Hello and welcome to Retrofuturism and Animation, our ongoing exploration of animated futures
from the past.
Today we are going to be looking at the future of Christmas, as well as other December holidays,
according to Futurama.
Now we have covered Futurama on this channel before.
To quickly reiterate, this was cartoonist Matt Groening’s followup to The Simpsons.
It followed Fry, a delivery boy from the 20th century, who gets transplanted to the 31st,
where he becomes a delivery boy.
The series revolved around the adventures of Fry and his crew mates, Bender and Leela,
as they deliver packages across the the universe.
It premiered on FOX in 1999, where it ran until 2003, and was revived on Comedy Central
from 2008 to 2013.
While the series takes place in the 31st century, it satirises the 20th and 21st, looking at
then-modern culture and personalities through the lens of futurism.
Contemporary celebrities could appear as themselves, with their heads and consciousness kept alive
inside a jar.
As we are approaching the holidays, we are going to be covering three festive episodes,
starting with season two’s Xmas Story.
This first aired on December 19, 1999 and was written by series co-creator David X.
Cohen.
It was directed by Peter Avanzino.
The plot revolves around Fry learning what Christmas in the future is like.
A lot has changed in 1000 years.
He first learns that it is no longer known as Christmas.
It is now Xmas.
Palm trees have replaced pine in terms of Christmas trees.
The crew chops their tree down with a laser axe.
The plot follows a conventional Christmas special, with Fry seeking the perfect gift
for Leela.
At one point he considers a joy-seeking rocket.
In terms of other innovations, we get a hovering ski lift as well as bobsleds.
I love the design and absurdity of the ski lift.
The trees on the ski hill are also controlled by voice so you can say trees up or trees
down.
At one point it parodies the famous Harold Lloyd scene from Safety First, only with a
digital clock.
We also get throwaway lines or gags that inform the chronology.
Bender receives a Christmas card from his “mother”
Fry is thankful they still have snow and that global warming never happened, which we no
longer call it that.
Today it is climate change.
Leela tells him it did happen but nuclear winter balanced things out, which is horrifying.
Still, the most blatant development is that Santa has been replaced by a killer robot,
voiced here by John Goodman.
This Santa bot was designed by Mom’s Friendly Robot Company in 2801 as a way to distinguish
naughty and nice children, though a programming error turned him into a killing machine.
He hunts anyone who has been are caught outside after sundown.
Santa would return two years later in season four’s A Tale of Two Santas.
This aired on December 23, 2001 and expanded upon the holiday lore.
In this episode the crew is tasked with delivering children’s letters to Santa, with the spin
that rather than asking for gifts, they ask him not to come.
One kid actually asks for a coffin for his grandfather, who Santa killed the previous
year.
Santa’s workshop is located on the North Pole of Neptune.
It is a destitute community with the indigenous species enslaved as elves.
Wanting to return Christmas to its warm, sentimental past, the crew attempts to defeat Santa with
a logical paradox.
They paint his actions as naughty and if he is to destroy all those who have been naughty,
he must destroy himself.
This fails but fleeing, the fuel from their ship melts the snow around the pursuing Santa,
freezing him in place.
This leads to Bender becoming Santa.
The rest of the episode deals with his shortcomings before he teams up with the other Santa.
It’s pretty light on innovations. We learn the state executes robots by electromagnetic energy.
The polar bear plunge is also referenced.
For those unfamiliar, this is when people dive into freezing water.
It’s done here in Canada on New Year’s Day.
In the future, people dive into ammonia.
We also get the first appearance by Kwanzaa-bot, voiced by Coolio, which is really great.
It plays up the fact that many don’t know or understand what Kwanzaa is.
I certainly didn’t when this first aired.
Kwanzaa is a holiday that was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, to give African Americans
an alternative to Christmas and the opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history,
rather than participate in the traditions of the dominant society.
It takes place between December 26 and January 1, and celebrates what Karenga called the
seven principles of Kwanzaa: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative
economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Each is celebrated on one of the seven days and are represented by the lighting of seven
candles, placed in a holder known as a kinara.
This would be explained in song, in a segment in the third and final Futurama holiday special,
2010’s The Futurama Holiday Spectacular.
Now the first two episodes we looked at both aired during the show’s initial FOX run,
and featured references to that period, the late ‘90s, early 2000s.
Jumping ahead, to its Comedy Central run, we get updated references.
Dick Cheney appears as Nixon’s Vice President.
It’s structured like a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror or Futurama’s own Anthology of
Interest so three different segments.
It’s Xmas segment features the crew searching out a real pine, which has been extinct for
hundreds of years.
Nothing really new or exciting in this.
The next segment features Robanukah, a play off of Hanukkah.
One of the Robanukah traditions is fem-bots wrestling in oil for six and a half weeks.
Unfortunately there is only enough for four and half weeks, as Earth’s petroleum reserves
have been exhausted, so the crew drills to the planet’s core.
Things go wrong and all but Bender perish.
500 million years pass, Bender returns to discover the bots are still wrestling, which
he calls a Robanukah miracle.
And the third, is the aforementioned Kwanzaa segment.
This followed the crew as they searched for beeswax to make the Kwanzaa candles.
This brings them back to the hive that was featured in the episode The Sting.
The bees are struggling to create wax, due to parasites.
Hermes teaches the bees about Kwanzaa, which kills the parasites and unites them against
the crew.
The segment ends with the bees celebrating Kwanzaa, with their candles made from the
crew.
All three of these segments have heavy environmental themes.
Al Gore, who was once the poster child for climate change, even makes an appearance.
They are non-canonical, though Futurama doesn’t really have one canon, at least for the period
between 1999 and Fry’s arriving in the future.
I’ve been wanting to cover Futurama for a while here but tracking the “predictions”
of the whole series was pretty daunting so hopefully you’ve enjoyed this festive trip into
that world.
If you haven’t seen it, check out our video on the futurism of the Simpsons, which includes
the fantastic Holidays of Future Past as well as their crossover with Futurama.
It’s similar in tone.
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As always, thank you so much for your interest in this channel and thanks for watching.
Stay safe out there.