Martin Ingle oblivious to the irony of banging on about an already banged-to-bits critique
"regurgitating a past that never existed" - apart from that being a contradiction in terms (if it never existed, it could never be consumed in the first place, let alone puked up again for the re-eating), if that is actually what is going on, then it would be quite an interesting state of affairs. Unprecedented, even!
"A past that never existed" is a way of saying that the Googie optimism of the Space Age turned out to be based on an illusion. As illusory as your lack of understanding for the sake of an argument.
ReplyDeleteOoooh!
DeleteI very much doubt anyone involved in the article cares very much about the topic one way or the other. The Guardian run articles about superheroes weekly as it gets people riled up and generates comments / clicks / user activity. They rarely have anything interesting to say.
ReplyDeleteRather than "a past that never existed", wouldn't that be a case of a future that never materialized?
ReplyDeleteAlso Googie optimism is a social fact that actually existed. It also physically existed in so far the architecture pervaded Southern California and the USA - some of it still exists. It may nor may not reflect an illusory hope or mistaken vision of how the future would be, something that now seems quaint and kitsch. But it was a phenomenon.
Something quite like it is making a comeback, unfortunately through tech bros and their "hard science fiction" fantasies of freedom cities and colonies on Mars - the sort of dark kitsch or dystopian Googie of the cybertruck.