Society Marches On: Difference between revisions

 

Related to [[Values Dissonance]], [[Science Marches On]] and [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]. [[Eternal Prohibition]] and [[Everybody Smokes]] are specific cases.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[Camelot 3000]]'', written in the 1980s, had a still-segregated South Africa in the eponymous year, far outdoing 2001.

* The character history for the [[Post-Crisis]] Katherine "Kate" Kane, who would become [[Batwoman]], is that of a dedicated student at West Point who was expelled from the academy and forbidden to enter the army because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The policy itself, which forbade any confirmed homosexuals from serving in the US Military, was repealed by an act of congress in 2011, barely a year after her origin was given in ''[[Detective Comics]]''. The story was completely accurate at the time it was written, and will have leeway for several more years because it is a flashback that occurred several years in the past, but it can no longer be brought forward to the "present" when [[Comic Book Time|time "progresses"]].

 

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC5sbdvnvQM This video] from 1966, which imagines what life would be like in 1999, manages to predict home computers, email, and what is effectively internet shopping, but assumes that the average woman will be paying for goods with her husband's money.

 

* [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s ''Space Odyssey'' was pretty hilarious in this regard; alongside with [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|a Soviet Union well into the 2000's]], Apartheid in South Africa continued into the 2030's, when it ended in a revolution that kicked the white ruling class out.

** Apartheid-related predictions were often a bit off in this way, due mostly to outsiders imagining some sort of centuries-long, deep-seated race war. Whereas it was a recent and quickly dated policy which was mostly prolonged because it somehow wound up as part of Cold War politics. As soon as the policy was put up to vote, everyone rejected it.

** ''[[The Puppet Masters (novel)|The Puppet Masters]]'' was published in 1951 and set in 2007. Although the heroine is just as tough and capable as the male lead (sometimes more so), the moment gender roles or romantic relationships come up she turns, hilariously, into June Cleaver.

** Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies" again features a sex-segregated future in which astronauts and space pilots are always male, and the spaceship stewardess/prostitutes in skimpy outfits are all female.

** Pretty much all of Heinlein's juveniles, despite being set in some indeterminate future, read like [[The Fifties]] with better technology. One obvious example is the main character in ''[[Have Space Suit—Will Travel]]''. On the one hand, his life ambition is to become an aerospace engineer. On the other, he's a recent High School graduate who has a summer job as a soda jerk at the local pharmacy.

* In the [[Isaac Asimov]] short story "The Ugly Little Boy," they have a time machine that only works to Neanderthal times, collecting a small child and doing lots of experiments on him. The nurse/mother figure gets quite upset. The lack of any ethics, or any requirement for ethical approval is shocking.

**** Though in the universe of ''[[The End of Eternity]]'' (published in 1955), we see that the vast majority of the centuries in the future have non-tobacco-smoking cultures, and Twissel complains about how hard it is to find a good cigarette and a place where smoking is allowed.

** A notable aversion is to be found, however, whenever Asimov describes music, in that he predicted synthesizers and electric instruments in the Foundation and Empire stories at a time when sticking a microphone on an acoustic guitar was still cutting-edge.

* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' has several parts where social mores have not dated so well. One example is the alien from Betelgeuse who tries to pretend he's human, and English, by adopting what he thought was a very common name - [[wikipedia:Ford Prefect|Ford Prefect]]. While probably funny back when the first radio serial was released, the fact that he's named after a car that hasn't been around for nearly half a century completely ruins the joke, and to date ''no'' adaptation has changed the name to something like "Ford Focus" or "Ford Fiesta". Another possible example is the claim that humans are "ape-descended life forms" that "are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea". This was back when digital watches were fairly new but not totally ubiquitous, but reading it now, can you think of ''anybody'' in a developed world that is still that impressed with digital watches?

