Archives for the 'Futurism' Category
Saying Yes and Hearing No
Steven Pinker, extolling the virtues of human language, observes that information is the sole commodity that a person can give away and keep at the same time. I would add that sexual pleasure is also something that a person can confer on another and personally enjoy simultaneously. The linkage between sex and language can further be divined by noting that the English language tacitly acknowledges that sex was the primary force behind the evolution of speech. I doubt that it is mere coincidence that the word ‘intercourse’ has two common meanings, only one of which refers to speech.
- Daniel Dennett
The best advice I’ve heard in a long time, comes from a trashy women’s magazine I picked up at the gym the other day: “aim to hear the word ‘no’ at least three times a day.” Like most good advice, I’ve yet to fully integrate it into my life (I’m at the “maybe” and “we’ll see” one or twice a week stage.)
For their fall collection, Viktor & Rolf sent their models down the runway wearing the word “No” written in makeup on their faces or sewn into their clothes. Models without a cause. But the fashion designers called it female empowerment. And it is, I guess. People generally dislike saying “no,” more than they dislike hearing it — it means you’ve been challenged. Saying it can burn a bridge. Hearing it can be a great motivator.
But the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns (one scoop of ice cream is nice, two is better, three is alright, and four scoops is worse than none at all) definitely applies to this advice: hearing “no” more than three times a day would be demoralizing to the most blissed-out zen yoga instructor.
Is there anything worse than disputing a balance with a call center representative? They’ll tell you “no” three times in a single sentence. This week’s New Yorker goes behind the scenes of Avoke, a voice software company that measures the exact moment a caller breaks from “cold anger” (”in which words may be overarticulated but spoken softly”) or “hot anger” (”in which voices are louder and pitched higher”) to full-on WTF?!???!?!?
The article mostly explains the difficulty in programing a computer we can talk to both by hearing and speaking language. One major speed bump: we have a lot of words that mean the same thing, just with subtle nuances. Take the word yes:
Even a simple concept like “yes” might be expressed in dozens of different ways –including “yes,” “ya,” “yup,” “yeah,” “yeahuh,” “yeppers,” “yessirree,” “aye, aye,” “mmmhmm,” “uh-huh,” “sure,” “totally,” “certainly,” “indeed,” “affirmative,” “fine,” “definitely,” “you bet,” “you betcha,” “no problemo,” “and “okeydoke” — and what’s the rule in that? At Nuance, whose headquarters are outside Boston, speech engineers try to anticipate all the different ways people might say yes, but they still get surprised. For example, designers found that Southerners had more trouble using the system than Northerners did, because when instructed to answer “yes” or “no” Southerners regularly added “ma’am” or “sir,” depending on the I.V.R.’s gender, and the computer wasn’t programmed to recognize that.
One of my friend Iris’s favorite words is “yes.” She notes, “around the world, ‘yes’ or its equivalent frequently tops surveys as the most beautiful word in a given language; for you, too, is it the only word that you really want to hear?”
But how often do we hear it? Most positive responses are yep, ok, sure, will do, etc etc. What else could a film called “Yes” be about other than bodice ripping? The scarcity of “yes” in daily discussions must have something to do with its frequency as bedroom utterance.
When John Lennon first met Yoko Ono, he walked up a ladder to read a single tiny word with the aid of a magnifying glass: “Yes.” Then there is Molly’s soliloquy in Ulysses closing the book famously with the words “..yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Interestingly, the Irish language has neither “yes” nor “no” (A fact that surely didn’t escape James Joyce when he wrote that.) Per a Wikipedia article that’s since edited, but is archived on Answers.com: “In it to indicate a positive or negate response to a question, the verb of the question is repeated in either the positive or negative form. For example (verb underlined)”
“An bhfaca tú an timpiste?” (”Did you see the accident?”)
“Chonaic.” (”Saw.”)or
“Ní fhaca.” (”Did not see.”)
The terms Sea (”is so”) and Ní hea (”is not so”) mean “yes” and “no”, but can only be used in response to the question An ea? (”is it so?”).
Previously:
- Alright, Sokay: Tomorrow’s English Language
- Open Source Art: Will There Ever Be Another Lily Chou-Chou?
Science Fiction: Women Do It Better
In a cafe in New Orleans a couple years ago, I overheard a couple in conversation. The girl was explaining the book she planned to write. For about thirty minutes I listened to this extraordinary idea for a narrative, a Jekyll and Hyde-inspired story dealing with female body insecurities that I’m not going to further explain because I really hope she’s still working on it, if not near publication.
