Why Vandalism?

In the postwar years, a big market developed for 16mm educational films for distribution in schools. They were designed to instill good social values in children and teens, from teaching them how to brush their teeth to dealing with serious adult problems. Often naïve and clumsy, many of these films drew mostly derision, even when new. Made by the Encyclopedia Britannica company in 1955, the 16-minute Why Vandalism? is an exception in that it gives a moody, realistic view of self-destructive teen behavior, one that predicts the formula for every theatrical Juvenile Delinquent picture to follow. The young anti-hero is already a mental case, a Frankenstein-Lenny figure who relates to animals but not people. A scene in a malt shop gives us kids more disturbed than James Dean's neurotic nature in Rebel without a Cause (1955): one punk nervously tears a seat cushion while another bends silverware into knots. An inner rage is being expressed, but the script offers no concrete answers as to why. The narration instead talks in vague terms about children denied love and warmth, and finishes with a weak lecture about parental neglect. The once-respected child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim is listed as a consultant; strangely enough, he was later discredited when it was learned that he faked his credentials and used fictional data to support his research. Bettelheim claimed that most every developmental problem was a result of poor parenting, and even blamed bad mothers for organic conditions like autism.

By Glenn Erickson