Remember Horizons, the Epcot ride? Despite being closed in 1999, the entire trip into the 21st century is on Youtube. Welcome to a world where no one is concerned about the ethics of irrigating the desert and kelp is a viable energy resource.
But naivety aside, the ride was damn cool. I remember riding it when I was around six years old and absolutely loving it. Some of the set designs look straight out of 2001 or Solaris, and you can still get some sense of the scale of the ride from this video.
25 years on from the 1984 opening of the ride, there’s an utter lack of the kitschy naive future in pop culture. Take Wall-E, for instance – incidentally tied with The Dark Knight for my favorite film of last year. While it functions like classic science fiction in a form of cultural commentary, like a Blade Runner-lite, the vision of the future is very bleak. The film does end on hope for the future, but in order to hit this point the human race must first soil their planet and completely retreat into the comfortable technological blanket. It’s incredibly anti-consumerist and incredibly anti-corporate – basically against all the things Horizons (originally sponsored by General Electric) stands for. How different is the transporter in Wall-E from the space station at the end of this clip?
Yet both come out of Disney – one from the thick of the 1980s and one from the end of the Bush presidency.
The 1980s Disney Future
January 14, 2009Remember Horizons, the Epcot ride? Despite being closed in 1999, the entire trip into the 21st century is on Youtube. Welcome to a world where no one is concerned about the ethics of irrigating the desert and kelp is a viable energy resource.
But naivety aside, the ride was damn cool. I remember riding it when I was around six years old and absolutely loving it. Some of the set designs look straight out of 2001 or Solaris, and you can still get some sense of the scale of the ride from this video.
25 years on from the 1984 opening of the ride, there’s an utter lack of the kitschy naive future in pop culture. Take Wall-E, for instance – incidentally tied with The Dark Knight for my favorite film of last year. While it functions like classic science fiction in a form of cultural commentary, like a Blade Runner-lite, the vision of the future is very bleak. The film does end on hope for the future, but in order to hit this point the human race must first soil their planet and completely retreat into the comfortable technological blanket. It’s incredibly anti-consumerist and incredibly anti-corporate – basically against all the things Horizons (originally sponsored by General Electric) stands for. How different is the transporter in Wall-E from the space station at the end of this clip?
Yet both come out of Disney – one from the thick of the 1980s and one from the end of the Bush presidency.
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This entry was posted on January 14, 2009 at 9:35 PM and is filed under commentary.
Tags: Disney, Futurism, Horizons, Sci-Fi, Wall-E