“So that’s almost like science fiction,” her boyfriend said. “Not really,” she replied
No, it’s not just “like” it, her idea is science fiction. But for some reason the classification is avoided when the work is written by a woman. It’s speculative fiction, fantasy, or quirky McSweeny’s-style stories, but if a woman wrote it, it’s certainly not sci-fi.
Just look at the brilliant book Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall. I haven’t read anything better in years. The science fiction community has all but ignored it, giving only passing mention of its James Tiptree Jr award win.
This may seem like a superficial concern. Why should it matter whether something is part of a genre or not? But “science fiction” is known as the literature of ideas, intellectual rigor, and philosophic arguments. Science fiction indicates an imaginative literature: analytic, scientific — a creative work of scholarship rather than banal solipsism.
Even if a female author is labeled science fiction, another distinction is made: that she isn’t “hard science fiction.” The “hard science fiction” bar is raised when women want to write or film science fiction. Women tend to write a lot about biology, and more women study biology than other sciences. As Peggy at Biology and Science Fiction points out, “there aren’t that many gadgets that have come out of the biological sciences, at least as compared to the physical sciences” — and gadgety is representative of “hard science fiction.”
There was a panel about this at the WISCON, the women in science fiction con:
JB: Part of the reason the concept, the term is problematic is it’s used as a norm for “real science fiction” and however we define it, it has changed as more women enter the field. Fantastic, speculative, there’s other terms they call it when they don’t want to call it sf. Femspec. In early days of 50s and 60s sf, male authors would write about social issues and the social issues around tech but when women do it’s soft sf. Then we come to 70s and 80s when writing about biology was considered soft, because (the rhetoric is that) women are their biology in some way, women can therefore more easily be biochemical scientists… I expect the next thing to fall is going to be mathematics. Real, normative, actual, the only kind we should really care about, that counts, used in book reivews, not included in canon. This changing definition has a gender bias to it.
Margaret: Just like what has been called “art”. At various times pottery, woven stuff, wasn’t art, because it was women and people of color who were doing that. And very similar things done with gender and hard sf. As you’ve suggested, when men were doing very similar things with social issues, that was still “hard”.
There’s pressure on a woman to write “hard science fiction,” even if she doesn’t really want to — just to prove that she can.
People gave Sleater Kinney a lot of guff because they didn’t have a bass player; but no one ever said that meant they weren’t a rock band! Classification is always arbitrary. Had Joanna Russ befriended Donald Bartheleme in the 70s, instead of editors of Amazing, her work would be called metafiction, (or whatever.)
Going back to the idea that every subject can be science fiction, those of the gender that breed and bleed, have plenty of interesting science fiction concepts to bring to the table.
And they are definitely consuming science fiction. At least as many young girls have read the Handmaid’s Tale as young boys have read Ender’s Game — perhaps an equal number of boys and girls have read Ender’s Game. Females tend to read more fiction, after all.
Another two reasons I just don’t buy the idea that men are inherently more interested in science fiction than women: Small Wonder and Out of this World, about a girl-robot and time-shifter whose dad is an alien, respectively. Those two shows (and Punky Brewster about an orphan who was obsessed with astronauts) were my favorites and yours if happened to be a girl growing up in the 80s.
What makes these two television shows unique from other widely enjoyed tv sci-fi like Lost in Space or even BSG today, is both of the lead characters were girls. It might be the first time science fiction was made just for a mass young female audience. Silly as it seems now, the shows were no better or worse than any other 80s sitcoms.
Children watching these programs were engaged with philosophy of science fiction: what would it be like to stop time just by touching your fingertips together? (I’m sure I’m not the only one who practiced this in my bedroom when no one was looking.) Or if your friend is made of metal and wires, do you treat her just like everyone else?
Women love science fiction! We do! Probably more than you dudes! Nearly every art school girl has Ursula Le Guin’s books on her shelf. Women actually write most of the fanfic. Even at the basest, lowest low culture it is in there: a number of romantic comedies, (many starring Mel Gibson for some reason,) use science fiction furniture. And I learned, during a period of unemployment, that nearly every soap opera has a supernatural gimmick — clones, witches, even aliens. Instead of mocking it, we should embrace it, as the feminine counterpart to the shlocky science fiction made by the likes of The Rock and Sylvester Stallone in the 90s.
