{"id":106355,"date":"2017-01-03T13:39:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T18:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106355"},"modified":"2017-01-03T16:01:05","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T21:01:05","slug":"the-source-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/","title":{"rendered":"The Source Material"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dipping into the thousands of ephemeral films in the Prelinger Archives<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_106357\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-106357\" class=\"wp-image-106357\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\" width=\"1000\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png 1463w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming-300x217.png 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming-768x555.png 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming-1024x740.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-106357\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from <i>Design for Dreaming<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a scene in <em>Ed Wood<\/em>, Tim Burton\u2019s 1994 biopic of the director of <em>Glen or Glenda<\/em>, that has always struck me as profound. The young Wood, played by Johnny Depp, is doing thankless work as a stagehand on a Hollywood-studio lot where he kills time watching stock footage of bomb detonations and rampaging bison. Visibly rapt, he asks what\u2019s to become of these clips, only to be told by the kindly clerk, \u201cProbably file it away and never see it again.\u201d He replies, \u201cIf I had half a chance, I could make an entire movie using this stock footage. The story opens on these mysterious explosions. Nobody knows what\u2019s causing them, but it\u2019s scaring all the buffalo!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since 1982, the archivist, filmmaker, and open-access advocate Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films. Some six thousand of these are available for free viewing on the <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Internet Archive<\/a>. Like Ed Wood, I can while away hours watching these movies, many of which were originally made to be shown before feature films, as part of expos, or in classrooms. I am so grateful for the opportunity to take a journey by cable car in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFire\" target=\"_blank\">A Trip Down Market Street<\/a>\u201d (1906), which captured downtown San Francisco just before the fire and earthquake reshaped the city; or to observe the industrial constructivism of the Chevrolet-produced \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/MasterHa1936\">Master Hands<\/a>,\u201d (1936) where the toil of autoworkers converts the assembly of machine parts into a kind of proletariat ballet.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/MasterHa1936\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/GoldenYe1960\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I love these movies for their balance of fantasy and realism\u2014they take on American themes out of Sinclair Lewis or John Dos Passos, sometimes coupled with an ostentatiously Brechtian pageantry. More than anything, these films show us what postwar America looked like. The 1960\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/GoldenYe1960\" target=\"_blank\">Golden Years<\/a>\u201d was tasked with taking bowling alleys out of the seedy working-class demesne and into middle-class wholesomeness purely in the basis of its color palette, described by voice-over as \u201cthe warmth of coral, the richness of gold, the quiet relaxation of green, the calm coolness of blue, the crisp contemporary look of classic white, and the pleasure-packed attractiveness of tangerine.\u201d Other films are psychosocial vignettes. In \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/CaseofSp1940\" target=\"_blank\">A Case of Spring Fever<\/a>\u201d (1940), for instance, a man who foolishly wishes to live in a world without springs is taunted by a demonic coil of steel\u2014an educational reel of the type memorably parodied on <em>The Simpsons<\/em>. Then there\u2019s the immersive fantasia of General Motors\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/2306_Design_for_Dreaming_21_26_14_00\">Design for Dreaming<\/a>,\u201d in which a dancer dreams of a masked man who takes her on a musical tour of the kitchen of the future.<\/p>\n<p>Some of these movies, or their tropes, have passed into the public consciousness, as you can see in footage like that of a portico withstanding the blast of an atomic bomb from 1952\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/Houseint1954\" target=\"_blank\">The House in the Middle<\/a>\u201d (a promotion by the National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association) or in one of Rick Prelinger\u2019s favorites, the Frank Capra\u2013directed \u201cHemo the Magnificent,\u201d from 1957, whose animated guide to the circulatory system was almost certainly the model for that jolly strand of DNA from <em>Jurassic Park<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/08QDu2pGtkc?