How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Survive the Atomic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Last week, we revis­it­ed some Cold War pro­pa­gan­da that taught upstand­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. It’s a gem, but it has noth­ing on the 1954 film, The House in the Mid­dle. Select­ed for preser­va­tion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry by The Library of Con­gress, the short doc­u­men­tary makes the ulti­mate case for clean­li­ness. Bring­ing view­ers to the Neva­da Prov­ing Grounds, the 12-minute film shows what hap­pens when clean, white hous­es are sub­ject­ed to heat waves from an atom­ic blast, ver­sus what hap­pens when a dingy, ill-kept house goes through the same drill. It turns out that neat peo­ple can not only claim moral vic­to­ry (as they always do). They also get to live anoth­er day. Con­sid­er it proof of the sur­vival of the tidi­est.

The film was pro­duced by the Nation­al Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau with sup­port from the Fed­er­al Civ­il Defense Admin­is­tra­tion. The Nation­al Paint, Var­nish and Lac­quer Asso­ci­a­tion also appar­ent­ly played a role, sug­gest­ing that cor­po­rate inter­ests were cap­i­tal­iz­ing on wartime fear. Not the first time that’s hap­pened in Amer­i­ca. Or that last…

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Sur­vival Guide to the Post Apoc­a­lypse (NSFW)

Duck and Cov­er, or: How I Learned to Elude the Bomb

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees