Hello and welcome back to Futuretoons, where we explore the intersection of retrofuturism
and animation by looking at past predictions of the future seen in cartoons.
Today we are having something of a Soviet futurism double feature.
We are going to be covering two very different shorts.
One brimming with optimism, the other revelling in despair.
Utopia/dystopia.
This first short, the utopia, is a piece of propaganda, Ivan Aksenchuk’s Plus Electrification.
Now we have a whole series on the relationship between animation and propaganda, Animation/Propaganda,
and I think the argument can certainly be made that a lot of retrofuturism is propaganda.
If not explicit advertising, portraying the future in an idealised, impossibly stable
and comfortable way offers hope that is rarely realised.
Obviously no one can see tomorrow but looking around it’s pretty clear didn’t get the
world promised in a lot of this media.
We are the future.
It’s easy to forget that.
We are living in the future and get fixated on things like flying cars and space travel,
but at one time the future was electric.
Electricity.
That’s the subject of Plus Electrification.
This film documents the effort behind bringing electricity to distant parts of the Soviet
Union.
Years ago on Animation/Propaganda we looked at agit-prop, specifically the agit-train,
which was a train that went out to rural areas within the Soviet Union with the aim of spreading
propaganda.
These trains would be brightly painted with political slogans, and they would hand out
literature.
They would also screen films, which were much more accessible to these populations as many
could not read.
For some in the places they went, this was the only time electricity was seen, let alone
film, and while these trains fell out of favour by the 1940s, this short was produced in 1972.
In the early ‘70s, there were still some regions in the Soviet Union that didn’t
have electricity and Plus Electrification was a sort of celebration that that might
not always be the case.
That crews were hard at work getting power to the people.
A folk-like song is sung as power lines and pylons march into these different regions.
They shake hands with other towers and give light.
We learn this is but the first step on the road to a brighter tomorrow as it ends with
cities building up, modern cities that then give way to your standard ‘70s futuristic
fin and dome architecture.
A futureman is seen controlling this process.
At one point a resort island is created by melting ice.
I’m sure those in the remote artic appreciated that.
1972 is pretty late to the party, which kind of undermines this short’s joyous tone.
Some archival footage is used, that feels straight out of the 40s.
The animation is great.
It’s beautiful but knowing the state of the Soviet Union at this time, and its fate,
it’s hard to see this as anything besides propaganda.
Onto the dystopia, or at least the more blatant dystopia, depending on how you look at it,
1984’s There Will Come Soft Rains.
Directed by Nazim Tulyahodzhayev, this is an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short story,
set on New Year’s Eve, 2026.
This is an automated future where a robot takes care of a household.
It prepares breakfast, sets the table, announces it is time to eat, but the only problem is
there are no humans to enjoy it.
A nuclear attack has turned them into dust.
This is extremely eerie.
We get a bunch of shots throughout the house, toys playing on their own, dust piles clinching
dolls.
A gramophone plays The Moon Was Yellow, which gives off some serious Fallout vibes.
The robot continues its tasks.
It prepares a dinner to ring the new year.
A dove that somehow survived the attack flies into the house, activating the robot’s security
system.
This causes it to destroy a large crucifix, Christ, the house, itself, everything, which
is the takeaway from this.
Total man-made or, in this case, programmed destruction.
This film is very powerful.
In addition to the scenes already mentioned, the window, looking out on a peaceful meadow,
is actually just a video screen.
Nuclear winter is all that’s outside.
What’s also unique about this is that it takes place in America, Allendale, California
to be exact.
It was not localised.
Because of when it was made, the mid-80s, when the Cold War was heating up again, nuclear
annihilation is the main theme here, which is obviously still a threat, but I feel like
it has given way to environmental extinction.
Climate change.
This could easily be remade today with that as the message.
And that’s about it for today.
I will post links to these shorts in the description.
Let me know what you think.
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