The Future from Past to Present

Throughout human history, predicting the future has preoccupied the imagination and brought on everything from novel invention to widespread panic. Stories were concocted about the end times, fumes were inhaled to receive divine insight, and all manner of objects were consulted, all in an attempt to predict what was coming next. Television, like any storytelling medium, was also used to convey ideas about what the future might be like—using predictive strategies from serious contemplation to idealistic daydreams to plain old SWAGs. What follows are a series of examinations of different techniques used in television to predict the future.

Early in television history, Walt Disney’s show Disneyland was submitted to the Peabodys multiple times. When it won in 1954, the Peabody panel said it had “changed the bedtime habits of the nation’s children.” The “Tomorrowland” segment always had audiences thinking about the world of tomorrow, if there was life on other planets, and new technologies that could be developed. In one episode entitled “Mars and Beyond,” Disney focuses on efforts to build a spacecraft that can reach Mars. The episode is documentary-like, detailing humanity’s interaction with Mars, from Greek philosophers to a 1957 scientist explaining how it is possible for Mars to sustain life. Everything is illustrated, there are even accounts from scientists to back up the points the episode makes.

The most notable aspect of this episode’s approach to the future is that instead of explaining the trip to Mars using conditional words like, “could,” “would,” “maybe,” or even the future “will,” the Disneyland episode is all in present tense, as if the launch was actually happening then. As everything is said, it is carried out through cartoon, models, or still images. The only time conditional words are used is after the spacecraft makes contact with Mars, because no one at the time had actually seen close up what the surface of Mars looked like. This decision to use certainty made the program’s predictions of impending travel to Mars more engaging and entertaining for its audience—fueling the imaginations of the young viewers, as was ultimately the show’s prerogative.

On July 10, 1962, ABC launched Telstar; it no longer runs today, but this communications satellite was considered a big deal by everyone in the industry. It was the first satellite to send television pictures, telephone calls, and fax images from space. The launch of the satellite coincided with a film entitled Worldvision: A Passport to the Future.

    

ABC believed that the launching of Telstar would influence how communications would evolve, and as such the company would be at the forefront of this technological advance. Exalted for its stunning visuals, this program tragically no longer exists beyond a working script and an audio recording. However from these, the optimism of the broadcaster is clear as the program exclaims that with the satellite, the communications industry would be launched into the future and, as the title implies, ABC was inviting the world to come along for the ride.

Conversely, The World of Tomorrow takes an approach to visualizing the future based largely on novelty. The program emphasizes the “wow factor” of technological advancements possible in the next decade (from 1984) with flashing lights, outer space-themed graphics, musical accompaniment reminiscent of futuristic programs like Star Trek and the astonished-sounding narration of William Shatner. It presents dozens of future inventions like computer-generated graphics in movies, interactive laser compact discs, and lasik surgery—which in hindsight, weren’t too far off. There are few dramatizations; most of its glimpses of the future are of the specific technology in play during the present, so its conceptualization was founded entirely on things currently in existence, with no speculation really needed. By keeping few its forays into the realm of complete conjecture, the program embraces extraordinary aspects of its future world while keeping it grounded in reality.  However, when the era of the future being predicted is only a few years off, rather than centuries, the margin for error shrinks considerably. Programs like this, which aim to legitimately give their audience a glimpse into the near future, must take care to ensure that their representation has a good chance of being accurate, because many who watch it will actually live to find out. 

On a very different note, Time Trumpet is a documentary made in 2031—or a satirical faux-documentary made in 2006, depending on who you ask. It takes then-contemporary trends to the illogical extreme by making the program as scatterbrained, celebrity obsessed, and ill-focused as its audience “will be.” It pokes fun at human nature as something absurdly shallow, yet pushes no real agenda; it simply deteriorates into nonsensical logic and jabs at people, corporations, and the documentary format. It uses the near-future as a fun house mirror for the present.

