Educating society for a New Argentina. Childhood and the formation of subjectivities through the film Vacaciones útiles (Useful holidays) (Argentina, 1948)

ABSTRACT

Peronism deployed, especially since the 1950s, a set of devices for the attention and care of children in Argentina, not only through schools but also through other institutions, such as development societies, cooperatives, the Eva Perón Foundation, sports clubs, among others. The new social order was central to the rhetoric of the government, and it gave children a preeminent role, as is visible in the phrase ”in the New Argentina the only privileged are the children”. This paper focuses on Vacaciones útiles, a film made in 1948 that shows how educational cinema reflects a view of childhood and also how public policies aimed at it. This short film was part of a larger project called Cine Escuela Argentino, a Commission of the National Council of Education for the production of film material to be shown in schools and other public institutions. What particular view did Peronism have on childhood in it? To what extent can this film be thought of as an educational cinema or as a school cinema? In which ways do films like Vacaciones útiles or public policies like Cine Escuela Argentino show the figure of the State as author?

KEYWORDS:

• Educational cinema
• Peronism
• Vacaciones útiles
• 1948
• Cine Escuela Argentino

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Andrea Cuarterolo, “El cine científico en la Argentina de principios del siglo 20: entre la educación y el espectáculo”. História da Educação 19, no. 47 (2015): 51–73; Alejandro Hopfenblatt, “Un cine en transición: El aburguesamiento del cine argentino visto a través de las revistas especializadas”, Imagofagia 12 (2015): 2–24; María Silvia Serra, Cine, escuela y discurso pedagógico: articulaciones, inclusiones y objeciones en el siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2011).

² Ana Laura Lusnich and Pablo Piedras, Una historia del cine político y social en Argentina (1896–1969) (Buenos Aires: Nueva Librería, 2009); Clara Kriger, Cine y peronismo: el Estado en escena (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2009).

³ Museo del Cine de Buenos Aires, Museo del Cine en Acción (Buenos Aires: 2016).

⁴ Eduardo Galak and Iván Orbuch, “Cine, educación y cine educativo en el primer peronismo. El caso del Departamento de Radioenseñanza y Cinematografía Escolar”, Cine Documental 16 (2017).

⁵ Julio César Melon Pirro, El peronismo después del peronismo. Resistencia, sindicalismo y política luego del 55 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI editores, 2009).

⁶ Eduardo Galak and María Silvia Serra, “Sports, Politics, and Aesthetics; Educating Bodies and Sensibilities through Cinema in Peronist Argentina”, in Appearances Matter. The Visual in Educational History, ed. Tim Allender, Inés Dussel, Ian Grosvenor and Karim (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021), 109–123.

⁷ Cecilia Almada, Infancias peronistas. La cultura física y el deporte en la Fundación Eva Perón (1948–1955) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2020).

⁸ Just to mention Argentine cases, see Andrea Cuarterolo, “El cine científico en la Argentina de principios del siglo 20: entre la educación y el espectáculo”, História da Educação 19, no. 47 (2015): 51–73.

⁹ Eduardo Galak and Iván Orbuch, Políticas de la imagen y de la imaginación en el peronismo. La radioenseñanza y la cinematografía escolar como dispositivos pedagógicos para una Nueva Argentina (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2021); Serra, Cine, escuela y discurso pedagógico.

¹⁰ The academic works compiled in the book Cine educativo y científico en España, Argentina y Uruguay, by Alicia Alted Vigil and Susana Sel (Madrid: Editorial Universitaria Ramón Areces, 2016), are a good example. Also, in this sense, can be read the uses of cinema as a cultural artefact for entertainment and as an element of propaganda in the same period analysed by Peter Cunningham, “Moving Images: Propaganda Film and British Education 1940‐45”, Paedagogica Historica 36, no.1 (2000): 389–406; Angelo Van Gorp, “The Decroly School in documentaries (1930s–1950s): contextualising propaganda from within”, Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 4 (2011): 507–523.

