I. Visiting the 1964/1865 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York City, remains one of my most vivid memory flashes from an early age. I remember the James Bond car from Goldfinger, gigantic dinosaur replicas, small wax dinosaur figures that melted in the back of our car, and the first monorail trains I'd ever seen. It was cool, and international, and futuristic.
II. Recently, I came across this creepy thirteen-plus-minute GM/Frigidaire World's Fair Futurama film called Out of This World (1964). From the perspective of 2009, it comes across as a rapacious and lurid dystopian vision heralded as something wonderful. Its cocky narrator boasts of how humans will plunder other worlds in deep space, and under the Earth's ocean floor, and in the rain forests, and under the mountains and across remote deserts. There are operatic clichés about foreign cultures, featuring a gynoid wife in ludicrous costumes, lovingly caressing kitchen appliances and an air conditioner. But basically, 45 years later, you see what Americans take for granted in the kitchen and laundry room, plus the AC. In fact, except for the actual Earth-plundering, widespread internet availability and cell phones, it doesn't look like we've made many changes since then.
Warning: not for more delicate souls, who may be tempted to commit suicide by film's end. Here's a pertinent link to the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/out_of_this_world
Today's Rune: Initiation.
5 comments:
Seems I've seen this piece a few times before. I love the innocences it portrays with the family and background music; unlike today, where everything becomes compact and fast paced like a music video.
I remember going to Montreal in '67 where the future seemed a bit different.
I only have one word for the film...GAHHHHHH!
I REMEMBER THE DISNEY RIDE WITH THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD, THE GE RIDE THRU THE FUTURE, OO7'S AUTOMOBILE, BELGIUM WAFFLES AND IF MEMORY SERVES ME RIGHT, THE TICKER TAPE NEWS THAT SAID ADLAI STEVENSON DIED.
It's a horror movie.
Looks like an episode of the Twilight Zone, but without the underlying morality tale or cautionary lesson. Also makes me think of that seethingly ironic William Burroughs piece about "thank God for passenger pigeons, to be shit out of wholesome American guts", or something like that.
-JC
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