4.Moving pictograms

Table 2 lists the films known to have been created or produced by Ragan. The NFB stated that Ragan made at least 30 films for them; therefore, including the period before and after the NFB, he may have made an estimated 50 films. Most of the films he made for the NFB were short, about two minutes each, and were projected along with news films in between the theatrical films.

Table 2. List of films made or contributed by Philip Ragan

YearTitleCreditLengthClient
1936Is work relief better than the dole?3minWorks Progress Administration, USA
1938Shock Troops of disaster
Works Progress Administration, USA
1940-41Controls for Victory
4minNational Film Board of Canada
1942If 3minNational Film Board of Canada
 Empty Rooms Mean Idle Machines
2minNational Film Board of Canada
 Unmanned Machines Mean Unarmed Men 1minNational Film Board of Canada
 Unmanned machines mean unarmed men US NEWS REVIEW no,5 (1943?)
1minUS Office of war information Issue no,5
 National Income
2minNational Film Board of Canada
 Rationing
2minNational Film Board of Canada
 Price Shock
1minNational Film Board of Canada
 Pieces in Wartime
10minNational Film Board of Canada

No More Kitchen Sopranos
2minNational Film Board of Canada

The String
2minNational Film Board of Canada

Story of Wartime Controls
1minNational Film Board of Canada

Story of Wartime Shortages
2minNational Film Board of Canada
1943Bits and Pieces Blues
6minNational Film Board of Canada
 Buying Fever
3minNational Film Board of Canada
 Curtailment of Civilian Industries
2minNational Film Board of Canada

Industry Wages War
2minNational Film Board of Canada

Price Shock
1minNational Film Board of Canada
 He Plants for Victory 2minNational Film Board of Canada

Nutrition
2minNational Film Board of Canada

The Missus Beats Him to It
1.5minNational Film Board of Canada

Voluntary vs Involuntary Savings
3minNational Film Board of Canada

Économies de guerre nº 5
3minNational Film Board of Canada

What, No Beef?
1minNational Film Board of Canada

A Wee Thing
2minNational Film Board of Canada

The String
2minNational Film Board of Canada
1944the Rainy DayPhilip Ragan, Norman McLaren,1minNational Film Board of Canada

The Rug
3minNational Film Board of Canada

Seaforth Commings
1minNational Film Board of Canada
 How Prices Could Rise
2minNational Film Board of Canada National Film Board of Canada

What Canada Does with the Money She Gets from You
2minNational Film Board of Canada
 Providing goods for you
5minNational Film Board of Canada
 She Speeds the Victory
1minNational Film Board of Canada
1943-44Mutual Aid 

1945Money, Goods, PricesA Ragan Short15minNational Film Board of Canada

Le contrle des prix et le rationnemenPhilip Ragan Associates10minNational Film Board of Canada
 Price Controls and rationingPhilip Ragan Associates10minNational Film Board of Canada
 Canada Communique No. 15: The Road AheadPhilip Ragan7minNational Film Board of Canada
1945-47which way this time?Philip Ragan Productions10minOffice of price administration, USA
1946One World or NonePhilip Ragan Productions9minNational Committee on Atomic Information,USA
1948-9Uncle Sam M.D. 
 
 The Employees’Thrift Plan 
 

Of the people, by the people, for the people

The U.S. Treasury Department
1948Stuff for stuffPhilip Ragan Productions16minNational Film Board of Canada
1949Stuff for stuffPhilip Ragan Productions16minMGM USA
1953TARGET YOUPhilip Ragan Productions8.5minThe Federal Civil Defense Administration of the United States
1955Front-lines of freedom 14.5minThe Civil Defense Corps of Canada, The Federal Civil Defense Administration of the United States

The first work Ragan produced for the NFB was Control for Victory (Figure 10), which was divided into two major parts, the first half of which is reminiscent of a diagram in the above-mentioned booklet One Year of WPA in Pennsylvania (Figure 5).

図12.《Controls for Victory》、 1940−41.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/controls-for-victory/

Since the release of this film, Ragan has made more than 30 short animations for the NFB, whose themes included wartime propaganda and education, such as buying war bonds, labor and wage control, fighting inflation, unemployment issues, saving money, and communal gardens.

For propaganda work with the purpose to educate, Ragan created a unique worker character named Plugger. However, Plugger was not a unique entity, as it was the pictogram of a worker that was also used in Sociographics Philadelphia’s emblem (Figure 11). Despite appearing as an anonymous person without eyes and a mouth but with strong geometric features, one may assume that people accepted it as a character because of its large thighs and peculiar walking stride. When he plays the role of a husband in the home, he is portrayed as authoritarian and patriarchal, while the female figure, who is supposed to be his wife, is represented as a rounded figure, emphasizing gender differences (Figure 14). In the environment outside the house, the large-legged walk evokes not only the worker but also the disciplined soldier, and when applied to the factory production scene, this powerful figure integrated with the war machine is depicted as a mechanical cyborg-like body (Figure 12).

Figure 11. Symbol of Sociographic Philadelphia, c. 1937.
Figure 12. Empty Rooms Mean Idle Machines, 1942.
Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada
Figure 13. He Plans for Victory, 1943. Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada
Figure 14. Money, Goods and Prices, 1945. Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada
Figure 15. Mutual Aid, 1944.

Despite creating popular characters, Ragan should have focused on exploring new ways to depict social and economic structures through pictorial diagrams. Several films were produced to convey the fight against inflation and the need for price controls. In particular, Money, Goods and Prices, a film made at the end of the war to explain the economic system, does not rely on the Plugger character but instead uses diagrams and combines them with live action (Figure 14). Worth noting is that Ragan himself appears in the film and explains that despite the difficulty in capturing the economic system in photographs, it may be clearly expressed in pictogram-based diagrams.

However, one cannot deny the significant limitations in the use of pictograms compared to other animation forms. Hence, some of Ragan’s films attempted to overcome these constraints while maintaining a symbolic representation, as is the case with Canada Communiqué No. 15: The Road Ahead (1944–1945). Aiming to publicize government services in rehabilitating and reemploying postwar veterans, the work is staged so that the viewer is led through a simplified, straight avenue, with a bird’s-eye view of the service, and branch roads dotted with factories, universities, and retail outlets. The perspective flowchart of the road is shown mainly up close and panning, and as the viewer reaches the wharf at the road’s end, the entire road zooms down to an image of a globe in the Northern Hemisphere, and the film ends with an appeal for a ‘mutual understanding of the world’. This seamless transition between scenes can be seen in Mutual Aid (c. 1944) in a sequence in which a moving symbol of a ship transforms into an abstract arrow with a wake, which is then depicted as an abstract route on a world map (Figure 15). These attempts can be seen as an effort to overcome the limitations of representation using symbols, which are essentially static elements.

In an article introducing Ragan’s work, Dugan (1944) cited Ragan’s view that his work differs from Disney’s in its treatment of symbols, as Disney creates pictures that imitate reality. In addition, given that his animations are just 80 seconds on average, he asks whether they could be ‘one of the easiest means of spreading sound principles of international understanding throughout the world’. 

However, with longer films such as Money, Goods, Price (15 minutes), Ragan’s films seem to have taken a turn that was not in line with Dugan’s expectations, namely a more dramatic direction.

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