Moving Pictures Used by Students

100 years ago today, one Dr. Anna Hall of New York City gave a lecture accompanied by a film to a large audience at UC Berkeley. The film and lecture demonstrated the work of the Child’s welfare league in “promote[ing] wholesome play by the establishment of playgrounds and play centers” among other efforts “to promote the physical and mental development of children.” The irony of the use of the moving image medium in the interest of the playground movement strikes me as similar to the American Heart Association’s endorsement of the Wii Fit last year. In both cases, the medium — the movies in 1911 and video games in 2011 is implicitly figured as simultaneously the cause and the solution to an increasingly sedentary modern lifestyle.

San Francisco Call (06 July 1911): 9.