Finally, Futurescape opens segments of its program, like this one, with dramatizations of the future that introduce its discussion of how modern research could develop into technologies that shape the distant future. Here, the scene-setting sketch portrays a future city much like one today, except with high-rise structures built with some amorphous future architecture and flying cars zooming through the air. Yet when it zooms in to street level, we see people who remain dressed in modern American style, speaking English, and exhibiting behavior no different than one would expect of people today. This concept of the future, it seems, is different from the present in very imaginative ways - like robots who look like and live alongside humans - yet similar and largely identical on other levels. On the one hand, the idea of robots with human functions who demand the right to vote is highly presumptive, given that today’s robots can barely manage to traverse such difficult terrain as a slightly raised threshold. On the other, it’s an equal stretch to assume that the United States government, the English language, and modern customs and lifestyles will still exist a hundred or more years from today. It’s something drastically advanced fit into familiar and realistic concepts.

Such is Futurescape’s approach to visualizing the future: a sensational portrayal built around actual technological advancements that are unlikely to affect the future in the ways the show presents any time soon. Research into mapping the circuitry of the human brain may, in fact, enable scientists and engineers to build computers that can mimic or duplicate its functions. Achieving this is one thing, developing it into a viable technology that is consistently problem-free and successful is another. As neat as it is to imagine the possibility of having computer chips that enhance the processing power of the brain or humanoid robots with emotions and ethical decision making power, the odds of it all are slim for the foreseeable future.

However with futurism, an artistic movement that rejects traditional forms in order to celebrate through art the energy and dynamism of modern technology, the canvas on which to paint is boundless. Programs like The Jetsons and Star Trek have made use of those endless possibilities in their depictions of the future—some intentionally absurd and some borrowing from principles of theoretical physics to legitimize the program’s scenarios. With no definite predictor of exactly what is possible years down the road, no idea of what the future might hold for humankind is too outlandish. Futurescape seems comfortable, within the constraints of reason, to go as far as they can with that creative license. 

Choosing a strategy for portending, predicting, or playacting the future all depends on the oracle’s goals. From the idealism of the technology advertiser to the scathing absurdity of the satirist, no one way is useful for all objectives. Though some strategies may prove more accurate in the long run, very often the aim of the program is more immediate. In fact, the way in which the future is presented says more about the present than its ostensible subject matter. Starry-eyed idealism and outlandish optimism may serve the advertiser and the entertainer, but realism is more apropos for the journalist, as pessimism is for the activist documentarist.

Media Coverage of Women's Issues

We watched several segments that attempted to educate women about their bodies and their options pertaining to reproductive health. While these segments were certainly a step in the right direciton, we feel as though women and the issues surrounding reproductive health were misrepresented. Many of the segments ignored women's larger needs. 
For Women Only: Birth Control is a 1968 30-minute episode of the NBC series dedicated to tackling women’s issues. To discuss reproductive health, the network assembled a panel of six experts, made up of five men and only one woman, ranging from medial doctors to leading university researchers. The all-female crowd featured few women below the age of 30, some even appearing to be elderly, and very few women of color. As seen in the clip, the single female panelist presents birth control as not only a primarily female responsibility and duty, but as a means to maintain a stable relationship with a husband by preventing pregnancy. In this clip and throughout the entirety of the program, sexually transmitted diseases are ignored. Sex functions as merely a tool for reproduction, and female sexuality is seemingly non-existent or shameful. While educational, the doctor’s discussion of birth control is somewhat exclusionary and reflects largely conservative attitudes. Single women are not in the audience nor are they considered, and LGBT women are not referenced at all. While confronting birth control, the program often approaches women’s health as a whole in the context of a partner’s or societal concerns. As we see often in media today, the discourse about women’s health is then diverted away from women themselves, and a program that was made “for women only,” ignores their overarching needs. The clip I chose is from a special called; For Women Only: Abortion. The special features a panel of people ranging in careers, and each offers a unique viewpoint on the issues surrounding abortion. The panel members are: Dr. Kleegman, a professor, Father Granfield, a professor of criminal law at a Catholic university, Harriet Pilpel, an attorney, and Dr. Nathan Rappaport, an abortionist. I chose to use a clip from this special because I think it adequately demonstrates the viewpoint towards women’s health issues during this time period: it looks at the issue through the perspective of everyone except the woman herself. 

