jegka's review
2.0
I was hoping for a funny nostalgic collection like Scouts in Bondage or Galery of Regrettable Food. This book takes itself more seriously and therefore is not as fun. More of an actual accounting of those horrid old filmstrips from elementary school.
manwithanagenda's review
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
A lot more serious than I thought it would be. Gregory really takes his subject seriously.
There's plenty of humor here, of course, but the text gets more in depth into the sociological, historical (and to a lesser extent) the artistic contexts behind the creation of filmstrips and how their messages changed from their creation for the army, to use in classrooms in the 50s through the 70s. This serious commentary is peppered with little jibes and sarcastic chapter titles.
The images are great, though most of them are little thumbnails of the strips themselves and only a few are blown up so you can really see the details and odd, earnestly cheerful expressions of the actors. The one on personal hygiene was the highlight.
So don't expect to be rolling on the floor laughing, or getting lots of cool weird 50s Stepford advice. It's a nice book to flip through and the text is informative without being too wordy or hard to get into. It just wasn't exactly what I was hoping it was.
There's plenty of humor here, of course, but the text gets more in depth into the sociological, historical (and to a lesser extent) the artistic contexts behind the creation of filmstrips and how their messages changed from their creation for the army, to use in classrooms in the 50s through the 70s. This serious commentary is peppered with little jibes and sarcastic chapter titles.
The images are great, though most of them are little thumbnails of the strips themselves and only a few are blown up so you can really see the details and odd, earnestly cheerful expressions of the actors. The one on personal hygiene was the highlight.
So don't expect to be rolling on the floor laughing, or getting lots of cool weird 50s Stepford advice. It's a nice book to flip through and the text is informative without being too wordy or hard to get into. It just wasn't exactly what I was hoping it was.
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