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Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrips (2004)

door Danny Gregory

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In the pre-Internet, pre-VCR--oh, go ahead, call them prehistoric--days of baby boomers' grade school, the high art of audiovisual classroom programming was the filmstrip. If you're old enough, you remember the darkened room, the hum of the projector, and the beeep that signaled the teacher to turn to the next frame. If you weren't busy shooting spitballs, filmstrips might even have taught you something about science, hygiene, the great bounty of American farms and factories. With simple illustrations and quaint photographs that evoke a more innocent era, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is the first book to collect dozens of these filmstrip treasures together, creating a panorama of four decades of overlooked graphic design, popular culture, and inadvertent humor. Readers from the Internet generation will get a good chuckle over what appears to be electronic cave art. But you'll also discover one of the great subtexts of postwar American life. From the mid-1940s until the late 1960s, filmstrips were the coming attractions of capitalism and the American way, teaching youngsters how society wanted them to view the world. Filmstrips celebrated our foundering railroads ("Tommy Takes a Train Trip"), the space program ("The Moon, Our Nearest Neighbor"), and our trusted friend the butcher, the milkman, the mailman, and the cop. They taught us not to sit too close to our new TV sets and why we should change our underwear twice a week (presumably, Commies did this only once a week). A chronicle of America's filmstrip experience, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is also a glimpse into the companies and eccentric pioneers who created these graphic gems and how they influenced several generations of American youth.… (meer)

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Toon 4 van 4

A quick read, and a fun trip down memory lane. This book would no doubt confuse anyone who wasn't a Baby Boomer; fortunately, I am a Baby Boomer and could remember the filmstrips we used to watch, useful filmstrips on how to live in society. Yeah, not much useful. Not all that fun at the time, either, but a good deal of fun remembering them. The author, approximately my age, goes through a selection of filmstrips, talks a little about them, and includes portions of the strips. Some of the selections are odd, because the sections he leaves out make it jumpy and difficult to follow, but some of them are just plain....odd. With or without the selective panes. All that advice we received when we were young...how much of it stands the test of time? Very little. Of course, in the internet age, students being presented with one of these filmstrips would probably complain to someone...and soon they wouldn't be watching them anymore. Not enough zing and bling. Overall, a fun read, and quick. (

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Devil_llama | Dec 16, 2023 |

Educational Filmstrips: They're as close as you can get to the dictionary definition of kitsch. Remember the charming photography & illustration? The "Ding!" that signaled your dozing teacher that it was time to move to the next picture? The author has collected 7 annotated some of the most priceless mid-20th-century filmstrips.

jhawn | Jul 31, 2017 |

A glorious (and irreverent) look back at a wonderful technology now lost to the mists of time (and the occasion eBay auction.) Having grown up watching these 'teaching aides' year after year in school, I devoured the contents of this book in no time what-so-ever and enjoyed every moment of it. The book offers many glimpses into a wide variety of filmstrips and gives a wonderful interpretation of both the content and the times in which they were created. I highly recommend getting a copy (I got mine for a buck - you can't beat that with a stick!) if it even begins to peak your curiosity. I really do! (

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reellis67 | Nov 18, 2013 |

In grade school, I was a bit of an A-V geek. Danny Gregory’s “Change Your Underwear Every Two Weeks: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrips,” (Artisan, $19) brings back those days in a rush of vintage images. In “The Story of Milk,” mother dons white gloves and a beret to shop for dairy products; in “Right Clothes Help Health,” creepy dolls polish their dorkdom by wearing shorts with knee socks. I’m buying a copy for a friend who remembers those grade-school machines as well as I do. Also, perhaps she needs a primer on milk. —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5404778/

Fun with filmstrips
Do schools today still show filmstrips? Most don't, with VCRs and DVDs and computers, they've left that primitive form of visual learning behind. But those of us who remember trying to feed the darn film into the right slot, only to see the "START" screen come up upside down, will love, love, love Danny Gregory's "Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrips" (Artisan, $19).

The filmstrips Gregory has uncovered here are so bizarre they seem to come from another planet. In "You and Your Clothes," little Billy learns to change his underwear all of twice a week and to wear a tie when playing with his soapbox racer. In "Trailers at Work," kids learn not to mock the mighty trailer, whether it's someone's home or is just hauling trash to the dump. In "Electricity at Home," kids learn how electrons help us make toast.

Gregory includes so many generous samplings of the filmstrips that it would be easy to flip through the book and all but ignore his text. Don't. You'll laugh out loud, as I did, at bits such as "Jim is chastised for staying up late. Is he boozing? Playing dice? Raising heck? No, he's quietly reading a book in an overstuffed armchair. The next morning, this wastrel sits groggily on his bed, no doubt ruing his night of easy pleasure." Gregory's book is the "Mystery Science Theater" of the filmstrip world, something I didn't even know there was a call for.

Mixed in with the humor is an obvious respect for the gentle goofiness of the filmstrips, which really did aim to teach, to inform, to make their viewers decent citizens and good people. Especially touching is the epilogue, where Gregory writes of watching his first-ever filmstrip, about an American farmboy, while a nine-year-old student at an American school in Pakistan, and through it getting "the first true taste of the country I have called home for 30 years." Aww. —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6072569/ (

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GaelFC | Nov 3, 2006 |

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In the pre-Internet, pre-VCR--oh, go ahead, call them prehistoric--days of baby boomers' grade school, the high art of audiovisual classroom programming was the filmstrip. If you're old enough, you remember the darkened room, the hum of the projector, and the beeep that signaled the teacher to turn to the next frame. If you weren't busy shooting spitballs, filmstrips might even have taught you something about science, hygiene, the great bounty of American farms and factories. With simple illustrations and quaint photographs that evoke a more innocent era, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is the first book to collect dozens of these filmstrip treasures together, creating a panorama of four decades of overlooked graphic design, popular culture, and inadvertent humor. Readers from the Internet generation will get a good chuckle over what appears to be electronic cave art. But you'll also discover one of the great subtexts of postwar American life. From the mid-1940s until the late 1960s, filmstrips were the coming attractions of capitalism and the American way, teaching youngsters how society wanted them to view the world. Filmstrips celebrated our foundering railroads ("Tommy Takes a Train Trip"), the space program ("The Moon, Our Nearest Neighbor"), and our trusted friend the butcher, the milkman, the mailman, and the cop. They taught us not to sit too close to our new TV sets and why we should change our underwear twice a week (presumably, Commies did this only once a week). A chronicle of America's filmstrip experience, Change Your Underwear Twice a Week is also a glimpse into the companies and eccentric pioneers who created these graphic gems and how they influenced several generations of American youth.

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