{{short description|1963 film}} {{use American English|date=February 2020}} {{use mdy dates|date=February 2020}} {{Infobox film | name = Perversion for Profit | image = Perversion-for-Profit-putnam.jpg | caption = George Putnam in ''Perversion for Profit'' | director = | producer = Charles Keating | writer = | narrator = George Putnam | starring = George Putnam | music = | cinematography = | editing = | distributor = Citizens for Decent Literature, Inc. | released = {{Film date|1963}} | runtime = 31 minutes | country = United States | language = English | budget = | gross = }} thumb|''Perversion for Profit'' part 1 thumb|''Perversion for Profit'' part 2
'''''Perversion for Profit''''' is a 1963<ref name="perversion">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QQI7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA80 |title=Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Righ |accessdate=8 August 2022 |author=Strub, Whitney |date=2013 |page=80 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=9780231148870 }}</ref> Eastmancolor propaganda film financed by Charles Keating through Citizens for Decent Literature and narrated by news reporter George Putnam. The film's argument is that sexually explicit materials corrupt young viewers and readers, leading to acts of violence and "perverted" attitudes towards sexuality {{Ndash}}homosexuality included. Although ''Perversion for Profit'' was serious in its suggestion that pornography could erode the integrity of American culture, Peter L. Stein of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' wrote in a 2003 review that it was "shrill and sometimes comical".<ref name="Stein" />
Today, ''Perversion for Profit'' is in the public domain, and it has become popular on the Prelinger Archives website and on YouTube. As Peter L. Stein observes in an article for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', however, the film also has considerable historical significance, serving as a sort of time capsule of pornography from the era as well as an example of historical concerns regarding media influence:
<blockquote> ... as the parade of girlie magazine covers, men's physique pictorials and campy S&M leaflets continues, the film betrays a kind of prurience the filmmakers could hardly have intended. What results is a remarkable visual record of midcentury underground literature and sexual appetites, and a gloss on the values of the society that condemned them.<ref name="Stein">{{cite news|last=Stein|first=Peter L.|title=A Rejected Genre: Those kitschy and cautionary starchy industrial and educational films provide an Illuminating Peek at the Past 75 Years of American Culture|url=https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/a-rejected-genre-those-kitschy-and-cautionary-2559330.php|work=San Francisco Chronicle (August 31, 2003)|access-date=30 January 2012|date=31 August 2003}}</ref></blockquote>
At the time the ''Chronicle'' article was written, ''Perversion'' was the Prelinger Archive's second most popular download, superseded only by the well-known Cold War film ''Duck and Cover''. Like Stein, ephemeral film scholar Rick Prelinger, founder of the Archive, views such films as illuminating historical documents or what he calls "unofficial evidence of everyday life".<ref name="Stein" />
==Summary== In 1963, Putnam narrated ''Perversion for Profit'', in which he warned viewers about magazines containing nudity and homosexual material, saying gay people were "perverted" and "misfits",<ref name="The Atlantic">{{cite news|last1=Friedersdorf|first1=Connor|title=Pornography 'Weakens our Resistance to the Communist Masters of Deceit'|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/pornography-weakens-our-resistance-to-the-communist-masters-of-deceit/272764/|website=theatlantic.com|publisher=The Atlantic|access-date=28 February 2015|quote=And then we come to a terribly sad indictment of our society – the so-called physique group of publications. These magazines with a homosexual viewpoint and poses are often not understood by many youngsters who take them as instruction of body development. But psychiatrists believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal male adult to this kind of publication, though he may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless pervert. Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced youth, who in purchasing and studying this material becomes a pawn for these misfits. These homosexuals, who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed: 'Today's conquest,' they say, 'is tomorrow's competition.}}</ref> as well as implying that they were child molesters (and furthermore that they weakened U.S. "resistance to the Communist masters of deceit").<ref name="The Atlantic" /> The film was financed by Charles Keating.<ref name="Stein" />
==Allusions== Putnam erroneously cites the Supreme Court as having declared adult publications, "Dirt for dirt's sake." In actuality, that quote was from New York Court of Appeals judge John F. Scileppi and was in reference to Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'' (1961).
