Kevin Donnelly
posted 26 January 2006

The Public Information Film (PIF) is a televisual constant, to a greater or lesser degree. The authorities have always seen television as an ideal forum for telling people what to do and letting them know what is good for them. Perhaps we see fewer of them now; maybe that is because we see more television programmes telling us what to do (last Tuesday I counted three of the four channels I can receive showing programmes about dieting or fitness at the same time). We certainly see a narrower range of PIFs. No-one tries to tell us about the dangers of polystyrene ceilings anymore. Here I will focus on films from the 1960s to the 1980s, and draw out some common threads.

There is a strong strain of 'the public are idiots' running through these films in these years. Cartoons like 'Jo and Petunia', in their series of hilarious adventures, suggest an urban working idiotclass, who do not know any better than to throw stones from countryside walls at bottles (1973). 'Lonely Water' (1973) also mentions that 'Only a fool would ignore this sign... unfortunately there is one born every minute'. This also makes good use of the stentorian tone (here, Donald Pleasance, elsewhere Patrick Allen, Valentine Dyall or Michael Jayston) that is part teacher, part apocalyptic preacher, which would crop up time and again. By the time of 'Stupid Git' (1983), which is about drunk driving, the themes and voices are so well worn that they can be inverted: the drunk driver reckons he can cope, until 'some stupid git does this [pedestrian walks out in front of car] or this [driver opens door onto oncoming drunk driver]' and of course the punch line is 'so who's the stupid git now?' But people are not just idiots; they are actively threatening - 'Where's your lad?' (1980) drips with fear of urban youth, attempting to strike the same fear into parents. He is a bastard, and you are idiot parents. In these latter two PIFs, the stentorian tone, the voice of authority (and fear) has given way to more laddish tones; perhaps they thought that the government could talk to people as a friend.

Many of the earlier PIFs are aimed at adults but designed as semi humorous cartoons. 'Rude on the Road' (1959) views like the title sequence of a 1960s sitcom like I Dream of Jeannie. At least this PIF posits that people do know the rules of the roads, and choose not to obey them, rather than never knowing them in the first place. They also reflect an improving economy, as more people bought cars. 'When in the Country' (1963) assumes that many of its viewers know nothing about it at all, and may cause trouble now that they can more easily go there.

'Billy Blunders' (1976) really does view like a 1970s sitcom, except that at the very end of this a man finds his head flying through the windscreen of his perfectly driven car. In fact this PIF is curious in that the idiot of the title is not the intended audience: it is a 'clunk click' PIF. The implication being that 'everyone else is an idiot, so wear a seatbelt'. Jo and Petunia continue on their hilarious adventures until their worn tyres PIF, at which the cartoon of their mini stuck halfway up a tree fades into a live action shot of the same. This is a recurring theme - the amusing PIF which changes tone at the very end, as though you have just watched a morality tale and not just some hectoring from the government.

PIFS are also indicators, like adverts and programmes, of their society. Accordingly, 'Young Workers' (1973) assumes a large section of the audience will be working in factories, and will also be idiots. 'Jobs for Women' (1970) seems very patronising - encouraging young women to get careers rather than jobs - but is made for an society where this concept was relatively fresh and the employers did not need to pay equal wages for the same jobs. Several films of the early 1970s implore youngsters to visit the careers officer at school, not go to university, but leave school at 15 or 16 for a job. 'Space Invader' (1982) attempts to marry road safety and early computer games. It is difficult to believe that this, with clunky graphics, and the reference to 'earthling' at the end, was ever aimed at adults. Now we have the idiot who is also so culturally ignorant he can only be reached by an allegory with a fashionable shoot 'em up. What next, the use of Pac Man as an 'eat fruit and veg' PIF? You can just imagine the committee rooms designing these PIFs looking at accident statistics and shaking their heads. 'Just how do we get through to these nutjobs? I know, let's use Space Invaders.'

There is a deep ambivalence in some of these films about how far to frighten. The 'Charley Says' series (1973) are serious but friendly and clearly voiced by a four year old (I hope). The tone of these is perfect for its audience. (And they do not date as much as others, because the child always refers to 'mummy', and goes on a picnic with her. Having said that, I suppose the subtext is that daddy is working, rather than does not exist.) But 'Lonely Water'? Or famously 'Play Safe - Frisbee' (1979). Here we have the kind of empty synth music that ran through early 1980s pop and was intended here to be haunting - the child screams and is burned up by a 66000 volt shock retrieving his frisbee from a substation. The PIF closes with the shot of his school clothes on the banister and the girl he was with screaming, cut up together. Very disturbing tea time viewing - and necessary? This is far more disturbing than many PIFs aimed at adults. Why do children need to be frightened into behaving well? Is this a hangover from older traditions of education, or does it reflect a changing attitude towards young people at the time, seeing them as sources of violence and fear (the boy in this PIF 'breaks in' to the substation to get his frisbee)? Our culture has problems with young people: how to create them, what they are here for, how to teach them, what do with them when they behave badly, that are probably universal but seem increasingly acute.