** Interestingly, when a comic book adaptation was being written (in the early '90s or so), Adams was approached about changing the line about "digital watches" to "cell phones", and he adamantly refused, insisting that the cartoonist was missing the point. So, what ''was'' the point? Well, um... er... ah! Cell phones are actually useful devices due to their mobility, while digital watches have no advantages over regular watches. So, Adams probably considered digital watches a pointless novelty while thinking that cell phones are actually useful. Uh, you know, probably.

** As shown in the television series, the watches he was talking about used power-consuming LED displays, and so you had to push a button to see the time. The joke is probably that Douglas Adams found those types of watches impractical.

* In Hamilton's [[Sargasso Of Space]], it is evidently assumed that crewing space ships would be a job primarily reserved for Men, much like sailing was when the story was written.

* The book Steampunk Prime has a number of late 19th and early 20th century science fiction stories that contain examples of this. "In the Deep of Time" involves a man who is chronically revived in an advanced future... where woman STILL are expected to be subordinated to men.

* Arguably averted in ''[[Atlas Shrugged]].'' While the time frame the book takes place in is deliberately vague (it seems to [[The Fifties]] with some sci-fi inventions, like Rearden Metal), the main character is a powerful career woman who courts and has sex out of wedlock with three different men—and holds this up as a sign of her empowerment, rather than something to be stigmatized by. On the flip side, the two housewives of the story have a decidedly anti-Fifties portrayal. Lillian Rearden is portrayed as a nagging parasite who tries (and initially succeeds) to control her husband with sex and is ultimately much worse off for relying on her husband's wealth than if she had forged her own way. Cherryl Taggart is shown to only be a valuable commodity to one of the antagonists when she stays docile and uninformed—her steady gain of savvy shows her become an empowered figure who her husband agonizes over being unable to control any longer. All three are quite the far cry from the docile housewife common in [[The Fifties]] fiction.

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' tried to avert this. On one hand, they had minorities and women in Starfleet, which was [[Fair for Its Day|progressive for the '60s]], and [[Everybody Smokes|no one smoking]]. But the women were still wearing miniskirts as military uniforms and, although never explicitly told to [[Stay in the Kitchen]], they were often portrayed as [[Damsel in Distress|Distressed Damsels]]. In short they did their best to avert the trope but couldn't due to [[Executive Meddling]], especially in the pilot (see below).

** In the episode "The Enemy Within", evil!Kirk tries to rape Yeoman Rand. She later recounts the incident for good!Kirk, Spock and McCoy, displaying a very '60s attitude about it ("I don't want to get you into trouble. I wouldn't even have mentioned it.") ''while being in tears''. And this is while she is unaware that there are two Kirks running around!

** And her only line is the Russian for "Pretty", referring to a dress in a store window.

 

* ''Since I Met You'' by DC Talk contains the line "My 200 friends couldn't fill the void in my soul". Listening to this in the 90s, this seemed like a ludicrously huge number; but since the advent of Facebook, "200 friends" is, if anything, lower than average.

** Though considering the large number was probably meant to reference the obvious impossibility of being close to that many people, perhaps it's a rather good (if unknowing) reference to the empty vanity of adding people merely to increase the number appearing on your profile. But in that case 200 friends still seems a bit low.

** On the other hand, lots of jokes based on George complaining about his "button finger" (with the implication that what we are lazy about will just get more crazy in a world where you just push buttons all day) are more of a [[Funny Aneurysm]] due to increasing awareness of Repetitive Strain Injury.

*** Not to mention several jokes about the standard work week being ''9 hours'', based on the popular conception of the time that technology would allow people to work far less. Not only has the exact opposite happened for many people but cell phones and email has allowed bosses to contact employees 24/7 meaning that the separation between work and leisure has become blurred.

***** Most people rarely sees free time as leisure time, but rather time to use to get more work in for more money. Their parents and grandparents worked the same hours, but earned far less.

* Many future-themed classic cartoons, from [[Looney Tunes]] to MGM, fit this trope. In many instances, they even assume the ''dress styles'' of the era in which they were made will still be relevant in the future.

 

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[[Category:Society Marches On]]

[[Category:Tropes March On]]