To support his position, Putnam refers to "[[Pitirim Sorokin|Dr. [Pitirim] Sorokin]], the renowned Harvard sociologist," a Russian-American who founded Harvard's Sociology department and served as the American Sociological Association's 55th president.<ref name="ASA">{{cite web|last=American Sociological Association|title=Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin|url=http://www2.asanet.org/governance/sorokin.html|work=American Sociological Association|publisher=American Sociological Association|access-date=30 January 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120418232413/http://www2.asanet.org/governance/sorokin.html|archive-date=18 April 2012}}</ref>
To exemplify corrupting literature, Putnam reads a passage from the pulp fiction novel ''Sex Jungle'' (1960) by Don Elliot, a pseudonym for novelist Robert Silverberg.<ref name="Works">{{cite web|title=The Works of Robert Silverberg|url=http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=1001|work=The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site|access-date=30 January 2012}}</ref> In a 2000 interview, Silverberg explained that the erotic fiction that he published under the Don Elliot pseudonym ...
<blockquote> ... was undertaken at a time when I was saddled with a huge debt, at the age of 26, for a splendid house that I had bought. There would have been no way to pay the house off by writing science fiction in that long-ago era, when $2500 was a lot to earn from a novel that might take months to write, so I turned out a slew of quick sex novels. I never concealed the fact that I was doing them; it made no difference at all to me whether people knew or not. It was just a job. And it was, incidentally, a job that I did very well. I think they were outstanding erotic novels.<ref name="interview">{{cite web|last=Horwich|first=David|title=Interview: Robert Silverberg|url=http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001211/silverberg.shtml|work=Strange Horizons|access-date=30 January 2012|archive-date=November 14, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111114070205/http://strangehorizons.com/2000/20001211/silverberg.shtml|url-status=dead}}</ref></blockquote>
==Broadcast== Turner Classic Movies has televised the film Saturday nights on its TCM Underground block.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/732161/perversion-for-profit|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111001210337/http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/732161/Perversion-For-Profit/|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 1, 2011|title=Perversion For Profit (1965) - Overview|website=Turner Classic Movies}}</ref>
==See also== *List of American films of 1963 {{div col|colwidth=30em}} * Censorship in the United States * ''Boys Beware'' * ''Dating Do's and Don'ts'' * Freedom of speech in the United States * ''Fuck'' * Lavender scare * List of films in the public domain in the United States * ''Reefer Madness'' * Sex education * Sexual morality * ''Sex Madness'' * ''The Story of Menstruation'' * ''This Film Is Not Yet Rated'' {{div col end}}
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==Further reading== * {{cite news|work=The Atlantic |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/pornography-weakens-our-resistance-to-the-communist-masters-of-deceit/272764/|access-date=April 20, 2013 |title=Pornography 'Weakens our Resistance to the Communist Masters of Deceit': And other warnings from the 1961 film Perversion for Profit, the Reefer Madness of porn |date=February 1, 2013|first=Conor|last=Friedersdorf|publisher=The Atlantic Monthly Group}} * {{cite journal|title=Perversion for Profit: Citizens for Decent Literature and the Arousal of an Antiporn Public in the 1960s|first=Whitney|last=Strub|journal=Journal of the History of Sexuality|volume =15|issue= 2|date=May 2006 |pages=258–291 |doi=10.1353/sex.2007.0013|pmid=19235281|s2cid=7251523|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/v015/15.2strub.html|url-access=subscription}} * {{cite book|title=Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right|publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2010|first=Whitney|last=Strub | location = New York | isbn= 978-0-231-14886-3}}
==External links== {{commons category|Perversion for Profit}} * {{Internet Archive film|id=Perversi1965}} (Part I) * {{Internet Archive film|id=Perversi1965_2}} (Part II) * {{IMDb title|id=0386713|title=Perversion for Profit}} * {{rotten-tomatoes|id=perversion-for-profit|title=Perversion for Profit}} * {{TCMDb title|id= 732161|title=Perversion for Profit}} * [http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=1001 Profile of the novel "Sex Jungle" by Robert Silverberg], an excerpt of which is used in the film
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perversion For Profit}} Category:1963 films Category:Documentary films about pornography Category:American social guidance and drug education films Category:Articles containing video clips Category:1963 English-language films Category:1963 American films Category:Discrimination against LGBTQ people in the United States Category:English-language documentary films