Some work by women that should be welcomed into the Science Fiction cannon: the writers Anna Kavan, Angela Carter, Shelley Jackson, Katharine Burdekin. In film: Lynne Littman, Kay Linaker, Caroline Thompson, and so many others. The music of Anne Clark. Art by Sara Sze and Patricia Piccinini. These are all just off the top of my head. I should probably make another post on this.
And let me praise Daughters of the North yet again. It’s magnificent. The Handmaid’s Tale comparisons were inevitable, but Atwood’s dystopia, while bleak and repressive, isn’t nearly as horrific as Hall’s vision. Hers is a world of hunger, suffering, torture, shit. It’s even better than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Sarah Hall is a genius.
Images of sculptures by Sarah Sze
Previously:
- Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men
- Dario Argento and the Paradoxical Feminism of Horror Films
Related links:
- Bat Segundo interviews Sarah Hall
- When Harry Met Sexism, Bidisha, The Guardian
- Science Fiction Fandom Has No Sex, This Recording
- What Chicks Don’t Like About Science Fiction, io9
- Gender and Fan Studies, CCC
Alright, Sokay: Tomorrow’s English Language
sokay
(also okay) informal
- exclamation 1 expressing agreement or acquiescence. 2 introducing an utterance.
- adjective 1 satisfactory. 2 permissible.
- adverb in a satisfactory manner or to a satisfactory extent.
- noun an authorization or approval.
- verb (OK’s, OK’d, OK’ing) give approval to.
— ORIGIN probably an abbreviation of it’s ok.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, Updated: 30 November 2035.
Fast contractions like the Brit-ism “innit,” and filer words (”um, like”) are constantly moving in and out of our daily lexicon. Why not “sokay”?
“Sokay,” says the waitress when the other waitress bumps into her tray with a “sorry.” You say “sokay,” to the guy saying “pardon” for almost pushing you out of the metro in rush hour. It’s the knee-jerk polite-ish response to the knee-jerk polite-ish apology, barely considered at all; sometimes uttered so softly neither party even hears it. You can’t just say “okay,” as that implies, “Oh, so you are sorry, well I recognize that.” Only “it’s okay,” assures the other person you didn’t take the bump personally.
Language is a constantly evolving thing. Soon few will know what a “swiftboat” was, or more dismally, who John Kerry was, but the term will continue on as it so narrowly defines a common campaign tactic. Lots of our language comes from election year rhetoric. “Keep the ball rolling” refers to “Victory Balls,” ten-foot diameter globes of tin and leather, General William Harrison’s supporters pushed from rally to rally in the presidential race in 1840.
There are a few theories about the origin of “OK”, but at least two refer to that same election’s victor (and incumbent) Martin Van Buren. “Orl korrect,” the 19th century jokey way of writing “all correct” was a Van Buren slogan. Plus, his nickname Old Kinderhook provided the initials.
What is known is that one of the first instances of OK appearing in print was in the spring of 1839 by the Boston Morning Post:
It is hardly necessary to say to those who know Mr. Hughes, that his establishment will be found to be ‘A. No. One’ — that is, O.K. — all correct.
So if OK stands for “all correct,” wouldn’t it be “AC”? Not exactly, says linguist Erin McKean, who points out that the word was intentionally misspelled. Much like the way people on the Internet shorten or abbreviate words when typing, OK was misspelled on purpose.
“For instance, a lot of kids online spell “cool,” “k-e-w-l,” says McKean, senior editor for U.S. dictionaries at Oxford Press. “They know how to spell cool, but it just looks cooler to spell it “k-e-w-l.”
Blame the kids. Now with the internet and mobile phones they have even more ways to pervert spelling and definitions. Kent State researchers consider instant messaging a separate language. “They found that what looked like nonstandard features of written language were, actually, the standardized features within the IM language. The language of instant messaging was found to be informal, explicit, playful, both abbreviated and elaborated, and to emphasize meaning over form and social relationships over content.”
Teens abroad have a subversive vocabulary based on the predictive text on mobile phones
Key words are replaced by the first alternative that comes up on a mobile phone using predictive text — changing “cool” into “book”, “awake” into “cycle”, “beer” into adds”, “pub” into “sub” and “barmaid” into “carnage”.
Those expressing excitement with the old-fashioned text phrase “woohoo!”, now use the far more hip “zonino!” instead. The replacement words — technically paragrams, but commonly known as textonyms, adaptonyms or cellodromes — are becoming part of regular teen banter.
