Molly Cyderman-Weber
Central Michigan University
Coding and Ideology in American
Social Guidance Films from the 1940s-1950s
After
a long period of establishing their legitimacy as an appropriate and effective
instructional tool, classroom films became popular teaching medium in the
1950s. Instructional films addressed
many topics; the most common were science films, travelogues, traffic safety
films, and social guidance films.
Instructional films provided an institutional vehicle for teaching
cultural musical codes - a language of associations based on instrumentation,
rhythm, melody, and harmony - to the baby boomer generation.
In
this talk, I investigate the contributions of music to ideologies sustained
through cultural musical codes in 104 social guidance films by discussing the
conditions under which music occurs in each film and by examining the possible
meanings. The films, a subset of the
Prelinger Archive, were made by 21 different production companies, but titles
from Coronet, Centron, and McGraw-Hill dominate the collection and therefore
receive more detailed scrutiny than titles from other companies. In my analysis, I address title theme,
diegetic, and non-diegetic music and consider practical function along with
ideological communication.