Modern Media and the Oil Industry
While radio, television, and especially film have often been seen as formative for the advent and experience of modernity, their close relationship to the oil industry tends to be overlooked. The aim of this project is to re-write the history of 20th century media culture through the lens of petroleum extraction, as the advent of global media culture and petroleum extraction are historically linked and intertwined. Modern imaginaries have been shaped by oil as both a form of energy and a product since the early 20th century as oil became the condition for mobility and travel, modern urban living standards, and a host of new products including the film strip. Spearheaded by Standard Oil, oil companies triggered a massive social and cultural change internationally producing and circulating moving images. Such industrial and sponsored films include educationals, commercials, and documentaries that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation, creating media interfaces that would allow corporations to coordinate their goals with broader cultural and societal concerns. Beyond films produced by oil extraction companies themselves, a host of other films transgressing boundaries of genres, periods, and nations, depicts oil from different perspectives. This project analyzes how films, in their respective social and cultural contexts, have enacted a form of micropolitics that worked towards the goal of naturalizing the consumption of oil.
Final report
The project Modern Media and the Oil Industry started in January 2020 and was originally planned for the period 2020-22. Grounded in thorough historical and archival work, one purpose was to develop new concepts and methodologies vis-à-vis research on industrial and sponsored film based on bottom-up work of collecting material and data. Unfortunately, archival research was severely hampered due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the very moment this project was meant to move forward to a phase of working in archives both nationally and internationally, which is why we contacted RJ in due time to inquire about a prolongation of the project.
In a first phase, we engaged in reading and discussion of scholarly literature related to the research field of non-theatrical, sponsored, and industrial film. In 2020-21, we also individually engaged in identifying and mapping hitherto unknown archival collections of relevance to this project, starting in Sweden and Germany, respectively. Dahlquist surveyed relevant holdings for the project foremost in Riksarkivet and Centrum för Näringslivshistoria: OK, Svenska Shell, Svenska turistföreningen, Motormännens riksförbund, Svenska biografbyrån etcetera. The article on the electrification of the railway Malmbanan was an initial study of the importance of industrial films to communicate change in infrastructure as well as promote tourism industries. In Germany, Vonderau surveyed relevant archives, historical trade publications, and films, including e.g. field visits to Historisches Archiv Aral/BP, Deutsches Filminstitut Wiesbaden, Deutsches Erdölmuseum Wietze or Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv; due to war losses, a widely fragmented archival situation, and Germany’s lack of comparably large oil companies, findings remained scarce. As the situation improved, travels to e.g. the United States became possible even for academic researchers and many of the archives of interest opened. Visits to Briscoe Center (University of Texas, Austin) were made to continue research about the collaboration between the film industry and oil companies, working on e.g. the ExxonMobil Historical Collection, the American Energy Industry Collection, and others.
Initial exploratory work in archival catalogues clearly reveals that the original idea of serial analysis as a key method did not work out, because archival holdings are too fragmentary as to allow for such a quantitative approach. As opposed to advertising film, for instance, media used in the oil industry were very diverse and in Europe much less prominent than in the United States, for instance. In accordance with our stated interest in the micropolitics that worked towards the goal of naturalizing the consumption of oil as energy and product it was our wish to develop methods more suited to such “micro”-perspectives. This also included broadening the scope beyond traditional film archives to include material related to the history and current practice of public relations (PR) which turned out to be highly relevant for the understanding of what “film” and audiovisual materials more generally means for the industries using them. One major finding and future spin-off of this project indeed is the high relevance of (and lack of research on) PR, which is why it became a focal point of one of the Stockholm conferences as well as the University of California Press (UCP) publication. Another finding is that, seen in light of industrial film production in Europe overall, the number of oil-related films produced for and by companies remains rather small. After initial talks with the Swedish Film Institute our project quickly settled on working with both established and unorthodox collections that were open to investigation, including company archives (Volvo), YouTube, and significant dedicated collections abroad, such as TAMI-Texas Archive of the Moving Image, where Caroline Frick provided helpful assistance (such as the Raiford H. Burton Collection), or Project Arclight, an online source for trade publications which allows to survey the prevalence of sponsored/industrial film within mainstream theatrical cinema in the United States. The project’s researchers have continuously meet via Zoom or in person. These joint meetings did at times include other European scholars, such as Dr. Rudmer Canjels (Amsterdam), a specialist on Shell and its Film Unit.
