Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/25/future-shlock.html
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A few comments: The post ride chapter where you viewed the model of the city of future was part of the ride in it’s Disneyland incarnation. It was my favorite part when we visited ~1971. It is interesting to think that if they were to start from scratch with the same timespan, rather than 1900s 20s 40s 60s we would have 60s 80s 00s and today. So the ultimate scene from the original show would be the first act today,
The conflict between technological triumphalism and distopia WAS very strong in the 60s and 70s.
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Anyone recall when the model of Moshe Safdi’s Habitat Puerto Rico (the proposed follow-on from Habitat 67 in Montreal) turned up in EPCOT and in what context? I’ve only ever seen a few black and white images of it.
I’ve long been fascinated by Carousel of Progress myself, as well as Horizons, with its curious continuation of the same apparent narrative. A whole ride making-up an unmade 5th scene of the earlier ride, built on a kind of Metabolist-influenced vision that seemed to emerge widely in both futurist and science fiction media of the 80s. It also seemed to lift some things from Jacque Fresco --or wherever he lifted them from-- though Robert McCall seemed the major aesthetic influence, having painted one of his giant murals for the attraction. Horizons seemed like the last hurrah for any sort of futurist positivism as the popular culture slid into a generally dystopian outlook and toward a compulsive escapism into fantasy and nostalgia in an attempt to avoid it.
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It’s worth downloading the mp3 and listening to the pro-trump ad right after the interview, it doesn’t sound like a parody to me so i’m curious how cory feels about appearing on a podcast that is promoting him and his chinese-manufactured merch. It’s not on the youtube embed though.
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