I love classic Disney Informational videos. The (now)retro-futurism of them. The male voice who is sure our nuclear future is going to be bright and brilliant. The painted scenes that could easily pass for modern art. All of it comes together wonderfully, and takes me back to a time when I was being raised by my tiny color TV.
The video after the jump is an example that ties in my love for the future that never happened with our combined love for all things automobilia…
The clip is called The Magic Highway and it was first aired in 1958… a few years before Mad_Science’s Falcon was even born.
Thanks for the tip Ben!
[Source: The Car Lounge, Youtube]
The Magic Highway of TOMORROW!
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I feel so much optimism for what 2000 could be – I can't wait for the past-future!
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Reminds me of Conan's "In The Year 2000!!"
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Well put diatribe.
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Different urban layouts as a result of highways: check.
Yeah, the construction of the Interstate system (especially I-95) through town truly altered the urban fabric here, and generally not for the better. -
Adding to the video's retro-futuristic kitsch value, the narrator is Marvin Miller….who provided the voice of Robby the Robot in the movie Forbidden Planet.
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I thought it was funny that even on the family vacation, it's clearly Dad's responsibility to program in the route, because you know, even without having to drive the car, that's a job clearly not fit for Mom!
Also, the typical day, Dad goes to his office (not even a cube!!!!) and Mom and Son go shopping. Hey wait, she's allowed to drive the car then? -
You think that the Jetsons people saw this? Or were stereotypes just so widespread in the 1950s?
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Surprisingly accurate in terms of features, if not in depiction.
High speed highways: check. (Remember, this was '58. They didn't have interstates.)
Radar/night vision: check
Auto-routing: check
Real-time traffic: check
Cars on high-speed trains: check (Chunnel)
All the conveniences of home in your cross-country car: check (the shot with the kids in the back watching TV was awesome
Different urban layouts as a result of highways: check.
^^^This one's big for me, as I drive 40 miles one-way to get to work. It's obvious which parts of the greater LA area were built before or after the 50s, as the proportions are totally different.-
The truck-train is today's shipping container. Moving sidewalks are in nearly every large airport where people drift past shopping windows as the baggage traffic trundles along underneath. They did get a lot of things right. The highway designs remind me a lot of the roads at Walt Disney World. There are a lot of large radius corners.
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Being a history fanatic and a fanboy of old architecture, I find it chilling that in the "future," everything that is old and inefficient will have been razed for the centralized city, like they showed. Guess what? It didn't work. That's what they did in the big cities in the fifties and sixties when they bulldozed old neighborhoods and built housing projects, and they turned into nightmares. It's funny how the old concept of a walkable neighborhood is coming back into vogue. Back in the day, before everybody had wheels, it was a necessity and the cities and towns of the era just naturally evolved that way. Now it's being treated as some genius idea, the fact that you can build a development where you can actually walk to work and go about your daily business on foot. What a concept.
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