the good old days

Why not commemorate this historic occasion …

image from NASA

… with this?

image from the Stanford School of Medicine

Going Places, from 1948, teaches us the basics of capitalist manufacturing through the example of one soap-maker who was inspired to make the best soap ever thanks to his childhood chores. At first, Freddie simply wants to make good soap quickly so he can have time off to ogle passing women; once he becomes a success, he is convinced by his main competitor that they should engage in price-fixing.

The devil wins that little argument, but Soap Company #3 quickly defeats their monopoly by selling inexpensive soap — and then the government steps in. After that point, the movie glosses over their illegal monopolizing… the free market fixes everything!

The movie also discusses the benefits that the profit motive (and thereby a successful business) will bring to its worker and to the community.

Operating at a profit, a business can provide the employee with comfortable, colorful working conditions; high wages and steady employment; first aid and health protection; accident and life insurance; time off for vacations.

I’ll illustrate their example with a brief case study… Visteon, my former employer, went through years of trimming health insurance benefits and taking back as many other benefits as they could. Then they closed our factory last year. Strongly correlated with benefit cuts and plant closures was a string of announcements of dismal performance (dressed up as “we lost $12 million less than expected, only $150 loss this quarter!”), as well as fat firing bonuses for managers who left about as quickly as they were hired. And that sort of executive malfeasance doesn’t get any real coverage in Going Places.

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I like how everything ends with the promise that, if we embrace the profit motive, future generations of small children will be able to build jetpacks for themselves.

According to the end credits, this film was made by (with?) Harding College (now Harding University). Seven years later, they would bring us Responsibilities of American Citizenship, even more anti-Communist than this movie.

Need to understand the basics of atoms? Watch the quick A is for Atom film from 1952, produced by General Electric.

A literary feel is added by reminding students that “ships and shoes and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings” are all made up of atoms. (Considering how ungrounded in reality Jabberwocky is, it’s an odd choice. OOPS. As Tom pointed out, this is from The Walrus and the Carpenter, not Jabberwocky. A bit more coherent, but still a surreal work; Lewis Carroll was quite a character.)

Overall, it’s a cute animated look at some basic chemistry and physics, as well as a review of the history of atomic bombs and industrial applications. It has some quirky ideas (would you want to fly on a nuclear airplane — or be anywhere near a crashed nuclear airplane?), but is still a decent film for kids. (If you ignore the few occasional film skips which result in odd sentences…)

Via Retro Thing

Now that the Socialists have won the White House, what can we expect for our nation’s future? Dishwashers for everybody!

Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million families in this country; and at least ten million of these live separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave. Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dishwashing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons—mostly women to do the dishwashing of the country. And note that [dishwashing] is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but scientifically—sterilizing them—and do it at a saving of all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time!
– The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The rise of Bad Commies in USSR put an end to Dr. Schliemann’s vision of saving the world (or the USA, at least) from the evils of dishwashing. Luckily, the Capitalists would invent dishwashers anyway. (Or maybe they’re socialist dishwashers in a cunning disguise. That would explain the GRRRNNGTTTZZZ noise mine is making.)

The ad is from the 1940’s for Hotpoint Dishwasher, and thanks to Confessions of an Apron Queen for originally posting it.

Unless you’re familiar with Steven Colbert’s semi-regular Threatdown, you might not appreciate the blog post title. Either way, this vaguely threatening commercial as much is still worth watching.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the last clause. “If they do exist?” Are we supposed to be scared of the bear, or are we supposed to be hallucinating the bear, or is this bear just a cunning disguise to distract me from the socialist bear standing behind my couch waiting to eat me as soon as I turn off the TV?

I lived most of my life after the Berlin wall was down and communism became simply a place which makes really inexpensive plastic stuff. I thought I could laugh at lurking bears. But, some people still think the woods are full of bears.

At least, that’s what I initially thought when he mentioned “the ageless hope of people everywhere.” Turns out Nixon just meant freedom from tyranny.

Do you remember the Monroe Doctrine from your US History class? Me neither, so I looked it up.

The three main concepts of the doctrine–separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, non-colonization, and non-intervention–were designed to signify a clear break between the New World and the autocratic realm of Europe. Monroe’s administration forewarned the imperial European powers against interfering in the affairs of the newly independent Latin American states or potential United States territories. While Americans generally objected to European colonies in the New World, they also desired to increase United States influence and trading ties throughout the region to their south.

An 1820’s political theory was considered important during the Cold War? Wow. I wonder how many people who saw that 1960 commercial had any idea what he was talking about.

