According to Plan: Strategic Film Production at the London Rubber Company Jessica Borge
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
According to Plan: Strategic Film Production at the London Rubber Company Jessica Borge To cite this version: Jessica Borge. According to Plan: Strategic Film Production at the London Rubber Company. Cahiers d’histoire du Cnam, Cnam, 2019, 12 (2), pp.71-110. hal-02933984 HAL Id: hal-02933984 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02933984 Submitted on 8 Sep 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Cahiers d’histoire du Cnam vol.2 1 Dossier Le cinématographe pour l’industrie et dans les entreprises (1890-1990) Coordonné par Catherine Radtka et Robert Nardone 2019 / Second semestre (nouvelle série) Cahiers d’histoire du Cnam. Vol. 12, 2019 /2 (nouvelle série) Les Cahiers d’histoire du Cnam sont une revue à comité de lecture inscrite dans le champ de l’histoire des sciences et des techniques. Elle investit des questions de sociohistoire des institutions et pratiques scientifiques et techniques, avec une vocation pluridisciplinaire (notamment histoire, sociologie, an- thropologie, sciences de l’information-communication, et sciences de gestion). La revue publie des articles de recherche évalués en double aveugle (articles longs et articles de syn- thèse), sous forme de dossier thématique ou en varia. Elle offre également des ressources documentaires diverses : entretiens et témoignages, encadrés informatifs, notules et enquêtes menées par des acteurs. Un comité de lecture ad hoc est constitué à chaque numéro. La liste complète des lecteurs est publiée sur la page Web de la revue : [URL : http://technique-societe.cnam.fr/les-cahiers-d-histoire-du-cnam-696687.kjsp] Fondateurs (première série, 1992) Claudine Fontanon, André Grelon Les 5 premiers numéros de l’ancienne série (1992-1996) sont disponibles intégralement sur le site Web du Conservatoire numérique du Cnam [URL : http://cnum.cnam.fr] Direction de la publication Olivier Faron, administrateur général du Conservatoire national des arts et métiers Rédacteur en chef Loïc Petitgirard Comité de rédaction Andrée Bergeron, Marco Bertilorenzi, Jean-Claude Bouly, Serge Chambaud, Lise Cloître, Renaud d’Enfert, Claudine Fontanon, Virginie Fonteneau, Hélène Gispert, Irina Gouzévitch, André Grelon, Pierre Lamard, Alain Michel, Cédric Neumann, Loïc Petitgirard, Catherine Radtka, Laurent Rollet, Ferruccio Ricciardi, Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan, Stéphane Lefebvre, Henri Zimnovitch Comité de lecture du numéro Mireille Berton, Charlotte Bigg, David Cantor, Caitjan Gainty, Martin Goutte, Kira Kitsopanidou, Pascal Laborderie, Alain Michel, Cédric Neumann, Marina Nicola, Loïc Petitgirard, Ferruccio Ricciardi, Yvonne Zimmermann Secrétariat de rédaction Camille Paloque-Bergès, avec la collaboration de Bilel Osmane Laboratoire HT2S-Cnam, Case 1LAB10, 2 rue Conté, 75 003 Paris Mél : camille. [email protected] Maquettage Françoise Derenne, sur un gabarit original créé par la Direction de la Communication du Cnam Impression Service de la reprographie du Cnam Crédits, mentions juridiques et dépôt légal : ©Cnam ISSN 1240-2745 Illustrations photographiques : Archives du Cnam ou tous droits réservés 71 According to Plan: Strategic Film Production at the London Rubber Company in the 1960s Jessica Borge SAGE UMR7363, Université de Strasbourg1 De 1964 à 1976, le département du film Between 1964 and 1976, the London Abstract éducatif de la London Rubber Company a Rubber Company’s Education Film Unit réalisé sept films sur la contraception. Ces commissioned seven films about contraception, films ont été diffusés dans tout le pays, dans which were toured across the country. Films Résumé des églises, des centres de protection were screened in churches, welfare clinics, maternelle et infantile, des clubs des mères, mother’s clubs, health centres, and even men’s des centres médicaux, ainsi que dans des and women’s prisons. They filled an important prisons pour hommes et pour femmes. Ils ont gap in the training of nurses, medics and comblé d’importantes lacunes dans la ancillary medical services as well as educating formation des infirmières, du personnel ordinary adults and children in contraceptive médical et soignant. Ces films ont également theory and use. However, the films were also contribué à éduquer plus généralement les useful for directing the ever-increasing market adultes et les enfants à la contraception, en of contraceptive consumers away from rival ce qui concerne aussi bien les aspects contraceptive techniques.1 théoriques de la reproduction et de la contraception que les questions plus pratiques. Keywords: contraception; industrial film; Cependant, sur un marché de la contraception public relations; promotion; medical en forte croissance, ces films ont aussi été un marketing. outil pour détourner le consommateur des méthodes de contraception concurrentes. 