Can you believe it? No remote! That’s why we all stood so close. Well, that and there were only, like, three channels.
I was born in the late 1950′s–a time when people were more trusting and generally easier to swindle.
If we read something in the newspaper, we believed it. If Walter Cronkite said it on the nightly news, it was true. If an authority figure told us something, we believed it. We were the human versions of Silly Putty.
Is it any wonder these were the kinds of toys I remember having? “Bendable.” Poseable.”
Often, I hear lots of people in my generation refer to those days as “the good old days.” We remember our youths as simpler, less confusing times–as times when the future looked swell (if the Communists could be kept in line, which they practiced doing all the time).
That is impressive keeping-in-line-manship!
The present was something we didn’t think too hard about, either, because we didn’t have to. All those authority figures did our thinking for us.
It wasn’t until we grew up and realized that maybe not everything we heard or read was exactly accurate.
Why am I even talking about this? Good question! I’m so glad I asked!
The other night, just for something different, Phil and I watched a 1956 Sci-Fi cult classic, Forbidden Planet. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I hadn’t. I’m not into Sci-Fi. Fi is fine; Sci, not so much.
This is the 1950′s poster advertising the movie.
Seems like a pretty scary and intense film, huh?
Wow! This looks like a sinister movie. What is this evil space robot going to do with this obviously overcome and under-dressed blonde. There’s that mad-scientist looking dude off to the left with his shifty eyes and the obvious hero pointing a laser gun while holding his scared love interest. I mean, this movie has it all–it CINAMASCOPE COLOR!
Well, I don’t want to spoil the movie for you. It does a good enough job of doing that all on its own. But let me just show you a few still shots of the robot who isn’t quite the bad boy he is made out to be in this promo poster.
Here he is, having prepared a nice lunch for the Captain and his crew.
Here he is providing the cook of the space ship with bottles of whiskey that the robot made himself. If the robot is evil, it’s that he is enabling that alcoholic astronaut who looks and acts more like a cook on an army ship.
The one female in the movie (not the buxom long-haired blonde draped in the evil robot’s clutches), is asking the robot to sew her up a new dress so she looks “proper” for the space ship captain should she see him in the morning. The robot asks what kind of fabric she wants. Nothing threatening there.
I can tell you without spoiling the movie that there is some kind of monster and lots of laser blasting. But the robot is more of a housekeeper, go-fer, handy-bot, and generally obedient pet than any malevolent pile of metal gone rogue.
So I learned a couple of lessons:
1. Even in “the good old days,” they weren’t being straight with us. Just to be perfectly clear, by “they” I mean “”them.” Come to think of it, they weren’t so forthright about all that racism and sexism that as going on back then, either…
2. Those old movies are really revealing–in the “socially significant” way, not the “wowza” way–to watch from the perspective I have today. They are fun to watch, too.
I bet this movie is really about 25 kind of tall and highly intelligent women (thus 50 feet) moving into town. The men are just bowled over by these tall, hubba-hubba women and general chaos ensues. But, of course, they blame the women because the men can’t keep their shizzle together. Probably the women don’t destroy highways unless men can’t keep their eyes on the road as they leer at the women, thus causing car wreaks. That’s totally likely.
Have you watched any movies that have made you think any either silly or serious thoughts lately?
