One look at the term ‘retrofuturism’ captures how oxymoronic the concept is, and that’s the latest rabbit hole I’m in.
Last issue, I talked about my relationship with the past and nostalgia as a cornerstone of my mind. That’s what drew me to the concept of the future as imagined in the past. A common theme in subcategories of retrofuturism - such as Y2K and Sovietwave aesthetics - are the streak of melancholy that are oh-so-familiar to this insufferable nostalgia aesthete.
Retrofuturism mourns the loss of a future that could have been. A future that retains elements of the past and perceived past values. A future that’s comforting and tangible. A future that remembers we had hope, once.
Of course, it’s an idealised version of how the future was once imagined. In 2022, we have invented a term called climate anxiety. In 1966, it was atomic. When kids were asked about the future, this is what they came up with:
”The world will just be gone in one vast atomic explosion”
”Some madman will get the atomic bomb and just blow the world into oblivion - there’s nothing we can do to stop it”
”Somebody’s gonna use it one day”
”I think there’ll be no life at all really”
This reminds me of an episode of Man Men - yes, sorry, I’m referencing it again - when atomic anxiety was at its peak. It was entirely possible that the US would be vaporised. Advice to ‘duck and cover’ had reached the Manhattan office, but did nothing to comfort the sceptical Don, who didn’t understand the employees’ emotional need to feel in control, even with the knowledge there’s nothing they could do if the worst happened.
Yet it was the age of space optimism. Mankind’s giant leap to the moon just a few years later was no small step to restoring faith in a unified humanity:
Buzz Aldrin and fellow Moonwalker Neil Armstrong chose to go to the Moon with an Apollo 1 patch. It was selected to honour the ultimate sacrifice of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who perished in a fire during the first test of the Apollo command and service module. The astronauts also chose to remember their fallen Soviet competitors and carried with them two Soviet medals, honouring cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died in the Soyuz 1 spacecraft in 1967 and Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth, who was killed in an aircraft in 1968. Aldrin and Armstrong understood that even as Americans raced the Soviets to the Moon, success would be shared by all.
Not everyone saw it as a first leap of what was possible. To CS Lewis, who admitted he ‘lived in a neighbouring province to the Romantics’, foresaw a profound spiritual trauma from what he saw as a transgression:
“The moon of the myths, the poets, the lovers will have been taken from us forever,” Lewis wrote. “He who first reaches it steals something from us all.”
It’s true that there was some pretty terrible poetry published the day after the moon landing, but some astronauts were as profoundly impacted by visiting the moon as the sensitive among us are affected by poetry. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14:
“We went up there as space technicians, and we came back humanitarians. Looking [back] at earth is an instant global consciousness.”
Alan Shepard, also of Apollo 14:
“I remember being struck by the fact that it looks so peaceful from that distance, but remembering on the other hand all the confrontation going on all over that planet, and feeling a little sad that people on planet earth couldn’t see that same sight because obviously all the military and political differences become so insignificant seeing it from that distance.”
That is, it wasn’t seeing the moon itself that shifted their mindset forever. It was looking at the Earth from the vantage point of the moon.
Far from the decline of spirituality and the moon of myth that CS Lewis feared, the moon became more awesome than ever before with its eerie beauty. Rumours floated around for years that Neil Armstrong was a ‘lunatic’ from the experience - literally touched by the moon - although in fact he was simply introverted and didn’t want the limelight.
But I digress… although the Space Race was an exercise in nationalistic ambition, it inspired a lot of humanitarian and utopian ideas.
The Greek root of ‘utopia’ has a double meaning. One literal translation is ‘Heaven is home’, or ‘good place’. The other is ‘no place’, or any non-existent society. Walt Disney attempted to make it a real destination.
When Disneyland opened, it conceptualised the future as it would be in 1986. Like 2049 was to Blade Runner, and countless other sci-fi examples.
Walt’s dream of Tomorrowland was utopian:
“A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying Man's achievements... A step into the future, with predictions of constructed things to come. Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideals. The Atomic Age, the challenge of Outer Space and the hope for a peaceful, unified world.”
That’s it… the hope for a peaceful, unified world. The sense of hope for the future that once was. A song commissioned for Disney’s futurist attractions promised ‘There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow / Shining at the end of every day’.
Even Tomorrowland can be looked back on with nostalgia. There was a brief moment in the mid ‘90s that Tomorrowland Terrace became a teen hangout to see the nightly live band. No Doubt named its 1995 breakthrough album ‘Tragic Kingdom’. The title track opens with the "remain seated" warning from Matterhorn Bobsleds.
Here are some retrofuturistic images that have caught my eye.
Something I love about retrofuturist imagery is the projection of the present onto the future - for example, the assumption that we would all still love playing croquet.
I’m fascinated by early ambitions and anxieties about the prospect of moon colonisation.
Flash Gordon was a childhood staple in my household thanks to my parents. The space opera of Queen, villain brows and camp futurist fashion.
No takeaway, only brain dump.
Dan and I saw Jordan Peele’s new film Nope last week at the opulent Everyman in Horsham, as a special treat. I gingerly sipped my espresso martini on the plush velvet sofa as I shrank into it in genuine horror. I haven’t been scared by a horror film for a long time, despite being a lover of the genre. I thought about it for several days and went on another, separate rabbit hole about Travis the chimp. I won’t spoil it for anybody, but I will say the Gordie subplot haunted me for longer than the main UFO story.
Funnily enough, the film features some Googie imagery. Googie is retrofuturist architectural style that was prevalent in America in the 1930s featuring rockets, sharp shapes on signs indicating speed, and other quaint sci-fi images. The Fry’s Electronics store features in Nope, which was a real alien invasion-themed electrics store headquartered in California. Look out for it.Megan Thee Stallion’s new album Traumazine has kept me going when I’ve been in a slump.
The sea, always the sea.
I recently bought Final Fantasy VII on my Nintendo Switch. It was one of my most loved Playstation 1 games as a kid and I’m still in awe of its landscapes and storytelling.
Forever,
💌
Laura.