I miss the future that we were supposed to have. In the twenty first century, among other fabulous promises, we were all going to fly around in hover cars while wearing silver jump suits with big shoulders. The last time I looked in my garage my car had four wheels and never left the ground (well, not on purpose) and in my closet there is not one shiny silver outfit.
When I was a kid there was a show on called The Twenty First Century. It was sort of a science fiction type genre with predictions about what the future of the next generation would look like. I don't recall too much about it, but I remember one episode where they talked about how
everyone would have computers and how useful they would be - and I just didn't see it.
I have a lot of fun watching old Science Fiction movies. The one that I just watched that inspired me to write today was ... one of the Planet of the Apes movies. I think it was Return to the Planet of the Apes. The movie opens up with a futuristic cityscape, like about 1980, with
chained monkeys in orange cover-alls being led by sadistic, fascist overseers (with whips). They show you a little bit of this, then underneath they put up the words: "Los Angeles. 1991."
Beautiful! Does everybody remember just fourteen years ago when we had monkey slaves in California? Whatever happened to them? Oh, I miss my monkey butler so much!
An earlier and better example of the future that never wasn't is the novel 1984. It's pretty dated now, but the novel was written by George Orwell in 1948 and was about a dystopian future under a totalitarian system much like we believed Communism was at the time. When the year 1984 did come, all the news magazines and TV shows went nuts with articles
and shows about how close we really were to 1984. Not really. There were some handy comparisons between the technology that Orwell speculated about and emerging technology for keeping track of other humans. But that was about it. In America. Elsewhere in the world in
more totalitarian countries the comparisons were closer.
When I was a kid I used to love Star Trek, the original Star Trek. God, when I watch it now, though, I almost want to cringe. For one thing, the special effects are so dated. It was cutting edge back then, I know, but these days even crappy Sci Fi can do so much better. And then its
almost hilarious how little they imagined for the future. I keep thinking about their picture phones, each with a huge cathode ray tube in back.
Perhaps my favorite episode for silliness is Spock's Brain, which is actually a rather infamous one with fans - they don't like it - but I find it hilarious. In Spock's Brain, Spock's Brain is stolen, and the crew of the Enterprise (their space ship) track it down to a planet where women
rule everything. These women dress in mini-skirts, go-go boots, bouffant hair-dos and long fake eye-lashes.
Yes. If women could run their own planet this is exactly how they would dress.
Now, I started out originally with Planet of the Apes and I'm a fan. Not of the sequels but of the original. Charlton Heston really did some of his finest acting in that movie and I still have some lines memorized word for word. ie, "Take your stinking paws off of me, you damned, dirty ape!"
"It's a madhouse! A madhouse!" and "You maniacs! You finally did it. You blew it up. You blew it all up. Ahhh, damn you! Damn you all to Hell!" That last line is delivered in the shadow of the ruins of the statue of Liberty and sent a chill up my spine when I first saw it. It is really a
shame that he has Alzheimers and almost certainly will never act again. Boy, he was on the wrong side of most issues, but I don't care so much. It didn't have a lot to do with his acting.
How this affects the apocalypse: Predicting the future is hard. There are so many possibilities and they all have to do with free will and if people decide they don't want an end of the world, then they don't have to have it.
No comments:
Post a Comment