Motion picture films were once the mainstay of media resource centers in schools. You could obtain films for just about any subject. My job included setting up up the projector and requested film before a class started. I would run part of the film to adjust the focus and check the sound, then switch to ‘Reverse Play’ to go back to the beginning of the film. Of course the picture movement was backward, and so was the sound. It sounded something like, “ weep dwroop vfoo scrahees det”, making no sense at all. One day I noticed a student watching, seemingly fascinated by the reverse process, as I made my check on a film about Japan. Jokingly I said, “ Isn’t that interesting? You play it foreword, it’s English but play it backward, and it’s Japanese.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s pretty cool!”
Total acceptance!
I wish people were as quick to believe the true facts rather than myth, fable and rumor.
Phonograph records were also the subject of myth and fable. Numerous records were purported to have messages recorded backwards in them. You could hear incantations, dirty words and the like, if you played them backwards. ‘Backwards’ was not easy to do on a regular record player, but a professional turntable like we just happened to have in the TV Center would work. We had a steady stream of ‘believers’ wanting to check it out. Even the theme song to “Mr. Ed”, the program about a talking horse, was supposed to have something. They seldom came up with anything that sounded remotely like the rumored message.
For the most part, it was silly, good fun; we were willing to oblige them in their searches.