And the older generation — many of whom already struggle with simple text language — are being thrown into yet deeper confusion.
Then again, they called uncool things “pants” long before test messaging.
More than technology, the increase in non-native speakers who might use English only online is going to totally change our language, as Michael Erard explained in New Scientist a few months ago. There will be countless pigeon forms, not just Engrish, but dialects of the sort that you find in African “English-speaking” countries. My friend’s brother-in-law in Nigeria claims he can’t understand her accent. Erard’s article makes the interesting observation that nonnative speakers communicate best with other nonnative speakers. The grammatical structure is too complex.
You probably know it’s “a lot” not “alot,” and flinch when someone says, “they mailed it to my friend and I.” You know what “hopefully” and “momentarily” really mean, but use the colloquialisms nevertheless. But what about “had” before a past-tense verb? Or hyphenating adverbs?
I’ve never understood why some people get crazy angry about “alright,” but grammatical excellence seems to have less to do with English language preservation than it does ritual and initiation. (Yes, I’m trying to find a way of explaining that without using the dreaded E-word.)
When I checked “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” out of the library, I hoped it might cover any grammatical terrain my K through BA public education didn’t. But basically the author says do whatever you want so long as it means exactly what you want it to (i.e. the panda isn’t shooting anybody or going anywhere.)
Garance Franke-Ruta writes:
As blogs move us into a less heavily copy-edited world, I sometimes wonder if we’re moving back into a more 16th and 17th century form of writing, where the idea of correct spelling was less important than the communication of meaning — which, in reality, can be accomplished just as well with incorrectly spelled words and homonyms as with a more perfect language. And also: as we move ever deeper into this new world of speech-like writing, will the perfect, formal language of the page one day seem as antique and elaborate as Victorian silverware?
The success rate of dyslexics should finally dismiss using spelling and grammar as an indicator of intelligence. But besides that, the size, lighting and composition of a computer makes it less than ideal for reading compared to a piece of paper. This makes line-by-line editing a drag for most of us. Maybe it even draws latent dyslexic tendencies from people who don’t otherwise have a problem. Yet this is the device almost all of us use to write. While I’m sure some people are good at spotting errors no matter what the medium. I’m not one of them.
BestWeekEver’s response to a letter suggesting a “copy editor or a lively seminar on the Strunk and White classic Elements of Style is in order” is a classic:
we’re a f*cking blog. And this is the Internet. Though there are many confusing similarities between BestWeekEver.tv and the Harvard Review, the simple fact is the latter is written and edited by erudite men and women of learning, while the former is barely cobbled together by hungover ne’er-do-wells with poor command of the English language and whose lives are generally in shambles. I’m not familiar with this “Strunk and White” of which you speak, but I will assume it’s one of those “book” things I hear so much about from old-timey people. These “books” are like short, boring internets, yes? Forgive me for not caring about them.
The most annoying thing about someone correcting written grammatical errors is the assumption the writer is unaware of the difference between possessive and plural. Why there isn’t more research about how fingers following some rote process, sometimes press the wrong key — usually a homophone — is really surprising.
Related links:
- “The Future of English?” by David Graddol
- Matt Ygelsias’ cake
- Engrish
- “Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean” by Michael Erard
- “Going Nucular” by Geoff Nunberg
- Who is to Blame for “Under the Bus”? Newsweek
- “Do You Speak American?” PBS on the Ebonics debate
- Futurismic on “The Future of English”
- “Read My Slips: Speech Errors Show How Language Is Processed” Science
Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men
Deliver science fiction from any necessity to have purpose and value. Science fiction is far above the utilitarian yardsticks of the technical minds, the agency minds, the teaching minds. Science fiction is not for Squares. It’s for the modern Renaissance Man… vigorous, versatile, zestful… full of romantic curiosity and impractical speculation.
-Alfred Bester, Redemolished, “Science Fiction and the Renaissance Man” (quoted from here)
Crisis happens when we fail to look at the large picture, but who is standing far enough away to see?
Not much can be said that hasn’t already been said about the economy. But debts and bad loans aren’t just the fault of poor forecasting, it’s also due to acute specialization. Listen only to realty trade publications, driven by deadlines, ad revenue, and PR releases, and you might be convinced home prices are on the rebound. Healthy skepticism comes from a wide media diet.
