I love Public Information Films
to the point of spending cold hard cash on stuff like the 'Charley Says' compilations. I think the attraction is the way they indirectly provide a window on what life was like in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Nostalgia TV shows are all well and good, but focus too much on single aspects ("Look! Here's a clip of Love Thy Neighbour which shows how everyone in the 70s was a racist with a beige couch", etc). What PIFs do is give you an idea of the sort of things that affected people's lives in those days. These days, we have adverts warning parents that our children will be necking vodka, pills and cock as soon as we let them out of the house. In the 70s, PIFs were more concerned that those same children would be going out to vandalise phoneboxes ("Where's your lad going tonight? *SMASH*", etc). Today's PIFs warn us of STIs. 40 years ago they apparently didn't exist, although we should all be on the lookout for rabies.

It's amazing to think how many PIFs 30-40 years ago were warning us that if our children set foot outside, they'd be electrocuted by a substation/frisbee mishap, trapped in an abandoned fridge or drowned in a lake thanks to the Grim Reaper's poor lifeguard skills. Today, there are whole PIF campaigns telling the survivors "For god's sake, send your children outside before they turn into 50-stone X-Box-playing blobs. Forget all that stuff about death around every corner, they'll be fine, just give them a frisbee and send them on their way"
(costas, Wed 21 Apr 2010, 14:42, Reply)