Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Films in the United States ed. by Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, Dan Streible (review)

Educational film, which documentary scholars have often slighted, is more than worthy of cinema-studies attention. This is true even of the more aesthetically dreadful products. It is particularly interesting to anyone interested in cultural production. The histories of educational and entertainment-oriented documentary are inextricably intertwined in the early years, as this collection of twenty-two solid essays demonstrates. As educational film becomes a distinct market, it comes to have significant and sometimes unexpected effects both on culture and public discourse and on educational practices, as well as being a related effect of wider trends and movements.

Learning with the Lights Off is a welcome contribution to the literature on educational filmmaking in the United States, not least because it provides a good guide to existing scholarly literature in a wide range of areas if you range through the footnotes of the articles. (I also would have loved a unified bibliography at the end of the book.) It also provides an impressive list of all educational film–related associations and publications from the origins to 1970 and a detailed, well-annotated guide to collections (by Elena Rossi-Snook, who also provides a thoughtful discussion of the archiving problem), which should inspire many scholars and even PhD theses. An associated Web site provides access to films discussed in each article, which increases not only the book’s utility to scholars but also its attractiveness for assigned reading. Since these are all links, however, be prepared for broken ones as time goes on. Finally, the book offers a range of ways to use this rich body of material. The articles are organized chronologically, starting in 1895, with analytical articles extending to 1970.

For anyone familiar with the dominant narratives of documentary history, there is much that is enjoyable in walking through the twenty-two chapters. The irrepressible American confidence in technology—in this case, educational film—as a cure for perceived social ills runs all the way through these narratives. Among other contributors, Lee Grieveson shows this in his discussion of Ford films designed to Americanize immigrants.

Names familiar in other contexts reappear here. As Jennifer Peterson recounts, Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) was the American Museum of Natural History’s surprise sellout when it began its film programs, which are still extant today. Pragmatic philosopher John Dewey’s progressive educational arguments are repeatedly invoked to justify the making and selling of educational films. Joris Ivens keeps popping up (in chapters by Craig Kridel and Dan Streible), hired as the go-to documentarian filmmaker, sometimes by business interests for which his politics would have been anathema. Cult auteur Edgar G. Ulmer made a solid living with educational work, as Devin Orgeron relates. The Rockefeller Foundation’s big footprint on this history recurs repeatedly and is the subject of Victoria Cain’s chapter.

It is not particularly surprising to discover that a right-wing funder such as Alfred Sloan was horrified by and censored works he commissioned that criticized business, as Dan Streible shows. But it is surprising, to me at least, to see that he commissioned them at all and furthermore was not alone among corporate interests that sponsored work—particularly in the early years—that was not always linked to a business outcome. It is fascinating to see the go-away-closer dance that the genre’s promoters have done over the years with the concept of entertainment. At first a plus—indeed, some educational films are excerpts of theatrical fiction—the entertainment aspect became a minus (not serious enough for school sales), and then opinion seesawed. Medical films, as Kirsten Ostherr describes, fall under harsh scrutiny for using animation, for instance. Exploitation films were an important source of sex education, shows Eric Schaefer. The Rockefeller Foundation’s program officers were alternately attracted to the power of film and afraid that its visibility would spotlight...