Perhaps we are to capacity with lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, realtors, and economists — and what we really need are Renaissance (wo)men. But to be a Renaissance man in today’s workforce almost guarantees nothing better than a temp position in data entry at $13.50 an hour. And that’s the worst possible place for a highly active brain to be. A new report out from the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences explains how boring jobs turn our minds to autopilot no matter how hard we fight it, guaranteeing an increase in “careless” errors. Researchers are now designing headgear to train the brain not to make boredom-induced mistakes (a muzzle for one’s mind?)
Artist Fritz Haeg thinks we should follow Buckminster Fuller’s advice. “Basically, his theory is that the powers that be want us to be specialists,” he tells this month’s Art Review, “Because they don’t want us to see the big picture, because the more you see the big picture, the more you are apt to question things. He’s saying that decades ago, but I think its even more true today.”
Fuller was bankrupt and suicidal at the age of 32, before his life turned around. He began to wonder “what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity,” and that question turned his life around. “Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them,” he said.
Maybe what we need are more efficient ways of remembering what we learn. There is a profile of Piotr Wozniak, creator of SuperMemo, in this month’s Wired. The article explains how he is really the first to make use of the “spacing effect” method of learning, known by psychiatrists since the 1880s:
The spacing effect is “one of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning,” the psychologist Frank Dempster wrote in 1988, at the beginning of a typically sad encomium published in American Psychologist under the title “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research.” The sorrrowful tone is not hard to understand. How would computer scientists feel if people continued to use slide rules for engineering calculations? What if, centuries after the invention of spectacles, people still dealt with nearsightedness by holding things closer to their eyes? Psychologists who studied the spacing effect thought they possessed a solution to a problem that had frustrated humankind since before written language: how to remember what’s been learned. But instead, the spacing effect became a reminder of the impotence of laboratory psychology.
SuperMemo helps users retain what they have read by offering it up in small bits spaced at optimal intervals of time:
We are used to the idea that normal humans can perform challenging feats of athleticism. We all know someone who has run a marathon or ridden a bike cross-country. But getting significantly smarter — that seems to be different. We associate intelligence with pure talent, and academic learning with educational experiences dating far back in life. To master a difficult language, to become expert in a technical field, to make a scientific contribution in a new area — these seem like rare things. And so they are, but perhaps not for the reason we assume.
The failure of SuperMemo to transform learning uncannily repeats the earlier failures of cognitive psychology to influence teachers and students. Our capacity to learn is amazingly large. But optimal learning demands a kind of rational control over ourselves that does not come easily. Even the basic demand for regularity can be daunting. If you skip a few days, the spacing effect, with its steady march of sealing knowledge in memory, begins to lose its force. Progress limps. When it comes to increasing intelligence, our brain is up to the task and our technology is up to the task. The problem lies in our temperament.
Public Service Announcements have always provided hackneyed obvious information (”Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”) We should have Public Education Announcements: 30 seconds of Spanish phrases, Newton’s Laws, or basic geometry theorems. Everyone would be able to explain the second law of thermodynamics as quickly as we can say “Shoulda Hada V8.”
There is one place a Renaissance man can succeed in life, according to Alfred Bester, and that is writing science fiction. Everything you can think of can be a futuristic thought experiment. Bester was the consumate dilletante, and like Fuller, experienced a lifetime of failures before making his name. “The Stars My Destination” isn’t even one of my favorite books (I need a much more sympathetic protagonist,) but it’s impossible not to appreciate his sweeping intellect. From the SFW review:
In Bester’s view, any halfway intelligent craftsman can master the technical tricks of storytelling. But it’s only force of authorial personality and its mysterious translation to the printed page that makes any tale unique. In this day and age of cookie-cutter SF, such ideals are too easily forgotten. As William Gibson later echoed, much SF feels as if it’s written by careerists who might as well be practicing dentistry.
Being able to identify patterns and potential intersections, and creatively exaggerate current situations; these are all the gifts of a wide-ranging intellect. That’s what this weblog celebrates.
Related links:
Oliver Stone’s Prescient SFnal Scientology Critique
“Why should this reality be public domain? What’s so great about it?” asks a Clara Bow-bobbed Kim Cattrall in the 1993 miniseries “Wild Palms.” “Tony wants a new and improved reality: controlled by Mimecon and sold straight at 7-11… A world where we don’t have to be afraid to leave our dreams open at night.”
