Perversion for Profit (1963)

Genre

documentary film, propaganda film

Country

United States

Runtime

31 min

Rating

3.5 of 10 from 11 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A 1960s propaganda film argues that pornography corrupts young people and leads to violence and perversion. Narrated by a news reporter, it uses sexually explicit magazine covers and leaflets as evidence. The film is serious in tone but now seems shrill and unintentionally comical.

datedpreachysensationalistearneststridentarchivalcampymoralizing

What happens

Perversion for Profit is a 1963 Eastmancolor propaganda film financed by Charles Keating through Citizens for Decent Literature and narrated by news reporter George Putnam. The film's argument is that sexually explicit materials corrupt young viewers and readers, leading to acts of violence and "perverted" attitudes towards sexuality –homosexuality included. Although Perversion for Profit was serious in its suggestion that pornography could erode the integrity of American culture, Peter L. Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in a 2003 review that it was "shrill and sometimes comical". Today, Perversion for Profit is in the public domain, and it has become popular on the Prelinger Archives website and on YouTube. As Peter L. Stein observes in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, however, the film also has considerable historical significance, serving as a sort of time capsule of pornography from the era as well as an example of historical concerns regarding media influence: ... as the parade of girlie magazine covers, men's physique pictorials and campy S&M leaflets continues, the film betrays a kind of prurience the filmmakers could hardly have intended. What results is a remarkable visual record of midcentury underground literature and sexual appetites, and a gloss on the values of the society that condemned them. At the time the Chronicle article was written, Perversion was the Prelinger Archive's second most popular download, superseded only by the well-known Cold War film Duck and Cover. Like Stein, ephemeral film scholar Rick Prelinger, founder of the Archive, views such films as illuminating historical documents or what he calls "unofficial evidence of everyday life". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• Psychomontage (1963)
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• Scum of the Earth! (1963)
• An Essay on Pornography (1973)
• Sensuous Taboo (1966)