Films

<--------------------------------------------------> This is a posting to ECONHIST.TEACH, a list operated by The Cliometric Society (csociety@cs.muohio.edu). <--------------------------------------------------> I have used "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" in both intro macro and US ec hist. It is a re-release of a 1932 BBC documentary re the US great depression. Issued by Humanities Films Limited (or H.F. Institute. . . I forget). Don't confuse it with the trashy "Brother Can you Spare a Dime?" that you can find at video stores, which includes among other things women wearing pasties doing what women wearing pasties do. (I made the near-fatal error at UMass of buying this video, on the assumption it was the same thing, and showing it *without first viewing it on my own*! Imagine my surprise when the women with pasties started doing their thing! I don't know what the students remember, but it's the only part of the video that *I* remember!!) Anyway, back to the BBC version. It was put together in July or August of 1932, right after the riots in Washington with the WWI vets wanting their bonus pay. They talk about the campaign between FDR and Hoover (and it sounded eerily like the campaign between Clinton & Bush); the new theories of this Brit named Keeeynes (so much for convincing the students it is said Keynes as in Brains); the consumer durables revolution :); the shortening of skirts as a possible cause of the GD (I love that one!), and more. It includes discussion of how the depression is affecting black Americans as well as white Americans. All in all, I really like it. It make the GD much more real for the students. I have also used part of one of Bill Moyer's "Walk Through the Twentieth Century" series from PBS--the one on coal miners. "Out of the Depths." I don't show the whole thing, but cut it after about 20 minutes. I do this in the context of doing Fishback on miners, esp since Fishback's conclusions and the miners stories totally conflict. The miners in the film are in Colorado, so we can talk about the difference that geography and relative isolation might have made. M =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--= Martha L. Olney Visiting Associate Professor of Economics University of California, Berkeley [510] 642-6083 MOlney@econ.berkeley.edu <----------------------------------------------------------> To post a message, send it to ECONHIST.TEACH@cs.muohio.edu. For more information, send the message "info ECONHIST.TEACH" to lists@cs.muohio.edu. >