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
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
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.
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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 At the time the Chronicle article was written, Perversion was the Prelinger Archive's second most popular download, superseded only by the well-known Cold War film Duck and Cover.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)
More like this
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Women of the World (1963)
Psychomontage (1963)
Forbidden Temptations (1963)
Scum of the Earth! (1963)
An Essay on Pornography (1973)
Sensuous Taboo (1966)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.