There is a brilliant, bitingly satirical cartoon about a dysfunctional family that mercilessly puts American consumer culture under the microscope and finds it pusillanimous, vacuous and soul-destroying.
No, silly! - not the over-rated "The Simpsons", which is ultimately - beneath its thin veneer of satire - celebratory and reassuring (and, in my opinion, unwatchable for those reasons).
I'm talking about "The Jetsons". As with "The Flintstones", temporal dislocation is employed as a kind of Verfremdungseffekt, but in this instance we are thrown several centuries into a future which - like "The Flintstones"' palaeolithic age - looks disconcertingly like the suburban southern California of the early 1960s!
"The Jetsons" is harder-edged than "The Flintstones", and its subtle interrogation of American consumer capitalism more focused and sustained. Like most satire, and all of the protest movements of the post-war era, "The Jetsons" is better at stating the problems than offering any putative solutions. However, in the dumbed-down Clinton-Bush era of post-ideological (i.e. permanently ultra-right wing) politics, it's refreshing to have even the questions posed.
(PS. will the cosy, reassuring "The Simpsons", having featured war-hungry Tony Blair in a recent sugar-coated cameo, now give walk-ons to Lynndie England and her fellow Abu Ghraib torturers?)
No, silly! - not the over-rated "The Simpsons", which is ultimately - beneath its thin veneer of satire - celebratory and reassuring (and, in my opinion, unwatchable for those reasons).
I'm talking about "The Jetsons". As with "The Flintstones", temporal dislocation is employed as a kind of Verfremdungseffekt, but in this instance we are thrown several centuries into a future which - like "The Flintstones"' palaeolithic age - looks disconcertingly like the suburban southern California of the early 1960s!
"The Jetsons" is harder-edged than "The Flintstones", and its subtle interrogation of American consumer capitalism more focused and sustained. Like most satire, and all of the protest movements of the post-war era, "The Jetsons" is better at stating the problems than offering any putative solutions. However, in the dumbed-down Clinton-Bush era of post-ideological (i.e. permanently ultra-right wing) politics, it's refreshing to have even the questions posed.
(PS. will the cosy, reassuring "The Simpsons", having featured war-hungry Tony Blair in a recent sugar-coated cameo, now give walk-ons to Lynndie England and her fellow Abu Ghraib torturers?)