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Prelinger is clearly thrilled by the drama of materiality; as an eighth grader, he wrote a play about the dangers of nitrate film stock and began making found-footage movies from scraps of sixteen millimeter rental prints. Mesmerized by the footage of war and calamity with which CBS padded <em>Twentieth Century with Walter Cronkite <\/em>(\u201cI resented the editor\u2019s hand,\u201d he recalls, \u201cI wanted to see the source material in its entirety\u201d), he attended U.C. Berkeley before getting caught up in the punk movement and landing in 1980s New York, where he happened to share a flat with the archivists behind 1982\u2019s nuke-panic montage-movie <em>The Atomic Caf\u00e9<\/em>. Prelinger was hired as the director of research on a follow-up film on post\u2013World War II sexuality to be called <em>Heavy Petting<\/em> but, at a time when film was rapidly transitioning to video, making it both cheap and endangered, he found himself driven to collect educational and sponsored film with the undiscriminating eye of a salvager. By the 1990s, his collection was a\u00a0hundred thousand reels strong and this had more than doubled by the time the Library of Congress acquired it in 2002. Now it\u2019s not uncommon to see the films featured in ad hoc music videos on YouTube like a sublime paring of \u201cA Trip Down Market Street\u201d with Air\u2019s \u201cLa femme d\u2019argent<em>.<\/em>\u201d My first exposure to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/OneGotFa1963\">One Got Fat<\/a>,\u201d a bike safety film where children in grotesque monkey masks are run down one after another, was as visual accompaniment to \u201cEverything You Do Is a Balloon\u201d by Boards of Canada. Nor has Prelinger ceased to play at this \u201cgame of recombinations\u201d himself, producing feature length films like 2004\u2019s <em>Panorama Ephemera <\/em>or 2013\u2019s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/nomoreroadtrips.blogspot.com\/\">No More Road Trips?<\/a><\/em>, which was composed entirely from home movies of families on vacation.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/OneGotFa1963\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe highest destiny of cultural collections is to be consumed,\u201d Prelinger wrote to me in an e-mail. This befits commercial masterpieces like \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/OnceUpon1956\">Once Upon a Honeymoon<\/a>,\u201d where an angel breathes new life into a marriage by demonstrating how AT&amp;T telephones can become part of any decorating scheme; or its counterpoint \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/AdventuresInTelezonia\">Adventure in Telezonia<\/a>,\u201d where a demonic marionette out of nightmares glides along telephone wires to enforce proper telephone usage. Film is a participatory art form for Prelinger and he asks audiences of his recent home-movie montages to become the sound track, as in \u201cthe Elizabethan Theatre, a boxing match, or question time at the House of Commons \u2026 Sometimes the excitement of making noise in the movies outweighs (or transcends) whatever specific goals the maker might aspire towards: permission is granted the audience, they eagerly accept it and run in whatever direction they choose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prelinger\u2019s brand of defamiliarization is especially striking, and possibly transgressive, when you consider how many of the ephemeral films in the Archive were created simply to bring new innovations to the attention of consumers, no matter how slight or self-explanatory said innovations would seem to be. \u201cBehind the Freedom Curtain,\u201d for example, dramatized the function of voting booths for audiences in 1957. Another thing that becomes impossible to ignore after gorging on these movies is the ubiquity of \u201cdanger\u201d: an often unspecified, catchall menace that, like Henry James\u2019s \u201cBeast in the Jungle,\u201d promises that some spectacular doom waits for us in cars, out of the skies, at work, or even in our own homes. The cadence of these films mines everything in the midcentury pop-cultural vernacular\u2014aliens transform a crossing guard into an all-purpose avenger of household negligence in \u201cHarm Hides at Home,\u201d and the Caterpillar Tractor Company\u2019s \u201cShake Hands with Danger\u201d features a catchy Johnny Cash\u2013style jingle\u2014to make their points. But my favorite of the safety films is \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/time_out_for_trouble\">Time Out for Trouble<\/a>,\u201d (1961) where a sinister voice\u2014the accident personified\u2014gloats, \u201cThese stupid humans. They think <em>things <\/em>are responsible for accidents. Material things, like that electrical cord that caught Jane\u2019s foot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/time_out_for_trouble\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p>It can be tempting to laugh off artifacts like \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/Perversi1965\" target=\"_blank\">Perversion for Profit<\/a>,\u201d an antipornography screed by a Cincinnati-based censorship outfit, but Prelinger was careful to correct me when I referred to the visionary Technicolor aesthetic of so many of these movies as \u201cpop art.