¹¹ Daniel Biltereyst, “Afterword: school documentaries, childhood and new cinema history”, Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 4 (2011): 573–577.

¹² Serra, Cine, escuela y discurso pedagógico.

¹³ Christel Taillibert, L´Institut Internacional du cinématographe éducatif (París: L´Harmattan, 1999).

¹⁴ There is a wide production of publications that gather the controversies about the cinema of the first half of the century, in a political sense. They include educational cinema, not only made visible in relation to the production of material for use in schools, but also linked to the thin line that separates the educational from the propaganda cinema, projected in theatres. In this framework, we follow Thomas Elsaesser’s hypothesis of the cross-national nature of film productions, especially in the second quarter of the twentieth century, a context in which similarities abound more than differences and in which international transit stands out – especially that of producers, cameramen, composers, set designers, screenwriters or actors between Berlin, Paris and Hollywood, many of them for political reasons, but also attracted by new film markets in which to develop. Thomas Elsaesser, “Expresionismo y cine alemán” and “Identidad racial, autenticidad y exilio: los directores alemanes y Hollywood”, in En tránsito. Berlin-París-Hollywood. Más allá de la historia del cine, ed. Carlos Losilla (Madrid: T&B Editores, 2009), 33–40, 41–64.

¹⁵ Galak and Orbuch, “Cine, educación y cine educativo en el primer peronismo”.

¹⁶ Proceedings number 94 inviting the Honourable Chamber of Deputies to the International Film Exhibition, Argentine Chamber of Deputies, 1939.

¹⁷ Proyecto de Ley Dirección Nacional de Cinematografía Educativa (Draft Law), 1946, 11.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Serra, Cine, escuela y discurso pedagógico.

²⁰ Many changes occurred during this period in the state institutional organisation of education, especially when the Ministry of Education was created on 11 March 1949, replacing the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, which implied a separation of the area of justice and an elevation to ministerial rank.

²¹ Decree 18.949. Creation of the National Commission of Radio Education and School Cinematography.

²² Ibid.

²³ Alted Vigil, “La participación española en el Instituto Internacional del Cinematógrafo Educativo de Roma”, 17.

²⁴ For more information see Galak and Orbuch, Políticas de la imagen y de la imaginación en el peronismo.

²⁵ About the relationship between the media, Peronism, propaganda and the role of Apold, see Mirta Varela, “Le péronisme et les médias: contrôle politique, industrie nationale et goût populaire”, Le Temps des Médias. Révue d’ histoire 7 (2007): 48–63.

²⁶ Management Report of Museo del Cine de Buenos Aires.

²⁷ Guillermo Fernández Zuñiga and Angustias García Usón, Anuario del cine argentino. 1949–1950 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Cinematográfica Americana, 1950). Also, a complete list can be seen in Eduardo Galak and Iván Orbuch, “Cine, educación y cine educativo en el primer peronismo. El caso del Departamento de Radioenseñanza y Cinematografía Escolar”, Cine Documental 16 (2017).

²⁸ Serra, Cine, escuela y discurso pedagógico.

²⁹ In this regard, see the database of the Spanish National Educational Cinematheque film collection, which includes productions from 1954 onwards (published in Laura López Martín and Jorge Moreno Andrés, “Base de datos de los fondos fílmicos de la Cinemateca Educativa Nacional (1954–1971)”, in Cine educativo y científico en España, Argentina y Uruguay, ed. Alted Vigil and Sel, 179–217); Emeterio Diez Puertas, “Las negociaciones para el acuerdo cinematográfico de 1948 entre Argentina y España (1939–1948)”, Secuencias 35 (2012): 59–83; and Eduardo Galak “Argentina y España: representaciones de la juventud y la cultura física argentinas en imágenes del No-Do español”, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 13 (2021): 579–609.

