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.