can view Public Information Films here.
And here's Doctor Who's John Pertwee, trying to get kids to memorize the clunkiest acronym I've ever heard:
* (Find a) Safe (place to cross)Sensible children
* (Stand on the) Pavement
* Look (for traffic)
* If (traffic is coming, let it pass)
* (When there is) No (traffic near, walk across the road)
* Keep (looking and listening for traffic as you cross).
But these earnest attempts obviously didn't stick, because the nanny state decided to get darker. It started trying to scare citizens with horrific depictions of road and industrial safety accidents:
In Lonely Water, the Grim Reaper decides death is an appropriate punishment for disobeying water safety regulations:
VOICE: I am the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, ready to trap the unwary, the show-off, the fool, and this is the kind of place you’d expect to find me....Death appears as the embodiment of the British state itself, bemoaning its lack of power over foolish subjects who continued to demand a greater share of national wealth and, in some cases, to run things themselves.
VOICE: The show-offs are easy. But the unwary ones are easier still. This branch is weak, rotten, it’ll never take his weight.
VOICE: Only a fool would ignore this. But there's one born every minute. Under the water there are traps. Old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's the perfect place for an accident.
BOY: Oi look there’s someone in the water. Get us that big stick to get him out.
VOICE: Sensible children! I have no power over them!
I think the class struggle provides the subtext why filmmakers tried to foster such a climate of fear. Watching these films - there are over 100 - one gets the distinct impression that there is no safe place. Outside are careless drivers, rampaging teenagers and thieves. Inside are crank phone callers, TV license-thieves and flaming grease-pans. The kitsch amusement value of PIFs never falters, but it's weighted by a sense that society is going wrong, and there's nothing anyone can do to help.
1970s Britain looks like a frightened place - caught in a bind of falling profits and rising worker demands, stagflation was setting in and no one knew what the future held. The nanny state sublimated its fears into the day-to-day: it couldn't tell British workers to sit down and shut up - yet - but it could tell them danger was all around. This culminated in perhaps the most famous PIF, the absolutely chilling Protect and Survive, about how to survive a nuclear holocaust.
Artist Peter Kennard responds
Tellingly, this is left off the official PIF archive site; perhaps no one wants to remember how close the world was to war or, more tellingly, the film appears ridiculously naive in its contention that anyone would survive. Artist Raymond Briggs responded with graphic novel When The Wind Blows, later turned into a film about an elderly couple who attempt to follow Protect & Survive's guidelines. I'd recommend it, if you can handle 90 minutes of two pensioners dying of radiation poisoning.
PIFs continue to be made today, though the tone has softened. Is this simply a cultural shift, or a sign that the government itself no longer feels threatened, like it did in the 1970s? The corporatist compromise fell apart under Thatcher's hammer-blows at the unions, and Labour's own witch-hunt of the left; the discourse of participation stopped being wish-fulfillment, and became the grim sign-post of neoliberal triumph over workers' struggle. These films can be read as historical markers of two things: how seriously the welfare state took welfare, and how strident that state became when subjects refused to cooperate.
You can view Public Information Films here.
Labels: class struggle, corporatism, nanny state, Public Information Films