³⁰ Although it is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to point out educational borrowing policies in schools in historical terms, especially with regard to technology in the classroom. In this sense, it is worth noting the methodological alerts developed by David Phillips and Kimberley Ochs about the articulation between externalisation and internationalisation and the influences that are not only unidirectional (in the case of Argentina, generally centre-periphery) but also cross-national, which occurred mostly among American countries (including the United States). Precisely, on the film exchange between Argentina and the United States see Alejandro Kelly Hopfenblatt, “Exhibición y distribución de cortometrajes de propaganda de los Estados Unidos en Argentina en los años ’40: el programa de 16 mm de la OCIAA”, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (2020); David Phillips and Kimberly Ochs, “Researching policy borrowing: some methodological challenges in comparative education”, British Educational Research Journal 30, no. 6 (2004). Also, it can be read in this sense: Gita Steiner-Khamsi, “Cross-national policy borrowing: understanding reception and translation”, Asia Pacific Journal of Education 34, no. 2 (2014): 153–167, especially to understand how a receptiveness is played in the relationship between reception and translation.

³¹ Marcela Gené, Un mundo feliz. Imágenes de los trabajadores en el primer peronismo 1946–1955 (Buenos Aires: FCE-Universidad San Andrés, 2005); Clara Kriger, Cine y Peronismo. El estado en escena (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2009); Galak and Orbuch, Políticas de la imagen y de la imaginación en el peronismo.

³² In this regard, see Emeterio Diez Puertas, “Cine transnacional y geopolítica hispanoamericana: el caso de España en sus relaciones con la Argentina (1931–1943)” (PhD Thesis, Universidad Carlos III, 2016).

³³ The projection of a newsreel of at least eight minutes’ duration has been obligatory in all cinemas and screenings since December 1943, by Decree No. 18,405 of the Dirección General de Espectáculos Públicos (General Directorate of Public Spectacles). These characteristics of film newsreels are not exclusive to Peronism, as they began earlier and continued afterwards, and also it is possible to identify these uses in other contexts. For further information, see Eduardo Galak, “Hacia una estética peronista: Educación del cuerpo y formación de subjetividades a través del noticiero cinematográfico Sucesos argentines”, in La educación de las sensibilidades en la Argentina moderna: Estudios sobre estética escolar II, ed. Pablo Pineau, María Silvia Serra and Myriam Southwell (Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2017), 211–225.

³⁴ Kriger, Cine y Peronismo.

³⁵ Gustavo Aprea, “¿Existe un cine totalitario?”, in Cine y totalitarismo, ed. Block de Behar and Rinesi (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Universidad de la República y Ediciones La Crujía, 2007), 91–128.

³⁶ Kriger, Cine y peronismo.

³⁷ Eduardo Galak and María Silvia Serra, “La producción estatal de cine para la educación en Argentina: ‘Cine Escuela Argentino’ (1948–1955)” (Paper presented in ISCHE 41, Porto, 2019).

³⁸ Susana Sel, “Modernización, información e ideología en el cine científico argentino (1898–1957)”, Cine educativo y científico en España, Argentina y Uruguay, ed. Alted Vigil and Selin, 44.

³⁹ Inés Dussel, “La verdad en la imagen propagandística. Reflexiones sobre un corpus enigmático (Westerbork, 1998)”, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 8 (2018).

⁴⁰ YouTube source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYPopU_3egY.

⁴¹ César Vásquez was a relevant figure in Argentine national public policies on Physical Education, being for a decade the first Director of the General Administration of Physical Education between 1938 and 1947, and then Inspector General of Physical Education. On César Vásquez’s role as a public official, we recommend reading Eduardo Galak, Pablo Kopelovich and Martín Pereyra, “Entre el nacionalismo y la internacionalización: la primera década de la Dirección General de Educación Física (Argentina, 1938–1947)”, Praxis educativa 25, no. 2 (2021).

⁴² Daniel Santoro and Julián Fava, Peronismo. Entre la severidad y la misericordia (Buenos Aires: Las cuarenta, 2019), 52.

