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Perversion for Profit
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<p><i>Perversion for Profit</i> is a 1963 <a href="/facts/Eastmancolor/jBwwfE1e">Eastmancolor</a> <a href="/facts/Propaganda_film/MfHN9jQD">propaganda film</a> financed by <a href="/facts/Charles_Keating/JXyL8V8G">Charles Keating</a> through <a href="/facts/Citizens_for_Decent_Literature/G9ULz5AD">Citizens for Decent Literature</a> and narrated by news reporter <a href="/facts/George_Putnam_(newsman)/yWz31ueg">George Putnam</a>. The film's argument is that sexually explicit materials corrupt young viewers and readers, leading to acts of violence and "perverted" attitudes towards sexuality –<a href="/facts/Sexual_orientation/Rcx5r9UB">homosexuality</a> included. Although <i>Perversion for Profit</i> was serious in its suggestion that pornography could erode the integrity of American culture, Peter L. Stein of the <i><a href="/facts/San_Francisco_Chronicle/HV7h1xrr">San Francisco Chronicle</a></i> wrote in a 2003 review that it was "shrill and sometimes comical". </p><p>Today, <i>Perversion for Profit</i> is in the <a href="/facts/Public_domain/YWKMDKw4">public domain</a>, and it has become popular on the <a href="/facts/Prelinger_Archives/e0Q0fvb8">Prelinger Archives</a> website and on <a href="/facts/YouTube/db276jst">YouTube</a>. As Peter L. Stein observes in an article for the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, 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: </p> <blockquote><p> ... 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.</p></blockquote> <p>At the time the <i>Chronicle</i> article was written, <i>Perversion</i> was the Prelinger Archive's second most popular download, superseded only by the well-known Cold War film <i><a href="/facts/Duck_and_Cover_(film)/rumj8GCK">Duck and Cover</a></i>. Like Stein, <a href="/facts/Sponsored_film/2P17XH1B">ephemeral film</a> scholar <a href="/facts/Rick_Prelinger/ft52C7nY">Rick Prelinger</a>, founder of the Archive, views such films as illuminating historical documents or what he calls "unofficial evidence of everyday life". </p>