In the clip, Dr. Rappaport insinuates deserving the audience’s pity, as opposed to the woman who has to undergo the abortion herself and deal with both the physical and mental effects afterwards. Not only that, but he insinuates that a pregnancy is a negative “situation”, which creates a sense of fear, and negative stigma that prevents people from talking openly about the issue. Throughout the entire segment, many opinions were given on the matter of abortion. But none seemed to be directed towards the average woman: the person who actually undergoes an abortion.

Furthermore, this could have been a great opportunity to open the floor and discuss the legislation surrounding abortion. There were many educated people there who could've provided the audience great insight as to the pros and cons of legalizing abortion. However, it turned into a personal argument between two professionals.
I chose a roughly two minute clip from the program Unwed Mothers (Minneapolis, MN) for our project (from 8:18 to 10: 45). Released in 1960 as a public service program, it effectively captures both the public sentiment towards illegitimate childbirth as well as the desire to change the stigma that surrounds it. The program looks at the issue and the women involved in a way that urges the public to sympathize and understand what they’re going through rather than judge or look down upon them. This clip starts out with the narrator saying that while the women are generally happy inside of the home, they don’t face the same reality outside of the home where they are met with stares and criticism. The program then follows three pregnant girls taking a trip to the park with the narrator describing how they deal with the judgments they receive. He says they put on fake wedding rings, and he even mirrors public sentiment by adding, “it’s embarrassing to have to buy your own wedding ring.” However, he is trying to evoke compassion in the audience as the explains the ring as “a bitter reminder of the boy who refused to marry the girl or of the parents who wouldn’t give their consent.” It’s interesting to note that he doesn’t mention the possibility of the girl having any say in her relationship. We continue to see clips of the girls at the park as the narrator notes how viewers would probably judge the girls by only seeing their pregnancy with the absence of wedding rings. He urges them to see the girl as a whole person who just made a mistake and is “unable to hide her wrong.” This clip shows how the program as a whole represents the issue of illegitimate pregnancy and addresses the negative stigma around it, all while looking through the lens of a conservative 1960’s America.

You Can Get an Abortion, Even If You Don't Need To! (1975)

This was an expository news program, in which female journalists in Florida go into aboriton clinics and claim that they need an abortion. What they discovered was startling. Five out of the eight  abortion clinics were doing abortions, even when the women weren't pregnant. There was an influx of people commending the show, and the show even spurred legislation in Florida that regulated the abortion clinics. A few were even shut down. This piece demonstrates the true power of television, and it contains what the previous segments were lacking: total representation of the truth. This representation caused progression, which ensued throughout both the media and legislation.

A Woman And Her Gynecologist.

This was a segment that came out in 1975, which served to empower woman to educate themselves about their bodies and their options when it comes to reproductive health. Many of the women in this show described their previous experiences with male gynecologists as unsettling and uneducational. The gynecologist, Dr. Maureen Chua, in this special was a female, and there was footage of the women interacting with her during their appointment. Dr. Chua takes the time to educate women about their bodies and options, and after their appointment each of the patients are interviewed. Across the board, each woman said they preferred their experience with Dr. Chua over their previous experiences with male gynecologists. This program was extremely educational, and certainly empowered women to not be ashamed to simply ask questions and take care of themselves. We think this was such an effective piece for this time period because it was produced by only women, and was funded by a women's rights group.

OVERALL TAKE: The medium of television has a unique power in making issues relevant and creating a forum for society to discuss those issues. It is important that women and women's health issues are represented on television, however, there is a long road ahead in fairly and accurately representing women's health.

LGBTQIA Pre-Y2K, As Told by TV

LGBTQIA Pre-Y2K, As Told by TV

The right to lead a life without prejudice from others has been a long fight for the LGBTQIA community. We set out to determine what life was like, according to Peabody Award nominated television, for LGBTQIA people before the year 2000, when the movement for acceptance began to gain momentum in the United States. The movement began with the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in New York City. From that time on, the media became increasingly open about sharing information of “homosexual” lifestyles. We discover that the prejudice ran deep in the early years of the movement, with discrimination from not only common neighbors but also leaders in the community. The following clips are evaluated together to examine the different types of prejudice the LGBTQIA community has experienced since the struggle came to light in the late 1960s.

