Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

182 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
controversially) conglomerated elements of style, Space age avatars were already
jumbling together time and geographic space. they were stage-setting the future
within the past and, with a wink, presenting fantasies of both to the present. 60
googie not only brought the excitement of a jet-propelled look into
the everyday activities of american life, but it also colonized the new “fast”
medium of television. true to the age’s most popular entertainment formula—
the toying with both past and future—the creators of The Flintstones, hanna-
Barbara productions, introduced The Jetsons. this animated series of 24 episodes
played in the prime Sunday night spot from September 1962 to March 1963.
after that, it became a staple of Saturday morning cartoon reruns for decades.
(additional episodes were made between 1985 and 1987, followed by movies
and television specials.) Over the years, merchandise spinofs from The Jetsons
continued to attract a market.
the life of the Jetsons fairly bristled with googie style. their neighborhood
boasted houses raised high above the ground on poles—suggesting the Cemosphere
and anticipating the Seattle Space Needle. the family few around the air in its
private rocket-ship and traversed the ground in individual people movers that
look just like today’s Segways. Sets were spare, brightly colored, modernistic.
the Jetson’s googie world of spheres and angles and turquoise and pink
projected an automated future. george Jetson worked three hours a day, three
days a week for Mr. Spacely of Spacely Space Sprockets. he mostly pressed
buttons. although the Jetsons enjoyed the standard fare of family sitcom mixups,
frustrations, and travails, labor-saving devices of all kinds provided abundant
leisure. Space references abounded in this future: a Moon Side Country Club, a
space-club trip to the Moon, an auto shop called Molecular Motors. Football
was played by robots. the family dog, astro, was acquired after a comparison
with an electronic, nuclear-powered dog. a used robot maid, rosie, made a
couple of appearances, but the future, after all, was fairly work-free.
googie was one highly popular part of a broader aesthetic that had emerged
along with abstract expressionism in high art. the abstract expressionists during
the 1940s and 1950s, too, explored the modern as a statement of freedom, an
acceptance of risk, and a willingness to shock. the connections between the
mid-century visions of space and postwar art seem almost too obvious, as so
many artists of the age employed lines, spheres, and vast canvasses to project
enigmatic representations of unknowability. Both artists and astronauts drifted
beyond the rules that governed their atmospheres; both projected a kind of
outlaw masculinity that combined an extraordinary endurance for the regularity
of hard work with a confdent ability to improvise and transcend boundaries.
60. Stephen lynch,“excursion roadside retro Be It Space age, Cocktail or tiki: Orange County
has gobs of googie,” Orange County Register, (June 27, 1998) Id# 1998178044, http://www.
ocregister.com/ocregister/archives/ (accessed September 15, 2007).