The project's most important output is the volume Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and the Moving Image (UCP, forthcoming). The volume will also be published by Luminos Open Access. The book suggests PR as a new analytical lens to revisit issues related to “useful” cinema’s usefulness, and invites to shed new light on “world cinema” or documentary film history. While being grounded in thorough historical and archival work, this book works towards new concepts and methodologies useful for the analysis of cinema beyond its traditional forms. The book’s guiding hypothesis is that PR and public advocacy have historically played, and actually still play, a vital role in shaping perceptions of crisis related to resource scarcity and conflicts, and to the environmental challenges accompanying them. Accordingly, the book’s overarching theme are various forms of media work that were seen as strategically required to establish, contain, mitigate, defuse or delay crisis perceptions, and the degree to which media communication or “rhetorics” has become a foundation for everyday knowledge production in this regard.
Secondly, the volume, Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021) with the project's two participants as editors originated in a conference organized at Stockholm University as early as 2015, but the most intensive work phase with editing the script, inviting and writing chapters and the introduction took place in 2020 and was made possible through the RJ grant. The volume connects existing research concerning sponsored, industrial and educational film to issues of energy and ecology. It also studies the historical relation between cinema and petroculture in order to underline the role of moving images in the way an energy regime was established in the 20th century.
Thirdly, we organized, as originally planned, an international conference in Stockholm, entitled Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and Moving Images, at the Department of Media Studies, in October 2021, involving a host of reputed international scholars such as Gregory Waller (Bloomington), Cynthia B. Meyers (New York), Yvonne Zimmermann (Marburg) and Mona Damluji (Santa Barbara) alongside younger scholars such as Rudmer Canjels (Utrecht). Due to Covid-19 the conference had a hybrid format to allow contributors from the US and Australia and others with travel bans to participate. A second conference, entitled Engineering of Consent? Public Relations and Motion Pictures? was initially planned to be held in Halle, but the event had to be cancelled due to travel restrictions and general Covid-19 unease at that time.
At our respective departments, the project has been integrated into teaching activities on undergraduate, bachelor and master level as far as has been possible, given the delay in archival work. In Stockholm, the topic educational, industrial and sponsored film was the focus in Dahlquist‘s 7,5 ECTS course Kunskapsbilder: Vetenskap, upplysning, industri. The project was initially presented at the research seminar at the Department of Media Studies in September 2020. In May 2024 the project in it’s final stages was presented at the research seminar at Film Studies at Lund University with the title “Moderna media och oljeindustrin: Reflexioner kring ett RJ projekt”. The two international conferences Drilling through the Screen and Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and Moving Images were open for staff and students alike at the department.
In Halle, the topic of sponsored film, and the energy/media nexus, have been regularly included in Vonderau’s weekly four-hour M.A. course on Mediengeschichte (media history) at the Department of Media, Music and Speech Studies. The project’s materials, methods, and results were also presented several times in a departmental lecture series (Ringvorlesung), e.g. in January 2025, and June 2024. Furthermore, Vonderau initiated and organized a new regular seminar in the field of ecocriticism, including sessions on sponsored film and energy industries. On several occasions, Vonderau also presented the project to academic audiences in interdisciplinary settings, such as, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien in Halle in June 2023 (focussing on the Leuna oil industry), or at the Herbstseminar Leucorea Lutherstadt Wittenberg in September 2022. On the occasion of the project, Vonderau instigated research dialogues with other disciplines both within and outside of Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, such as with the chemist Prof. Dr. Michael Bron at MLU, for instance, or Dr. Dr. Stefan Höltgen (Universität Bayreuth).