In 1972, the public service documentary Coming Out focused on educating its audience about gay people and their culture by trying to convey the motivations and thoughts behind being gay. A large part of the PSA was footage of men in drag at the Miss Gay America Pageant in Nashville, blatantly and immediately displaying the lack of concern for desertion among the different types of LGBTQIA people in the 1970s, long before the term existed. This grouping details the lack of concern addressed to differentiating between the types of gay, lesbian, transsexual, bisexual or in-between orientations that existed.

The documentary interviews priests, doctors, and police officers which all frame the topic of homosexuality as something that is scientifically explainable, curable with religion, or manageable with jail time. Many of the gay men interviewed chose to do the interview in shadow so that their families will not be offended or shamed. The lack of acceptance in society at the time called for the men to literally hide their faces when talking about issues of homosexuality.

This specific clip of the PSA features commentary from gay men themselves. The men explain that they are not harmful to society, as many people believe they are. The men have honest intentions and explain they have no control over their sexual orientation and no intention to do anything but live their lives and be happy. The man featured at the end of the clip, Tony, explains to the interviewer that he does not identify as gay and rejects societies labels, claiming he is just “Tony” and nothing else. We then see her, Tony, lip-syncing to a song about freedom of self-expression and love, symbolizing the slow yet steady strength that LGBTQIA people were gaining in the early 70s.
 Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, the LGBTQIA population continued to face discrimination from society at large. Often misunderstood and feared, the LGBTQIA population was routinely excluded from positions of power and importance within the community. A champion of the gay rights movement, Harvey Milk broke though the ceiling imposed on the gay community when he became the first openly gay person to be elected to a government position in the U.S. Although he shattered boundaries, the pushback from a largely unaccepting society shadowed his term in office.

The following clip exposes internal tensions as Harvey Milk and John Briggs, the leader of Proposition 6 an initiative that aimed to strip openly gay schoolteachers of their jobs, fought over the bill. The clip contains a news scene from 1978 where Briggs and Milk argue about the proposition. The argument arises because Milk makes a jab at Briggs regarding the statements Briggs made,

saying there was a positive correlation between gay schoolteachers and child molestation. Milk then continues to corner Briggs into admitting that he assumes that gay schoolteachers are child molesters, and that the only way to lower the number of child molesters, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is to take out the homosexual group.

The scene expresses the bias against the gay community during the 1970s. Even in a “progressive” city, such as San Francisco, the news stations still felt Briggs’ argument was substantial enough to air. In his argument, which continues to equate gay people to prostitutes, Briggs voices the concerns of the conservative population who are afraid of allowing gay people to interact with their children.

By 1981, the societal acceptance of the LGBTQIA population had not vastly improved. Many of the religious biases against LGBTQIA people that are still present in some groups today were prevalent in the 1980s. As evidenced in the documentary All God’s Children?, the difficult and often painful relationship between homosexuals and religious institutions were still prevalent. The clip provides a succinct summary of the tensions between the homosexual population and the church, incorporating several interviews with various clergy members, medical and psychological experts, and professors who offered contrasting outlooks on homosexuality and its place in religion. The exposition of different ideas from both sides of the tension aids in presenting the topic in an unbiased, purely educational fashion. However, dramatization is still present in the contrast of the expressed beliefs; some believe homosexuals feeling shamed by the church are unfairly mistreated, while others insist there is no place within the church for homosexuals choosing to be open with his/her sexuality.

The exposition of these contrasting views lends meaning to the program by educating the viewer on aspects of homosexuality, including their treatment by many religious institutions. The analysis of this sector of society casts a wide range of understanding about how the gay population is treated by society—the shame they are often made to feel, the contrasting, but mostly negative, reactions they are often met with, and the struggle they must endure in order to live contently within their identities.

As evidenced by the media, the LGBTQIA population faced years of discrimination from society, religious groups and political institutions. As the LGBTQIA population continues to gain momentum, it gives gravity to those who stood at the forefront of the movement when discrimination was at its highest, allowing the LGBTQIA population today to push new boundaries into complete acceptance. The fight for equal rights has been long, but well worth the many years of struggle. Most recently this effort culminated in the 2015 victory of Jim Obergefell in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal. The media pre-Y2K contributed to shaping the history of the LGBTQIA community and undoubtedly had an impact on the modern day movement.  

Post by: Charlotte Burney, Emma Demint and Christin Wade-Vuturo