An internet search bring up only five references to a PIF known as 'The Natural Born Smoker', shown at tea time in 1985, in which a man sits in some kind of laboratory, with his grossly distended finger and tiny ears (he never listens). This extremely disturbing image was shown in the middle of children's TV - though not for very long. The ambivalence towards fear reached a point in 1987, when the 'Don't Die of Ignorance' campaign against Aids used some very graphic imagery - but to frighten whom? It is hard to escape the conclusion that though it seems aimed at adults, the real targets are people just about to start on sexual activities. The AIDS panic of the late 1980s was driven as much as anything by fear of people, mainly young people, having uncontrolled sex.

These PIFs from a generation ago suggest that those problems were growing in Britain way back. You can sense this fear in some other, more apocalyptic PIFs. 'Rabies Outbreak' (1976) suggests a future world in which all stray animals would be destroyed, and in which we would actively live in fear of animals. The threat is open and nasty. The implication is that foreigners live this way all the time. An alternate world in which things we take for granted are smashed. The sense of this alternate world was growing through 1976-77: the collapse of Britain's economy meant that as a condition of the £2.3 billion loan from the IMF, Denis Healey had to introduce some policies, such as selling off bits of BP, which anticipated Thatcher and suggested that the way we had lived for 30 years was going to be changing, and the way the world was going was not necessarily going to be great. There was a 1970s brutalist tradition of television and film violence that saw even Doctor Who end an episode with a close up of a drowning face (1976). It grew out of the idea that it was possible to do new things on television, now that censorship seemed to be dying off, and solidified into an increase in graphic violence and cynicism. This general hardening of outlook during the 1970s mirrors the fading confidence in the post war settlement. The belief in the munificent Authority certainly seemed at the time to be fading: the concept that the government could tell you how to lift properly, to wear white at night, to tidy up as you went to bed, or to cook all three courses of a meal in the oven at the same time was losing credibility. Hence the PIFs range narrows from the mid 1970s, to being mostly variants on road safety or fire safety. By 1983, what would be the point of making cartoons about teenagers at work in the factories?

The most telling films are those which were never shown until seen as part of Threads (1984). They are the 'Protect and Survive' cartoons (1975), voiced by Patrick Allen, who now does the voiceovers to Channel 4 trailers of Big Brother. They were made by Richard Taylor Cartoons, (who also made the 'Charley Says' series) and were meant to accompany the booklet of the same name. The booklet was published in 1980. The films were intended to be shown on all TV and radio channels in the few days of probable transition to nuclear war, with 'Casualties' being held to the last moments. This PIF is about the end of civilization. Here the god is the radio. It will tell you what to do, not 'the electricity board' or the council or anyone else - because no-one was sure what would be left. Most chillingly, the film tells you what to do with a dead body. 'If however, you have had a body in the house for more than five days, and if it is safe to go outside, then you should bury the body for the time being in a trench.' This is clearly aimed at the small percentage who might actually benefit from this advice.

The point of 'Protect and Survive' was that there were some rural areas, or edges of suburbs, where the fallout readings might be low, and contamination low, where people could have, following the right advice, survived. However, the implication of the advice is that for people who did not live in these areas, if they followed the advice, they would have died - no-one really knew what constituted 'safe to go outside'. Did they think the population understood readings in rads? Or that you could live with a dead body in your house for days? Many of the people watching the film would have ended a nuclear war with no roof - so much for 'If it is safe to go outside.' Hence the number of mouths to feed who cannot usefully work will be smaller. Finally, the closing image and the logo of 'Protect and Survive' is a family surrounded by a ring - the nuclear family, accompanied by another slice of synth. There we go. It's all over. 'Casualties' is one of the most despairing and cynical documents of our culture.

Public Information Films informed the public in these years, and with the information blew a swathe of anxieties across Cold War Britain, through boom and bust. What happened to the PIF next was no different. We were still a nation of idiots, but this time we needed to be horrified out of our proletarian habits...