Friday, April 27, 2012

The Jetsons was a terrible lie

It wasn't the promise of ending all household chores with a snarky but efficient robot maid or the bubble topped flying car that folded up in suitcase thereby eliminating parking and all the associated hassles. I understand that technology doesn't always develop the way we want it to, see hoverboards or actually don't see them because they don't exist, but I could conceivably see friendly AI maids and a suitcase sized nanotech factory able to assemble a fully functioning sky car with a diamond cockpit and then disassemble it when you've reached your location being actual reality at one point. I can believe those things.
Before they were killing machines, before they were super hot Canadians, they swept and mopped.
 
It wasn't the talking dog that was the most improbable thing about the Jetson's either. Uplifting household pets to a childlike intelligence using a combination of genetic therapy and surgery by nanobot, super smart drugs, or those collars from Up is so probable that i bet's in a skymall catalog already. 
Why is there evil in the world? Oh, and I totally ate that houseplant.
The most improbable to the point of insulting thing about the Jetson's was the socioeconomic portrait it painted of the middle class. George Jetson represented the average middle class man of his time, 2062. His trials and tribulations were those of the middle class. He strives for the respect of his family while he works to provide for them. He is employed at a hostile workplace with a boss who exhibits shockingly poor management skills, to say the least.

He fires George daily, and his mustache is offensive.
But George, regardless of the mental trauma, toils on to provide for his wife and children, the dog, the robot, and even that weird alien thing they had at one point. Actually, i'm not sure if that thing eats, but anyway, so George works, but he only works one hour a day, one day a week. He puts in 52 hours a year, and is able to support a middle class lifestyle as the only breadwinner. Setting a middle class income at $57,000 George makes about $1096 an hour. The Jetson's sells a future where in 50 years the average wages for the middle class have increased 4000%. With that, the Jetson's loses all credibility as science fiction and moves into the realm of total fantasy, a hurtful fantasy. I can do without the wonderful gadgets, but I was really hoping for the 1 hour workweek.

2 comments:

  1. Now I'm disappointed on an entirely different level.

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  2. I am reminded of William Gibson's essay; :The Gernsbeck Continuum." George Jetson was a placeholder for the much more interesting reality that transpired off-screen when that total babe, Judy Jetson wrote novels in a loft in an abandoned warehouse owned by Spacely Space Sprockets and went to poetry readings near the wharf and listened to real people talk about what they care about.

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