Visible Legacies of Invisible Resources: Gas Infrastructure, Women, and Environmental Control in 1930s British Documentary Movement Films

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Three short British documentary movement films produced for the British gas industry, Housing Problems (1935), The Smoke Menace (1937), and The Obedient Flame (1939), highlight the importance of switching to gas use in homes. These films advertise efficient, quiet, and invisible gas as a solution to social and environmental ills. The regulation of this resource, and thus the onus of environmental regulation, falls primarily into the hands of women. The films grant agency to both energy infrastructure and its human mediators while stressing their need to operate unseen.