15th Mar 2008
Driver’s Safety Films: Your Permit to Drive
Cars are vital to mid-century America: they allows new industries, and opportunities “undreamed of only yesterday”. This message is poorly cloaked in the “driver’s safety” film Your Permit to Drive from 1951 — I say poorly, because the only thing the driving-permit-narrator mentions about actual automobile operation is being polite to other drivers. (Oh, and “staying off the white line”.)
In 1951 idiom, dangerous driving is synonymous with “poor sportsmanship”. General Motors wants you to become a considerate participant in the new world, in which “our whole way of living has become geared to the automobile”. (In an interesting editing choice, that line was closely followed by a shot of a pedestrian being killed by a car. Not really a way of living, hmm?)
During the inspiring monologue, the driver’s permit idly wonders whether bad drivers on the road are his fault, whether he could have convinced his owner(s?) to be more responsible and thoughtful when they’re driving. It would be nice to blame it on him, but it’s more likely the fault of General Motors* for gearing our way of life to the automobile.
* Well, Ford certainly helped. But they didn’t make this movie.
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