Back To The (retro) Future

[Dave Monroe]

Back To The (retro) Future
By RUTH LA FERLAApril 17, 2009, 3:28pm


In his form-fitting unitard, nailhead belt and steely man-cuffs, Flash
Gordon was suited up to save the planet, a swaggering sci-fi action
hero who first swung his mighty sword during the Depression years.

Now, Flash and his aerodynamically outfitted ilk — mid-20th-century
space warriors like Buck Rogers and the Green Lantern — have
resurfaced in spirit and in form, their ripped physiques and Herculean
exploits inspiring an outpouring of movies, Websites, books and even
household gadgets that evoke a brave new future through the eyes of
the past.

Watchmen, about the exploits of a generation of lapsed superheroes, is
captivating moviegoers. Buck Rogers will resume his adventures on the
Web next year. And Virgin Galactic, the space-cruising arm of Virgin
Atlantic, is offering to rocket would-be astronauts into orbit.

Fashion, too, is revisiting yesterday’s Tomorrowland. In their
collections for fall 2009, forward-thinking designers like Karl
Lagerfeld, Rick Owens, and Christophe Decarnin of Balmain cast a
wistful backward glance at the swashbuckling universe of
space-traveling superheroes.

Those collections—costume extravaganzas, really—were packed with
references to the kind of science fiction that had its genesis during
the hardscrabble 1930s. Models in glittering peak-shoulder party
frocks or tricked out like astral voyagers in silver jumpsuits
appeared to be suited up heroically for uncertain times ahead.

“The spirit of mid-century retro-futurism definitely lives on,” said
Daniel H. Wilson, a specialist in robotics and the author of Where’s
My Jetpack, a tongue-in-cheek exploration of, in the author’s words,
“a future that never arrives.” Now, as in past decades, space sagas
are a vivid expression of the “human impulse to look to science to
solve our problems,” Wilson said.

In the aftermath of the Depression and World War II, a conviction that
science and technology would rescue the planet — or at least our bank
accounts — buoyed the public’s confidence. That faith persists today,
but with a difference. In the 1940s and ‘50s, “it arose out of
optimism,” Wilson said. In today’s gloomy climate, visions of ray
guns, starships and flanged metallic bodysuits may not be enough to
rekindle that confidence, but they do offer a much-longed-for escape.

“We’re frantic to lose ourselves in fantasy,” said Martin Kaplan, an
associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Southern California. “We love heroes, not technocrats.
When times are so grim that you can’t get out of bed, you dream of
someone who can fly.”

When Captain James T. Kirk and his doughty crew return in May to the
USS Enterprise in the new Star Trek, they will stand in for the spirit
of expectancy that flourished during the postwar years. As Bryan Burk,
the film’s executive producer, pointed out, Star Trek originator Gene
Roddenberry envisioned in the 1960s a utopian future in which a
reeling economy, racial tensions, environmental crises and other evils
survived only on the pages of history books.

In Roddenberry’s universe, the spirited crusaders of Planet Earth were
left no option but to travel to faraway galaxies to find challenges
worthy of their superpowers. In subsequent years, his delirious
imaginings gave way to a more cynical mind-set, one reflected in the
brooding atmospherics of movies like Batman Begins or in
post-apocalyptic sagas like I Am Legend. But Burk, in making the 11th
Star Trek motion picture since 1979, is courting a new audience by
portraying “the opposite of a bleak dystopian future.”

“We want to put forward the idea that everything is going to be OK,” he said.

Well, more than OK. “Space fleets were our wagon trains to the stars,”
said Kenneth Jurkiewicz, an associate professor in the School of
Broadcast and Cinematic Arts at Central Michigan University. They
fueled fantasies of limitless horizons, along with the faith that, as
Jurkiewicz pointed out, “our future will be exactly like our past,
except better.”

The yearning to resurrect the feats of daring and the moral
certainties of a bygone age is at the heart of films like Watchmen,
whose dissolute superheroes leap back into their armor, rescuing
children from raging flames and attempting, however briefly, to
restore peace and order to the planet.

A similar nostalgia is likely to color the new Buck Rogers Web epic,
as well as a book, John Carter of Mars (newly formatted for the Amazon
Kindle), detailing the exploits of Edgar Rice Burroughs’
sword-swinging warrior, who first flexed his formidable biceps in the
early 1900s and inspired Buck Rogers. A live-action version of the
John Carter book, from Disney Pixar, is in the casting stage.

Virgin Galactic’s “suborbital” space voyages, offered at a starting
price of $200,000 deliberately invoke Pan Am’s promise, in the late
‘60s, to begin operating commercial flights to the moon.

Yet space enthusiasts need travel no farther than their kitchens.
Recently, Ziba, a California design-consulting company, worked with
KitchenAid to rebrand its mixers and food processors. The processor
replicates a 1950s household appliance modeled to look like a ray gun.
Illy, an Italian manufacturer of kitchen appliances, has come up with
the iperEspresso, a coffee maker with the face and stunted stature of
a high-polish R2-D2.

Fashion seekers can, of course, consult their wardrobes, which, come
fall, will likely be spiked with variations on an
architectural-looking cocktail dress or jumpsuit (Balmain),
accessorized with hot-pink moon boots (Nina Ricci), a helmet or
supersize headphones (Lagerfeld) or an evening dress so elaborately
draped it could have been worn by Flash Gordon’s consort, Dale Arden
(Balenciaga).

Action-comic superheroes have been teleported to the runways many
times before, most theatrically, perhaps, in the late ‘70s and early
‘80s collections of Thierry Mugler and Kansai Yamamoto. But the
resurgence of spacewear this season is especially forceful, and
touching, as designers confront an uncertain future. In their most
recent shows, self-styled seers of the catwalks combined robotic
engineering with effusive draping and scavenged-looking elements that
appeared to be inspired by the fantasy worlds of the Mad Max films.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, who used spare bolts and body parts to fashion
his monster, Laura Mulleavy who, with her sister Kate, designs the
Rodarte line, deployed shimmering textiles in shredded layers to
suggest, as she put it, “that we are living in a salvage culture.”

Rick Owens, whose fall presentation this month had an otherworldly
caste, calls the latest revival “an escape from banality.” Owens
acknowledged that his designs owe a debt to Frank Frazetta’s
illustrations for the John Carter book series, whose raven-haired
protagonist sported a six-pack and scanty skins, and was “caveman and
futuristic at the same time.” His own designs, with their
fierce-looking layers, meandering zippers, and winged lapels, suggest
a similar hybrid, expressing, he said, “a sentimental longing for
utopian happiness that is poignantly always out of reach.”

The impulse to explore an imaginary future is born partly of
necessity. “Designers are feeling pressure to simplify, to idealize --
to create some sort of fashion manifesto in response to a failing
economy,” said Andrew Bolton, a curator at the Costume Institute of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In purely practical terms, he said,
that translates to “a vocabulary of hard tailoring, streamlining and
very short skirts -- all the things associated with space-age science
fiction.”

Like the filmmakers, writers and Web designers, the fashion makers may
also feel an urgency to populate their runways with characters who can
transport audiences beyond dour everyday realities. Some may posture
as heroic teens, others as idealized parent figures.

“What we need are first responders who don’t share our pain,” said
Martin Kaplan, the associate dean. “If there’s one thing Buck Rogers
or Flash Gordon never had to think about, it’s a pension.” NYT

http://mb.com.ph/articles/202698/back-to-the-retro-future