Re: OTW: Retro Done Right

Joe Bernstein <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:e2pog3$jmt$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
...
(Have there been science fiction
musicals? Well, OK, I mean other than <Rocky Horror>.)

Just Imagine" (1930). We all know that the past is another
country. In this case, it's a country in which someone watched
Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and realized what it was missing: love
songs, dialect humor, and gay jokes. (Also, all that stuff about
industrial labor was kind of a downer, so 86 that.) "Just Imagine"
is a vision of the far-flung future of 1980 the way it used to be,
with mile-high towers, food pills, personal aeroplanes, and the
first flight to Mars. (Which evidently doesn't need women, since
it already has a lot of scantily-dressed ones who can do elaborate
dance numbers at the drop of a hat.)

Some have suggested that its example laid the groundwork for the
number of genre SF musicals made in the ensuing decades (which
closely approaches zero, unless out-of-genre examples like "Singing
in the Rain"[1] are included). Though apparently the city-of-the-
future shots got recycled as stock footage for serials like Buck
Rogers and Flash Gordon.

(And in that tradition, this post is itself recycled from my
response the last time the subject of SF musicals came up, since
I'd watched the movie more recently at the time. :-) )

Mike

[1] "Singing in the Rain" is, after all, a story centered around
the impact of a new technology on art and society. The only
problem with calling it SF is that the technology wasn't fictional
or speculative when it was made.

--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
mschiffe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Dont give up yet hillary!!!
    ... Oblama has spent his life having the system help him out, ... and dreams of all the blacks who think like Wright and Moss and who ... The racial climate in this country is a complete clusterfuck. ... Can you imagine if he picks Bill Richardson for VP? ...
    (rec.martial-arts)
  • Re: Creationism in Science Fiction
    ... I can't imagine any way that, for example, the infinite sum ... Sagan put it there because he hoped to design something which would be ... a proper and irresolvable science fiction mystery. ... Jodie Foster got punk'd by aliens. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: The most powerful woman in the world...
    ... Chancellor Merkel holds a doctorate in physics from the ... I can imagine that foreign policy combined with national ... Note that I'm still trying to figure out how a country is run. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Creationism in Science Fiction
    ... I can't imagine any way that, for example, the infinite sum ... wondrous mystery. ... Sagan put it there because he hoped to design something which would be ... a proper and irresolvable science fiction mystery. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: *How To Protect You Family From A Terrorist Attack!*
    ... >>> Just keep living in your fantasy world ... >> You fondly imagine, based on very inaccurate information or poor US ... this country is not "similar to yours". ... it will be the death of your country and culture". ...
    (misc.rural)