I haven't been reading the funnies in the newspaper ever since looking at them started giving me excessive eye strain. But lately I have subscribed to getting a daily email of the Savage Chickens cartoon by Doug Savage.
Today's is appropriate on a couple of levels.
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| The future looks bright |
Recall that the caption shown above, from the original cartoon, is a lyric from Donald Fagen's I.G.Y. song. Just a reminder of the opening lines:
Standing tough under stars and stripe
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright
Besides whatever political inferences you might draw from this cartoon, about one Donald or another, the retro-futuristic reference to jetpacks is consistent with the lyrics of I.G.Y., and some of the techno-optimism of the 1950s.
Speaking of techno-optimism, The Jetsons was an animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions which I watched on tv when it aired from September, 1962, until March, 1963 (short run!). This family of the imagined future not only wore the spandex jackets mentioned in the I.G.Y. song, but they also had their jetpacks:
I bought a DVD set of The Jetsons a few years back, covering 14 of the original 24 episodes. (The names of son Elroy and dog Astro show up occasionally as NY Times crossword puzzle answers.)
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| The cover of my DVD set of The Jetsons first season |
For additional imaginings about the future, I sometimes look at the subreddit for "retro-futurism." A subreddit is an online community for posts on a particular topic as part of the larger universe of the social media Reddit website. The Retrofuturism subreddit "focuses on the futurist visions of eras past," that is, a look backwards to people who were looking ahead. Go check it out. The future looked bright!
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