You and Your Friends

You and Your Friends

Rejissyor: Blake (B.K.) Inc.. "Here we are at a nice, friendly party. Watch carefully everything the people at this party do and say, then ask yourself, 'would I rate them plus or minus as friends?' Ready? Here we go!" Unusual for its quality and Hollywood-type production values, which can in part be attributed to the skill of cinematographer Don Malkames, this film is also notable as an early "interactive" film. Like the other Art of Living titles and like many films that were to follow in its path, including Centron's Discussion Problems in Group Living series, this film pauses momentarily at key points and poses questions to the audience. You and Your Friends follows a do's and don'ts, "Goofus and Gallant," right path/wrong path strategy — but with one big difference from other films — here no one is judged right or wrong. "None of these youngsters will do the right thing or the wrong every time. It'll be up to you to decide." However, it would take a pretty dumb kid to miss the point. Such a strategy is common to many films designed to influence and/or control behavior. It tends to downplay the seriousness of the conditioning by pretending to present a variety of views, and coasts on the entertainment value and release provided by showing obviously poor behavior. This is also a familiar strategy going back centuries, in this culture probably influenced by the Bible; it's easily understood. Nonetheless, its efficacy can always be questioned; I suspect most readers of Highlights for Children over the years have been fascinated by the transgressive Goofus rather than the tediously boring Gallant. And when antique educational films are publicly revived today, audiences universally identify with the bad child. Within the history of educational media, You and Your Friends comes off as quite modern. Like today's discussion-oriented "values clarification" videos, the movie takes place completely within an adolescent world. Both good and bad behavior is shown, and audiences are asked to discuss it. K

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