“Wild Palms” isn’t dark enough to be “Twin Peaks” and it isn’t campy enough to be “V,” but the show holds up as a odd document of early 90s speculative fiction (the film is set in 2007.) Producer Oliver Stone might not be known for his futuristic vision, but he certainly is paranoid, and that’s what every dystopic fiction needs. Said EW at the time:
“It was dreamlike and hallucinatory. I put my friends in it. I put famous people in it. I didn’t care about the story. It was a tone poem.” [Writer Bruce Wagner] hangs a right onto La Brea. “Then Oliver saw it.” Oliver Stone knew Wagner from purchasing the film rights to Force Majeure (a movie Stone still hasn’t made), and the Palms cartoon struck a special conspiratorial chord with the JFK director. ”It was so syncretic,” Stone says. (Syncretic? ”Look it up,” he says.) ”It was such a fractured view of the world. Everything and anything could happen. Maybe your wife isn’t your wife, maybe your kids aren’t your kids. It really appealed to me.”
Like much of early-90s science fiction, the focus is on televised holograms. A corporate body, with some zen-relgious pretensions and Hollywood ties — not unlike L. Ron Hubbard’s sect — is experimenting with bringing TV to life. These “New Realists” — insisting they are just Buddhists in practice, freeing the mind from the body — work with a narcotic drink “Mimezine.” Inspired by Philip K. Dick’s idea of corporately-distributed hallucinogens in “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” and William Gibson’s virtual worlds (Gibson even makes a sheepish cameo as himself in the first episode,) the most surprising thing about Wild Palms is it is actually pretty good.
It was originally a Bruce Wagner-penned comic in Details magazine that eventually spawned a book, “The Wild Palms Reader,” containing timelines, secret letters, and bios of all the characters, as well as contributions from scientists, sci-fi writers (Gibson, Thomas Disch, Bruce Sterling,) musicians (Genesis P. Orridge, Malcolm McLaren, Lemmy from Moterhead) and others like Mary Gaitskill, Jane Pratt, and ex-CIA Operative E. Howard Hunt. To hype the program, ABC offered 900-773-WILD (75 cents per minute,) offering tips and storyline cues. It was ultimately a flop, and still is, unfairly. Maybe it’s just to early for cult-classic status? Or maybe the miniseries format is just too awkward in length, which is why only PBS still airs them (”V,” for that matter, isn’t as cult-y in popularity as it seems it should be.)
Kathryn Bigelow (”Strange Days”) directed some of the episodes, and Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the creepy minimalist soundtrack. James Belushi plays Harry Wuckoff, a patent attorney, offered a job with the “Wild Palms Newtork” — Channel 3 — run by Senator Anton Kreutzer. Sen. Kreutzer used to be a sci-fi writer, his motto is “everything must go.” In addition to virtual programming, the “Fathers” have been kidnapping children since the 1960s. Wagner doesn’t even try to conceal the resemblance of “Synthiotics” to “Dianetics,” but Scientology was more benign in those days (Tom Cruise had only just begun his studies.) One doesn’t have to be Theresa Duncan to doubt this script could ever be filmed now.
In addition to the virtual worlds and Scientology send-up, the joy in watching “Wild Palms” is its naive perception of what the world of today would look like. Oliver Stone appears as himself, talking about “recently released” documents that prove his film JFK was correct and alluding to the “late” Jack Valenti (who did in fact die last year.) There are no cell phones and nothing like the Internet or email, and people smoke freely indoors, but the looks and feel of people’s homes is what seems most “off.” The utilitarian office tables and chairs, beige walls, and Times New Roman fonts show just how far we’ve come with design, in that future-speculating set designers couldn’t even imagine a world where college students decorate with IKEA and Trader Joe’s enables gourmet-enough hors d’oeuvre for the most casual get-togethers.
Ironically, the wardrobe stylings are what give the series a modern look—mostly because early 90s looks have yet see a revival on the runways. Those boxy silhouettes and monochrome jewel-tones are exaggerated with a Jetsons-spin. In an early scene, Cattrall wears a beautiful burgundy satin dress with an unusual Grecian-inspired satin draping, but just about everything she wears could easily be in Proenza Schouler’s next collection. That being said, I can’t really see a future in menswear for the Edwardian collars and neckties Belushi wears.
Related links:
- Wild Palms and the “Wild Palms Reader”
- “Neuromancer” by William Gibson
- Erik Davis’ review in the Village Voice
- David Cronenberg’s Videodrome
- Coilhouse, “Inside Scientology’s ‘Psychiatry Kills’ Exhibit”
- The New Yorker, “Chateau Scientology”
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