Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, presented by Orson Welles

May 1st, 2009 · 2 comments or link to (permalink)

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

This is an absolute gem and an almost forgotten one – a documentary version of Alvin Toffler’s classic 70s book, Future Shock presented by Orson Welles.

The premise of Future Shock was that the pace of human progress had achieved a level which would create a pathological reaction, a metaphorical motion sickness caused by the fact that nothing seemed permanent.

Unlike most past views of tomorrow, which look hopelessly obsolete (’nothing dates like the future’), the premise of Future Shock can only get stronger since not only progress itself, but the derivative of it, its increasing rate of change, exacerbates the core phenomenon.

Stylistically, however, Future Shock is a definitively dated period piece, an early 70s, Jumbo Fonted, psychedelic trip full of deliciously obsolete technology that conjures up wistful nostalgia where it is intended to do exactly the opposite. Even the poor quality of this video with its wavering audio track and bleached imagery actually adds to the effect.

Future Shock is both a perfect piece of vintage cultural nostalgia and still relevant scientific prophesy. It’s Everything retro-futurism should be.

2 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: nostalgia society the smashing list

Standard Operating Procedure – on Demand at Netflix

April 21st, 2009 · 2 comments or link to (permalink)

Above is the trailer for Errol Morris’ most recent film, Standard Operating Procedure, which is now available as a watch on demand feature at Netflix.

It takes the premise that all that will be remembered of the Iraq war in decades to come will be the photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib and dissects the role of photographs in how what went on there was ultimately judged.

Lynndie England, the person often held most culpable, because of her appearance in photographs appears least guilty under analysis. She was a child below the legal drinking age who was easily influenced by another reservist, the sadistic alpha-male, Charles Graner, who was often behind the camera in the most incriminating images.

No matter how horrifying the imagery of Abu Ghraib the people interviewed point out that the real violence was perpetrated by CIA interrogators who murdered prisoners during questioning, but whose crimes were not photographed or prosecuted.

The underlying point is that images will always carry more weight than written testimony, but that they are often taken at face value. The most iconic image of Abu Ghraib, the one which turned public opinion more than others, is the crucifixion-like image of a prisoner standing on a box with his head in a sack and arms outstretched. The electric wires hanging from his fingers are fake and the exercise in sleep deprivation rather than physical violence is deemed ‘Standard Operating Procedure’. But the image, with its religious overtone, speaks of something else. .

(BTW for those that wonder why I am posting a link to Netflix. The aim of this site is to point to great TV/movies that are available directly via the Internet. I’m a particular fan of Netflix’s watch it now service, which has increasing good movies available, after a slow start).

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The Curious World of Frinton-on-Sea

March 29th, 2009 · 5 comments or link to (permalink)

Part 1 embedded, Part 2 here.

Total running time: approx 40 mins

This documentary is an absolute gem, in the tradition of Errol Morris it finds the profound in the utterly banal, without resorting to postmodern sneering. The subject is a sleepy English seaside town, one of those places where uptight, keeping up appearances, Edwardian sensibilities hang by a thread, appropriately enough at the nation’s edge. This is a culture that was satirized in Dad’s army as being obsolete 40 years ago and which Orwell railed against even earlier in Keep the Aspadistra Flying, but it still lives in Frinton on Sea.

This calcified culture that has only recently begun to emerge in America, where middle class people, or to paraphrase Evelyn Waugh, ‘upper lower middle class’ people emulate the veneer of respectability displayed by the public face of the powerful, without enjoying the private debauchery. Its a sick joke that is played by the rich on the modest, the world over, where ordinary people suffer humdrum in exchange for a caricature of dignity.

When people talk about the hypocrisy of suburbia, as if the few people who are secretly sleeping around and snorting coke after church on Sunday are proof of endemic problems, they miss the point. Where I have encountered it, this Janus like culture seems to be the norm in the upper echelons of society, from the Hamptons to Hampshire, whereas in places like Frinton-on-Sea there are many people who actually live the lives that the Victorians pretended to. Its a raw deal.

Here, a BBC team pokes back at the ‘twitching net curtains’ of exburbia, to examine the traumatic impact of the decision to automate the town’s railroad crossing and the resulting local outcry. The result is a small socio-anthropological masterpiece.

5 comments » (report dead embeds in comments) tags: society

Koyaanisqatsi

February 28th, 2009 · 3 comments or link to (permalink)

When I was working for the architect, Norman Foster he came into the office after having seen Koyaanisqatsi and raved about it. Every sycophant, like myself, promptly went out and saw it.

In many ways its an architects film, with architect music by Philip Glass, repetitive and jerky like a Rotring penned plan. But there’s something that doesn’t quite fit, like the new age Hopi name and some of the more cliched imagery that looks like its from a stock library. These make it a flawed masterpiece but one which is a must see, nevertheless.

(Hulu, US only)

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New York Slum Images

September 1st, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

Quite often, I hear people complaining that New York has lost its edge and that it has been ruined by gentrification and Yuppies. The people that I hear this from have tended to be middle class white people.

Here are some pictures of New York in the 70s and 80s, when I remember visiting the South Bronx and it looked worse than my early memory of Beirut. Not much to romanticize about, unless you look back wistfully on poverty rarely seen outside of the ‘developing’ world and people shooting up through bloody, shoeless feet. The gritty creativity of downtown New York, was a theme park hell, whereas further north there was the real thing.

There is a consensus these days, that rising oil prices spells the end of suburbia. However, few people under 40 in global cities such as New York and London have any memory other than the improvement of inner city areas. Here real estate costs soared through tenement and terrace gentrification, rezoned industrial building conversions and more recently cartoon loft condo dwellings. But in a country with few socialist programs outside of free tennis courts, and a financial services crash which will lop a sizable chunk of New York’s local government revenue, the Brownstone and brick frontiers could easily retreat as they have done in the past.

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