\u201d These films were made in all sincerity: they serve as records of both the entrenched values of their era and the extent to which we\u2019re all naturally reconstituted from the received memory of film. One thing that becomes clear in Prelinger\u2019s 2006 book, <em>The Field Guide to Sponsored Films<\/em>, is how much of the cultural conversation hinged on extremely telling documents like the Academy Award\u2013winning \u201cThe House I Live In,\u201d where Frank Sinatra urges children in 1945 to \u201cUse your good American heads\u201d and resist anti-Semitism; or, on the other side of the scale, the paranoid \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/0003_Brink_of_Disaster_01_00_45_00\">Brink of Disaster<\/a>\u201d (1972), a diatribe against New Deal hippie liberalism where a student besieged by the student protester riffraff huddles in a campus library with the disapproving ghost of a Massachusetts colonialist. After the mob interrupts their discussion of drugs, sex, and radicalism, a freeze-frame title asks, \u201c<small>WILL YOU LET THIS BE THE END?<\/small>\u201d Meanwhile, the midcentury tug-of-war over public perception of labor unions is captured in real time. Prelinger\u2019s description of a 1946 film called \u201cDeadline for Action\u201d reads:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Influential union film arguing for political action through the ballot box. The film traces the story of an ex-serviceman who joins the picket line against his antilabor employer but also learns the importance of fighting big business through democratic elections. In explaining the rationale behind the post\u2013World War II strikes against General Electric and Westinghouse, Deadline for Action uses footage of police suppression of the picketers and animated sequences depicting corporate dominance of the American political system. Wrote J.A. Livingston [in the <em>Washington Post<\/em>], \u201cIt\u2019s worth seeing, both as a technical tour de force and as a masterful piece of propaganda. There\u2019s no doubt about this job\u2014it was not done by amateurs. But there might be some doubt whether it was made in America.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Suburban sprawl and urban blight; leftover New Deal socialism and the Red Scare; sexual education and the pervasive authority of triumphalist white-collar parenting. There\u2019s more than a little whiff of American mythology cut into the Prelinger Archives\u2019s assembly of narratives, even if the impulse is fundamentally documentary. Since the national library acquired the Archive, Rick Prelinger, who is an associate professor of film and\u00a0digital media at UC Santa Cruz, has increasingly turned his attention to video while compiling several film programs that chart the transformation of the American city, including <em>Lost Landscapes of Detroit <\/em>(2010\u20132012) and <em>Lost Landscapes of Oakland <\/em>(2014). He\u2019s obviously concerned with the question of how ideas and concepts become objects and what we bring to the table as observers of these objects. How much of the pleasure I take in 1969\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/0197_Coffee_House_Rendezvous_16_21_22_00\">Coffee House Rendezvous<\/a>,\u201d which did for the coffee house what \u201cGolden Years\u201d did for bowling alleys, is rank nostalgia? Do I feel thrilled by the gloomy World War II\u2013era \u201cMachine: Master or Slave?\u201d precisely because, with fifty-fifty hindsight, I think I know the answer? These are the suspicions art is supposed to provoke, a sort of screening room for the unconscious where we cut scraps of the world together into crude coherence.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/embed\/0197_Coffee_House_Rendezvous_16_21_22_00\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an irony of the present that these commercial remnants and public-service announcements have been allowed, through Prelinger, to outlive their original intent. They reach us as an authentic American art form, a chronicle of bygone beauty and horror in the modern world, deserving of preservation, study, and, especially, a new life.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Recent work by J. W. McCormack appears in\u00a0the<\/em> New York Times<em>,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>Conjunctions<em>,\u00a0<\/em>BOMB<em>, and the\u00a0<\/em>New Republic<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1186],"tags":[15276,18844,33,2968,26466,16329,1642,26461,7165,79,8705,3223,22681,26469,9510,26467,153,3889,7148,18842,81,26468,26463,26470,26465,26464,26471,3892,26462,4072],"class_list":["post-106355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-film","tag-american-culture","tag-archive-org","tag-archives","tag-censorship","tag-chevrolet","tag-collections","tag-commercials","tag-ed-wood","tag-ephemera","tag-film","tag-films","tag-footage","tag-found-art","tag-found-footage","tag-frank-capra","tag-free-movies","tag-henry-james","tag-john-dos-passos","tag-libraries","tag-midcentury-design","tag-movies","tag-national-paint-varnish-and-lacquer-assopcation","tag-prelinger-archive","tag-public-safety","tag-public-service-announcements","tag-rick-prelinger","tag-safety-films","tag-sinclair-lewis","tag-the-prelinger-archive","tag-tim-burton"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Wonders