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Our
short film opens in a classroom. It seems
the eighth-graders need a couple
volunteers from the fifth-grade class for
an assembly production. (Assembly
production? Yeah, right. Lining up the
poor saps up for a date in the john and a
swirly is more like it.)
The
narrator pipes up, saying, to be picked for
such an honor, it is important to be neat
and clean, and personal hygiene is the
beginning and the end of all things social.
The camera pans down a row to Don; a rough
and tumble looking fellow, who seems
healthy enough, but is a little unkempt.
And the fascist narrator takes him to task
for his awful appearance (but
speaking from personal experience I don't
think anything can help that cow-lick.)
Herr
Narrator turns omniscient, and turns back
the sands of time until we find Don still
in bed. (Sorcerer!
Burn him!)
Herr Narrator chides Don out of bed so
he'll have plenty of time to properly get
ready for school. After
a shower -- that requires Don to scrub
down to the white meat, elbows, toes, and
naughty bits -- Herr Narrator tells us
that we must bathe at least once a day
during the summer, but every other day in
the winter will suffice. You should also
wash your hair at least three times a week
(although
I'm not sure if water will actually
penetrate all that Vitalis.)
Next
comes the grooming, and for heaven's sake,
don't brush your teeth until after
breakfast. After Herr Narrator turns Don
into an obsessive compulsive by sanitizing
the bathroom spotless when he's done,
they return to his bedroom, where the
lesson in discipline continues.
One
must make sure to always wear clean
skivvies and clothes, making extra sure
that everything is adjusted and secured
properly. Don's shoes are a mess, so Herr
Narrator conjures up a a shoe-polishing
kit out of thin air. He also offers that
we can make a kit ourselves (but
that's a whole other industrial short all
together.)
Herr Narrator then gets on Don to clean
his room, and with the help of some time
lapse photography, the deed is quickly done
and Don is wore out (and
probably in need of another shower.)
So
Don is now looking dapper, but what about
his friend Mildred? She's a mess, too, so
Herr Narrator picks on her next, and sets
The Way-Back machine to the night before.
Because girls
are more fussy about their appearance and
must wash their hair before going to bed.
Herr Narrator warns not to go to bed with
wet hair (under
penalty of torture!), so Mildred
puts her hair up, and while it dries,
trims her nails with an emery board but accidentally
opens up a wound. (Sorry,
Mildred, that whole finger will have to
come off now. Must be tidy.)
Mildred's
room is a bigger disaster area than Don's,
so Herr Narrator cajoles her into speed-cleaning
it. Her room clean, and her hair dry, Mildred
flops into bed.
The
next morning, Mildred is put through the
same obsessive / compulsive drills as Don.
Clean undies and such, but then she must
fix her hair before dressing (and
is it me, or are the filmmakers letting
little Mildred linger in her slip for a
long, long time?) Herr Narrator
demands at least 100 brush strokes on each
side (no
more, no less. Ve must have discipline!) Her
hair in place, Mildred then dresses. Herr
Narrator says the first dress she chooses
is to formal,
and not appropriate for school (and
makes her look like a tart),
so she changes into something more
reasonable. Squeaky clean and spiffy,
Mildred head's to school...
Alas,
this was all Herr Narrator's pipe dream;
so Don and Mildred aren't pretty enough to
be selected for the assembly, and are
passed over for someone else.
And
the moral of the story? It's not who you
are, but the clothes you wear, and how you
wear them, that's important. And remember,
pretty people fit in better because people
like you better when you're as pretty as
society says you should be. (So
stop at nothing to look as pretty as the
mystery voices inside your head tells you
to.)
The
End
Have
you ever sat around and wondered just
where exactly did all these educational
shorts come from? Sure, they're a hoot to
watch today, but they were created for a
purpose -- I assume with the best
intentions, and they've been brainwashing
the youth of America ever since.
Some
would have you believe that they were the direct result of the adults who won World
War II not wanting the next generation
to degenerate into the free thinking, hard
drinking, and hard partying bunch of
sexually-deviant nihilists that dang near
led the country to ruin after the first
World War. Committees
were formed, experts were consulted, and
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
was boiled down to a simple formula: obey
the rules and maintain the status quo. If
you refused to obey and conform, you will be ridiculed, amount
to nothing, and worst of all, you will die
a horrible and catastrophic death.
I'm
guessing those military hygiene and scare
films that used to keep the troops in line
were good enough for the kids, too, so the
medium was adopted. If the kids won't
listen to reason, then we'll scare the piss
out of them by showing even the most
innocent of mistakes will lead to a life
of ruin or death.
Did
these things actually work? Were countless
lives saved because of these 10-minute one-reelers?
The world may never know for sure.
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