Film Analysis: Joan Avoids A Cold

This analysis will be focused on a 10 minute and 25-second film titled “Joan Avoids a Cold,” a black-and-white film produced by Coronet Instructional Films in 1947. The short film follows an average day in the life of Joan and Jim as they prepare for the Kermis festival. The film focuses on the two children in both a home and a school environment, detailing the difference in their actions and preventative health measure, and it also briefly follows their mother’s journey to becoming better educated on hygienic measures to implement in the household. By the end of the film, Jim has caught a cold, while Joan has successfully avoided it, allowing her to participate in the festival while Jim must remain at home. Throughout all of this, the film

It could be argued that this film is also targeted at mothers and those who work in family settings, as several minutes of the film are used to follow a scene between a mother and nurse as the nurse instructs the mother on good hygiene practices to use in the home, as a continuation of routines used at school. However, there is no definitive way to guarantee this as the film does not include any information explicitly mentioning its target audience as adults in the same way it mentions its target audience as

The narrator mentions differences in actions between Joan and her brother, Jim, throughout the video, one of the first instances taking place within the first two minutes when the narrator commends Joan for her wisdom in refusing a bite of a friend’s apple. The video also discusses a number of methods used to preserve health and prevent the transmission of sicknesses between classmates, friends, and families and highlights the importance of handwashing multiple times throughout the film. The video on its own cannot tell us much about the whys, and whos involved in its making, but it does share some important information on practices to avoid sickness, such as sterilization as a method of defense against the spread of sickness to those in close proximity to a sick person. The narrator notes Jim and Joan’s mother’s use of hot water to sterilize utensils used by Jim in an attempt to keep the rest of the family protected while living in the same household. A form of sterilization is also suggested earlier in the film as the school children scrub pencils and other objects shared by the class with soap and water. The piece also suggests the importance of having separate personal items for each member of the family, the examples provided include towels and cups, reiterating the link between direct contact with a sick person’s fluid and becoming