of the Prelinger Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Source Material by J. W. McCormack\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 3, 2017 \u2013 Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1463\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1057\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"J. W. McCormack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"J. W. McCormack\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"J. W. McCormack\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7f5b4b0696797db06f605340311acfe0\"},\"headline\":\"The Source Material\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\"},\"wordCount\":1833,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\",\"keywords\":[\"American culture\",\"archive.org\",\"archives\",\"censorship\",\"Chevrolet\",\"collections\",\"commercials\",\"Ed Wood\",\"ephemera\",\"film\",\"Films\",\"footage\",\"found art\",\"found footage\",\"Frank Capra\",\"free movies\",\"Henry James\",\"John Dos Passos\",\"libraries\",\"midcentury design\",\"movies\",\"National Paint Varnish and Lacquer Assopcation\",\"Prelinger Archive\",\"public safety\",\"public service announcements\",\"Rick Prelinger\",\"safety films\",\"Sinclair Lewis\",\"the Prelinger Archive\",\"Tim Burton\"],\"articleSection\":[\"On Film\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\",\"name\":\"The Wonders of the Prelinger Archive\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00\",\"description\":\"Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Source Material\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7f5b4b0696797db06f605340311acfe0\",\"name\":\"J. W. McCormack\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d780854512f58729fb6a758ec902af867d2601fc722c5f10f88b9eebbea7ce8a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d780854512f58729fb6a758ec902af867d2601fc722c5f10f88b9eebbea7ce8a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"J. W. McCormack\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jwmccormack\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Wonders of the Prelinger Archive","description":"Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Source Material by J. W. McCormack","og_description":"January 3, 2017 \u2013 Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1463,"height":1057,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"J. W. McCormack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"J. W. McCormack","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/"},"author":{"name":"J. W. McCormack","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7f5b4b0696797db06f605340311acfe0"},"headline":"The Source Material","datePublished":"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00","dateModified":"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/"},"wordCount":1833,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png","keywords":["American culture","archive.org","archives","censorship","Chevrolet","collections","commercials","Ed Wood","ephemera","film","Films","footage","found art","found footage","Frank Capra","free movies","Henry James","John Dos Passos","libraries","midcentury design","movies","National Paint Varnish and Lacquer Assopcation","Prelinger Archive","public safety","public service announcements","Rick Prelinger","safety films","Sinclair Lewis","the Prelinger Archive","Tim Burton"],"articleSection":["On Film"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/","name":"The Wonders of the Prelinger Archive","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png","datePublished":"2017-01-03T18:39:06+00:00","dateModified":"2017-01-03T21:01:05+00:00","description":"Since 1982, Rick Prelinger has curated the Prelinger Archives, which comprises upward of sixty thousand sponsored, ephemeral, and industrial films.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/designfordreaming.png"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/03\/the-source-material\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Source Material"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7f5b4b0696797db06f605340311acfe0","name":"J. W. McCormack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d780854512f58729fb6a758ec902af867d2601fc722c5f10f88b9eebbea7ce8a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d780854512f58729fb6a758ec902af867d2601fc722c5f10f88b9eebbea7ce8a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"J. W. McCormack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jwmccormack\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106355"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106363,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106355\/revisions\/106363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}