(Plane from Things to Come)
In the past I've pretty much believed the modernist idea that an airplane that flies well looks good, the idea being that form and function go hand in hand. Certainly there are many planes that fit the bill like the DC3. But I can imagine that a lot of planes that fly well don't look good. So maybe our hypothetical movie would be about awkward technologies that function well, but look hashed together. You know, something like "Masking tape in the sky."
Another idea I find intriguing focuses on extrapolated technologies. Technology usually develops paradigmatically. So you have propellers and then jets and then rockets; three completely different technologies. That's why Star Trek's Enterprise still looks right to us. We accept the idea of "warp drive" because we've seen paradigmatic technological change. But what if technology merely changed by extrapolation? Popular culture is littered with examples of inappropriate extrapolations: the house of the future where feminism means you can wash the living room carpet with a hose. Or Things to Come in which the modern planes have lots and lots and lots of propellers (see photos). So the film would feature a world where more = better. So a better car would be bigger and have more tires and two engines and lots of cylinders. And a faster plane would have more engines and more wings and bigger wings. And technology would become explicit so that the rich guy's plane would have five wings and two engines whereas the poor guy's plane would have only three wings and a tiny engine. It would be the bricolage world where when the poor guy got richer, he could strap on two more engines for a three engine, three wing plane. This is the world before computers when everyone could fix the timing on their engines with a screwdriver, the JC Whitney world where you're constantly adding cheap add-ons to your vehicles.
No comments:
Post a Comment