Both researchers have disseminated their research to an audience beyond the academic:
• Presentation of the project on the archival web page Filmarkivet.se in November 2023. A text with the title Energi—föreställningar, möjligheter, motstånd was published together with films on the same topic. A similar initiative was launched with Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin (Adelheid Heftberger) in June 2023, but delayed because of the archive’s rebuilding of their online presence (Digitaler Lesesaal) and due to be launched in 2025.
• Presentation of the project on the Stockholm Cinematheque in October 2024 with the screenings of the films Hur avlångt är egentligen detta land? (Lars Forsberg & Stig Larsson) and Lektionen in Finsternis (Werner Herzog).
• Workshop with Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger, the curators and organizers of a theme-specific exhibition at renowned Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, October 2021.
In a first phase, we engaged in reading and discussion of scholarly literature related to the research field of non-theatrical, sponsored, and industrial film. In 2020-21, we also individually engaged in identifying and mapping hitherto unknown archival collections of relevance to this project, starting in Sweden and Germany, respectively. Dahlquist surveyed relevant holdings for the project foremost in Riksarkivet and Centrum för Näringslivshistoria: OK, Svenska Shell, Svenska turistföreningen, Motormännens riksförbund, Svenska biografbyrån etcetera. The article on the electrification of the railway Malmbanan was an initial study of the importance of industrial films to communicate change in infrastructure as well as promote tourism industries. In Germany, Vonderau surveyed relevant archives, historical trade publications, and films, including e.g. field visits to Historisches Archiv Aral/BP, Deutsches Filminstitut Wiesbaden, Deutsches Erdölmuseum Wietze or Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv; due to war losses, a widely fragmented archival situation, and Germany’s lack of comparably large oil companies, findings remained scarce. As the situation improved, travels to e.g. the United States became possible even for academic researchers and many of the archives of interest opened. Visits to Briscoe Center (University of Texas, Austin) were made to continue research about the collaboration between the film industry and oil companies, working on e.g. the ExxonMobil Historical Collection, the American Energy Industry Collection, and others.
Initial exploratory work in archival catalogues clearly reveals that the original idea of serial analysis as a key method did not work out, because archival holdings are too fragmentary as to allow for such a quantitative approach. As opposed to advertising film, for instance, media used in the oil industry were very diverse and in Europe much less prominent than in the United States, for instance. In accordance with our stated interest in the micropolitics that worked towards the goal of naturalizing the consumption of oil as energy and product it was our wish to develop methods more suited to such “micro”-perspectives. This also included broadening the scope beyond traditional film archives to include material related to the history and current practice of public relations (PR) which turned out to be highly relevant for the understanding of what “film” and audiovisual materials more generally means for the industries using them. One major finding and future spin-off of this project indeed is the high relevance of (and lack of research on) PR, which is why it became a focal point of one of the Stockholm conferences as well as the University of California Press (UCP) publication. Another finding is that, seen in light of industrial film production in Europe overall, the number of oil-related films produced for and by companies remains rather small. After initial talks with the Swedish Film Institute our project quickly settled on working with both established and unorthodox collections that were open to investigation, including company archives (Volvo), YouTube, and significant dedicated collections abroad, such as TAMI-Texas Archive of the Moving Image, where Caroline Frick provided helpful assistance (such as the Raiford H. Burton Collection), or Project Arclight, an online source for trade publications which allows to survey the prevalence of sponsored/industrial film within mainstream theatrical cinema in the United States. The project’s researchers have continuously meet via Zoom or in person. These joint meetings did at times include other European scholars, such as Dr. Rudmer Canjels (Amsterdam), a specialist on Shell and its Film Unit.