Feeling nostalgic? Well, The Responsibilities of American Citizenship will help you remember just how incredibly exciting you found civics class in high school! It’s part of the “American Adventure Series”, which must just be jam-packed with exciting action… or at least, fascinating information.

The instructor, Dr. Clifton Ganus Jr., was a professor at (and later president of) Harding University, a Christian university.

The Harding American Studies Institute is designed to… promote “a complete understanding of the institutions, values, and ideas of liberty and democracy.” In doing so, the ASI exhibits a generally conservative political stance, focused on going “back to the fundamental values that made this country great.” — Wikipedia

This film was produced as part of their educational mission.

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Dr. Ganus reminds his students that forces in society are at work, gradually destroying the pillars of our nation’s value. (You’ll notice that FUNDAMENTAL BELIEF IN GOD is at the foot of these pillars.) America is the number one target of socialists, and socialist forces among us are working to establish a worldwide dictatorship.

Oh dear. What can we do?

Well, it’s important that everyone learn as much as they can about why our nation is so wonderful, what makes it so, and how we can keep it that way. There’s a quick run-through of our Obligations of Citizenship…

1. Understand What Makes America Tick
2. Understand Tactics of Communism — its basic, godless philosophy, and so on
3. Understand Disguises of Socialism — these aren’t just disguises, they’re cunning disguises
4. Understand Propaganda Techniques (of communism and socialism, of course; capitalist propaganda is A-OK)
5. Take Interest in Education — not learning anything yourself, mind you, but finding out what’s being taught in your schools (in other words, are your neighborhood children learning Godless Socialist Propaganda.. perhaps cunningly disguised?)
6. Become Active in Government
7. Strive for Spiritual Growth
8. Dedicate Part of Every Day to Citizenship

Now, on one level, this film is funny. You never know what new prop Dr. Ganus will pull out to illustrate his point — a globe, a bunch of flags, a troop of boy scouts frying some eggs — and he kept managing to surprise me with his creativity. Looking deeper, however, the discussion emphasizes eternal vigilance against a very vaguely defined “enemy”, not to mention defining religion as the fundamental difference between the American way of life and the Godless Commie Bastards way of life. Paranoia runs rampant as students are encouraged to watch for socialism; the enemy is “cunningly disguised” so there isn’t much one can do except be suspicious of everything. When a full four of your eight “Obligations of Citizenship” consist of watching out for THE ENEMY, something’s just not quite right.

The Berlin Wall may be down, but much of the 1955 rhetoric is still present in American society, albeit with a different enemy to replace “socialists.” While I’m certainly not per se opposed to religion, this film helps make an excellent argument for keeping it separated from government. It should certainly not — and, legally, can not — be included as an obligation of citizenship. Historically, being convinced the country has a divine mandate to do something has always led to trouble.

Drawing comparisons to modern paranoid incitement and propaganda are left as an exercise to the curious reader. It shouldn’t be all that hard.

Major Matt Mason had a seriously cool moonbase. Enjoy a 1968 commercial:

thanks to Where’s My Jetpack for posting this, presumably because he wants Mason’s jetpack…

Apparently, the toy line used to be heavily based on actual astronaut equipment, before such additions as a giant with laser eyes.

When introduced in 1966, the figures were initially based on design information found in Life Magazine, Air Force Magazine, Jane’s, and other aviation- and space-interest periodicals. Later, the line would attempt to transition into the realm of science fiction.

Considering the strong relationship between science fiction’s young consumers growing up to be NASA scientists, I’m honestly not sure whether diluting the toy’s realism would have been positive or not.

[Trivial trivia: Major Sam Carter on Stargate SG-1 played with these as a kid, and ended up getting made into an action figure herself. Whoa.]

And in other NASA-related news, they are partnering with archive.org to make their video and still image databases available for public searching. Fun!

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Some of the advice is good, like “wash and peel fruits and vegetables that were exposed to fallout.” Some is a bit more questionable, like piling hay around your barn to protect your livestock. All of it is amusing, though.

I’d love to get my hands on a copy of some of those brochures, particularly “Your Livestock Can Survive FALLOUT.” I doubt they’re terribly common, though…

Having been out of town for ages, then having relatives visiting us, it’s taking days to catch up on my RSS feeds. I had no idea I read so much stuff. Good thing I’m being downsized, I’ll have more time for reading random blogs!

Two nice short olde tyme things from Modern Mechanix… Leg Falsies from 1953 (as if small boobs weren’t enough, now we need to worry about curvaceous calf muscles) or an 1950 ad for Americanized Judo (you don’t want to accidentally learn that Godless Commie Judo, after all).