90 years of sex education films

I listen to various podcasts while I am commuting to work. The BBC produces a weekday poscast called "The NewsPod." They select various stories that have appeared throughout the BBC radio network. On February 9, 2009, one of the stories was the above-titled "90 Years of Sex Education Films." It is a fascinating story . . . I want to concentrate on one minor aspect of the story that caught my attention. It doesn't do justice to the entire production, but it illustrates something that fascinates me.

The first sex education films in Britain were evidently made in about 1918 or so.

In discussing them, the exhibition curator commented that she was expecting that the films would go from indirect and fumbling discussions of sex in the early years though more progressive and enlightened films in more recent times.

But this isn't what she found. Instead she found that discussions of sex ebbed and flowed in both how explicit they were and the sort of messages that they were giving. For example, in the 1940s, there was a lot of discussion of STDs which was probably intended to protect the armed forces as they traveled (and were tempted?) around the world.

In another example, the curator contrasted two stories of unwanted pregnancy from 1930s and the early 1970s -- where the basic plot was the same (i.e. late-teen girl finds herself pregnant). In the 1930s version, the girl eventually was forgiven by her fiancee and was able to go live with a sympathetic aunt: in the 1970s version, she lost all her friends and family and ended up alone. Oddly enough, the 1930s version was much more humane.

This story illustrates (for me) what I see as one of the key features of the "Modern" Western world - the idea of "Progress" - and why that idea is something of a mass hallucination more than a empirical fact.

Since the 18th century (at least), the general view has been that because of our technological innovations and increasing education, we are qualitatively different than our ancestors (who were poor, simple people) - generally society sees itself as more enlightened than the ancestors. [By the way, the Apocalyptic view of history also buys into this theory, if in an inverted way - i.e. we are the most evil generation in history, calling upon ourselves God's wrath.]

It is true that our ancestors didn't have many of the material and scientific advancements that we take for granted. (I am writing on a computer that will post things to a server in some location I don't even know, using phone lines and goodness knows what other technology.) Yet . . . This does not mean that we actually interact any more efficiently or meaningfully with our surroundings than did our ancestors.

We now have the ability to compare 90 years worth of sex education films -- and we can see that in fact, there was no steady march of "Progress" from ignorance to enlightenment. Instead, each generation made films that addressed their time and place. Some things became more permissive, others become less so -- in the 1960s, the films were relaxed, but by the 1980s (and the height of the AIDS epidemic), the films featured tombstones.

Is it possible that the author of Ecclesiastes might have been right? "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. . . . It has already been, in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them." (From Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)

Here is the BBC story:
** 90 years of sex education films **
Katie McGahan, curator at the BFI, and psychologist Dr Petra Boynton discuss sex education films.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/today/hi/today/newsid_7878000/7878373.stm >