Futurama is the brain child of Matt Groening and others. The series has been complete for some time now and the humour is failing to date. Either the series managed to reach timelessness within its four seasons, or it will eventually give way to obsolescence. Is it modern or is it post-modern?
Architecture and material possessions, as noted on By Design, present a conceit of modernism as being the logical end of history, the final phase of social evolution. The architecture in Futurama is entirely urban, and rurality is virtually non-existent due to the elimination of distance through technology. Technology has worked its way into every facet of this new information society, with china that reassembles itself upon breaking, the replacement of the wheel with hover, money that talks back, and the use of robots to do all routine labour.
The conceit here is that technology has made everything easier. The core idea being that of 'Technological Determinism,' that technological advancement determines social and cultural change. This is a flawed concept however; it does not take into account the economic realities and power of the manufacturer. For instance, the design of DVDs was such that they could not be ripped, and by charging $30 for a thin piece of plastic-metal, the profit is exponential, and companies fought furiously to protect this control — to their detriment, as noted by Dirk Deppey.
In Futurama, most technology seems designed to serve the end user rather than to make profit. In fact, the interiors all appear rather spacious. Human traffic is crammed together in transporter tubes and everything has been streamlined for efficiency. This shows a great deal of faith in technology as a liberating force.
Of course, this faith is not entirely blind. Technology has come to perpetuate outdated institutions and forms of governance. In Futurama, all the nations have come under the United States of Earth, with a flag that has the American stripes with a picture of the earth where the stars would be. Given that each star on the American flag represents the addition of a state, it would seem that, over time, the whole world simply joined the United States before running out of space on the flag. The Central Bureaucracy is also aided by an advanced arrangement of digital and physical filing systems, but needs a massive amount of space in order to maintain its reliance on paper.
Article comments
1 - John Owen
But is it any good?
Subjectively speaking?
2 - Chris Beaumont
Interesting read, but I came in expecting a review of the DVD. The title is rather misleading and should not be listed as a review.
Still, good column.
3 - DrPat
Futurama is more satire than post-modern commentary, JS!
For example, the robot is the character most imbued with human foibles and urges. This is not, in my opinion, done to expose the shallow programming of greed and consumerism in modern culture, but because it is FUNNIER that way.
4 - John Lee
specifically, a robot can get away with things that a human would never be allowed to
you don't see any cigar-smoking, whore-mongering, kleptomaniac characters in The Simpsons