The project's most important output is the volume Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and the Moving Image (UCP, forthcoming). The volume will also be published by Luminos Open Access. The book suggests PR as a new analytical lens to revisit issues related to “useful” cinema’s usefulness, and invites to shed new light on “world cinema” or documentary film history. While being grounded in thorough historical and archival work, this book works towards new concepts and methodologies useful for the analysis of cinema beyond its traditional forms. The book’s guiding hypothesis is that PR and public advocacy have historically played, and actually still play, a vital role in shaping perceptions of crisis related to resource scarcity and conflicts, and to the environmental challenges accompanying them. Accordingly, the book’s overarching theme are various forms of media work that were seen as strategically required to establish, contain, mitigate, defuse or delay crisis perceptions, and the degree to which media communication or “rhetorics” has become a foundation for everyday knowledge production in this regard.
Secondly, the volume, Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021) with the project's two participants as editors originated in a conference organized at Stockholm University as early as 2015, but the most intensive work phase with editing the script, inviting and writing chapters and the introduction took place in 2020 and was made possible through the RJ grant. The volume connects existing research concerning sponsored, industrial and educational film to issues of energy and ecology. It also studies the historical relation between cinema and petroculture in order to underline the role of moving images in the way an energy regime was established in the 20th century.
Thirdly, we organized, as originally planned, an international conference in Stockholm, entitled Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and Moving Images, at the Department of Media Studies, in October 2021, involving a host of reputed international scholars such as Gregory Waller (Bloomington), Cynthia B. Meyers (New York), Yvonne Zimmermann (Marburg) and Mona Damluji (Santa Barbara) alongside younger scholars such as Rudmer Canjels (Utrecht). Due to Covid-19 the conference had a hybrid format to allow contributors from the US and Australia and others with travel bans to participate. A second conference, entitled Engineering of Consent? Public Relations and Motion Pictures? was initially planned to be held in Halle, but the event had to be cancelled due to travel restrictions and general Covid-19 unease at that time.
At our respective departments, the project has been integrated into teaching activities on undergraduate, bachelor and master level as far as has been possible, given the delay in archival work. In Stockholm, the topic educational, industrial and sponsored film was the focus in Dahlquist‘s 7,5 ECTS course Kunskapsbilder: Vetenskap, upplysning, industri. The project was initially presented at the research seminar at the Department of Media Studies in September 2020. In May 2024 the project in it’s final stages was presented at the research seminar at Film Studies at Lund University with the title “Moderna media och oljeindustrin: Reflexioner kring ett RJ projekt”. The two international conferences Drilling through the Screen and Energy Imaginaries: Public Relations and Moving Images were open for staff and students alike at the department.
In Halle, the topic of sponsored film, and the energy/media nexus, have been regularly included in Vonderau’s weekly four-hour M.A. course on Mediengeschichte (media history) at the Department of Media, Music and Speech Studies. The project’s materials, methods, and results were also presented several times in a departmental lecture series (Ringvorlesung), e.g. in January 2025, and June 2024. Furthermore, Vonderau initiated and organized a new regular seminar in the field of ecocriticism, including sessions on sponsored film and energy industries. On several occasions, Vonderau also presented the project to academic audiences in interdisciplinary settings, such as, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien in Halle in June 2023 (focussing on the Leuna oil industry), or at the Herbstseminar Leucorea Lutherstadt Wittenberg in September 2022. On the occasion of the project, Vonderau instigated research dialogues with other disciplines both within and outside of Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, such as with the chemist Prof. Dr. Michael Bron at MLU, for instance, or Dr. Dr. Stefan Höltgen (Universität Bayreuth).
Both researchers have disseminated their research to an audience beyond the academic:
• Presentation of the project on the archival web page Filmarkivet.se in November 2023. A text with the title Energi—föreställningar, möjligheter, motstånd was published together with films on the same topic. A similar initiative was launched with Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin (Adelheid Heftberger) in June 2023, but delayed because of the archive’s rebuilding of their online presence (Digitaler Lesesaal) and due to be launched in 2025.
• Presentation of the project on the Stockholm Cinematheque in October 2024 with the screenings of the films Hur avlångt är egentligen detta land? (Lars Forsberg & Stig Larsson) and Lektionen in Finsternis (Werner Herzog).
• Workshop with Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger, the curators and organizers of a theme-specific exhibition at renowned Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, October 2021.