1 The author acknowledges that the preparation of this Mots-clés : contraception ; film industriel ; article, within the ERC BodyCapital project, received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) relations publiques ; publicité ; marketing under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research médical. and innovation programme (grant agreement No 694817). In the summer of 1962 the British cal advances in condoms4. More so, the Family Planning Association (FPA), FPA’s eagerness to produce a follow-up wishing to produce a sequel to their 1958 to Birthright suggested that audiences film about contraceptive theory, approa- were receptive to learning about contra- ched the London Rubber Company ception – or at least the work of the FPA (LRC), makers of Durex condoms, for – through the moving image. In August sponsorship. The sequel to Birthright2 1962, LRC’s Managing Director, Angus was intended to update audiences on the Reid, wrote to the FPA with a decision on latest birth control technology: the oral the question of sponsorship for the Bir- contraceptive pill3. However, whereas thright sequel: the company would prefer LRC was willing to support films dis- to make its own films5. cussing contraception in the abstract, the idea of funding one that advertised the Between 1964 and 1976, LRC’s “pill” – a potential marketplace rival – Education Film Unit made seven films seemed absurd. The FPA and LRC had about contraception, namely: According an awkward, co-dependent relationship to Plan (1964); Learning to Live (1964); chiefly because the FPA supported female Sex Instruction: Man and Woman (1964); contraceptive techniques over male, Family Planning – A Medical Approach even though it often depended on finan- (1964); London Image (1965); Every cial aid from LRC (Borge, 2020; Borge, Baby a Wanted Baby (1968); and Res- 2017b, pp. 185-221). The FPA oversaw ponsibility. A Film About Contracep- the only testing body for oral contracep- tion (1976). These films were ostensibly tives in Britain (Junod & Marks, 2002, exhibited for the purposes of sex educa- pp. 136-7), so advertisement for the pill tion (Head, 1977, pp. 298-299; Daines, might also serve as promotion for the 1970) but they also functioned beyond FPA. The FPA’s intention to use film this remit. The LRC corpus catered to, to promote the pill nevertheless moti- was shaped by, and sought to intercede vated LRC to action. Market research in changes sweeping through the British showed that average consumers saw the birth control marketplace in the 1960s, pill as a modern scientific development namely, a widening public discussion, but were wholly unaware of technologi- and the development of new technolo- gies. Both the FPA and LRC had clear PR ambitions for their films. The FPA, 2 The FPA’s Birthright is not to be confused with Oscar Micheaux’s 1938 film Birthright (see [URL: https:// player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-birthright- 4 Ernest Dichter Associates (henceforth EDA), 1380c: 1938-online] or the American VD film of the same A Motivational Research Study on Rubber name (Birthright, Southern Educational Film Production Contraceptives, London, EDA, 1961, pp. 9, 14, 15, 160, Service, 1951), which is set on a chicken farm in Georgia 164. Ernest Dichter papers and research reports. Hagley (Eberwein, 1999, pp. 160-161). Museum and Archive, Delaware. 3 FPA archives, Wellcome Library, London, FPA/ 5 Angus Reid to Mrs Clifford-Smith, September 4th A17/38. 1958. FPA/A7/78. 72 73 which had established a publicity Sub- 2016; Bonah & al., 2015; Curtis, 2015; Committee in 19506, wanted to make the Gaycken, 2015; Ostherr, 2013; Oregon topic of contraception acceptable, to push & Streible, 2012; Hediger & Vonderau, for improved access through the National 2009; Boon, 2008; de Pastre-Robert & Health Service, and to promote its own al., 2004). Faye Riley, for example, has organisation as the public face of this applied the micro-history approach to subject. In 1954, it was agreed that “the her examination of the Centron company, fundamental object was prestige and to which made both industrial and educa- create an informed opinion in influen- tional films, reading the inner dynamics tial circles”7. LRC’s films were a direct of the organisation as key to its overall response to this activity,