⁴³ Regarding Peronist policies aimed at “the only privileged”, Santoro and Fava state: “Evita does not deny the children’s past; instead, from these adverse conditions, she builds a prospect of fulfilment: that second chance from redistributing fate, with an intervention of the state that reaches even to individual biographies themselves. This would be one of the meanings of ‘social justice’: redeeming lives by transforming fate, exercising a profound existential distributive justice” (2019: 52).

⁴⁴ Gabriela Nouzeilles, “El niño proletario: infancia y peronismo”, in Políticas del sentimiento: El peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina moderna, ed. Soria, Cortés Rocca and Dieleke (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2019), 111–128.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Gabriela Ferreyra, “Las actividades periescolares durante el primer peronismo: estrategias socio-pedagógicas para el cuidado de la infancia”, Trabajos y Comunicaciones 51 (2020): 9.

⁴⁷ Although the iconographic analysis of these films is not the aim of this paper, it is worth mentioning that such policies aimed at children and the visual operations accompanying them have been extensively studied. In this respect, Nouzeilles states: “Each of these instances of dramatising the state’s beneficent power is recorded in the official photographs and film footage, which tacitly underline the symbolic ‘stature’ of Perón and Eva as agents and promoters of state largesse through the place of pre-eminence they occupy in the scene depicted and, at times, by adopting an angle of view that reinforces the ‘bottom-up’ perspective of the children” (116). Specifically about the film Soñemos, it is recommended to follow Luigi Patruno’s reading in “The City Evita Built. Cinematic Childhood and Peronism in Luis César Amadori’s Soñemos (1951)”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29, no. 1 (2020): 63–84.

⁴⁸ On the public policies of Peronism on childhood, see Cecilia Almada, Infancias peronistas. La cultura física y el deporte en la Fundación Eva Perón (1948–1955) (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2020); Marcela Gené, Un mundo feliz. Imágenes de los trabajadores en el primer peronismo 1946–1955 (Buenos Aires: FCE-Universidad San Andrés, 2005); and Cristina Pons, “Cuerpos sublimes: el deporte en la retórica de la Nueva Argentina”, in Políticas del sentimiento: El peronismo y la construcción de la Argentina moderna, ed. Claudia Soria, Paola Cortés Rocca and Gustavo Dieleke (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2010), 41–65. On the other hand, in Tim Allender, Inés Dussel, Ian Grosvenor and Karin Priem’s book, Appearances Matter: The Visual in Educational History (Oldenbourg : De Gruyter, 2021), some writings can be identified that point out policies on film audiences in other countries during the same period. For example, see “Images that portray, Challenge, and Refuse: Visual Content and Education in Francoist Spain, 1939–1975”, by Eulàlia Collelldemont, Núria Padrós and Raquel Cercós.

⁴⁹ Galak and Serra, “La producción estatal de cine para la educación en Argentina”.

⁵⁰ María García Alonso, “La propaganda de la acción o la acción de la propaganda”, in Cine educativo y científico en España, Argentina y Uruguay, ed. Alted Vigil and Sel, 63–74.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eduardo Galak

Eduardo Galak is a professor at the University of La Plata (UNLP) and at the National Pedagogical University (UNIPE), Argentina, and a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research. His research focuses on representations of body and its cultural significations, and on historical studies about body policies and aesthetics. He has published several articles and books, including Educar los cuerpos al servicio de la política. Cultura física, higienismo, raza y eugenesia en Argentina y Brasil (UNDAV Ediciones y Editorial Biblos, 2016) and Políticas de la imagen y de la imaginación en el peronismo. La radioenseñanza y la cinematografía escolar como dispositivos pedagógicos para una Nueva Argentina (Biblos, 2021).

María Silvia Serra

Maria Silvia Serra is a PhD on Social Sciences (FLACSO) and Professor of Pedagogy at the Facultad de Humanidades y Artes of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR), Argentina. She also is de Director of the Master Educación, Imagen y lenguajes Contemporáneos (UNR). She has been working on the relationship between education and culture, with special focus on cinema. She also works in the aesthetic dimensions of pedagogical discourses in the educational space.