The Attempted Militarization of the Jetsons
A lesser known episode of "The Jetsons" speaks directly to our current plight: the relentless but eternally floundering attempt to militarize a bourgeois society that is more interested in consumption and leisure than serving a mythical national ethos. The whole show is a wonderful commentary on how this consuming, spending, bourgeois, capitalist society is impervious to militarization. The state is seen as a pointless device for wasting time and money, something people will obey with their feet but will otherwise ignore with their hearts and minds. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (24)
Jeff has provided another example in the entangled history of comics and cartoons and the rise (and rise) of the state.
See here for a brief history of the "Comic Code Authority", a private self censorship outfit set up by the Comic book publishers as an effort to stave off direct federal regulation, all promoted by an "expert" but crank huckster "consumer protection advocate" and psychologist Dr Frederick Wertham.
Many of the storylines of famous comics reflect issues of interest to libertarians. "Wonder Woman" , at least the original story, was a parable on the alleged evils of isolationism. "Superman" only added "the American Way" tag line during the 1950s Cold War.
In recent decades as the strictures of the CCA have been lifted, many comics have adopted a kind of watered down cultural leftism, although thankfully in The Jetsons bourgeois values have managed to survive the rot. There are a few other bourgeois refuges here and there in comic land, the movie "Batman Returns" celebrates a business tycoon (Bruce Wayne's dad) as a social benefactor and the X-Men, of course, were all trained in a private school, Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters!
Published: September 21, 2005 1:37 AM
I probably should have added another couple of comic book characters pursuing quasi-libertarian themes, especially Herge's Tintin.
Not only did Tintin reach the moon before NASA, but it's worth noting his adventures in "Tintin in the land of the Soviets". First published in 1929, it was a more accurate description of what was really happening in Stalin's Russia at the time than reports by Pulitzer prize winning journalists in "serious" newspapers.
"Tintin In America" (1932) is not a flattering portrait of the other superpower either, in particular Tintin runs afoul of gangster syndicates manipulating the government to obtain access to oil wells on Indian land.
Tintin was no gun shy liberal either, when chasing criminals he would often borrow a revolver from a nearby cop and shoot the baddies' getaway car's tires' out.
Another great libertarian comic book character, not well known in America, is Asterix, the fighting Gaul, a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire! His magic potion protected his village and kept the Caesars at bay.
Published: September 21, 2005 2:56 AM
The Asterix character is now used by french communist party and unions to picture france resisting the great capitalist evil...
Published: September 21, 2005 6:57 AM
Maybe a bit off topic, but however an interesting and remarkable geopolitical evolution: EU/China vs US . One empire (USSR) down, one to go (US). 2 to go now (US and Eurasia)?
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2005/09/step-too-far.html
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]The agency report will fuel suspicions in US circles that the EU - which considers itself a "strategic partner" of China - is progressively strengthening its Asian "partner" in order to dilute US influence in the region and strengthen its own. Part of this EU-China alliance is, of course, the UK, which is also funding the Galileo programme. Yet, at the same time, the UK is expecting the US to release secret data on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme, despite risks of technology leakage to China.
With the ever-strengthening relationship between China and the EU, however, the UK is being dragged further into the China sphere, and arousing increasing distrust in US circles. With crucial production decisions having to be made on the JSF by the end of the year, the US might consider that this current development is a step too far and cut the UK adrift.
Published: September 21, 2005 8:02 AM
The Commentary on the Jetson's cartoon by Tucker reminds me of another short cartoon I saw recently. It was from Disney, seemingly from the 40's, and depicted a story of a young german boy named Hans who is schooled for the "Education of Death." He is unwilling at first but soon joins his fellow nazi's in the march of the fuhrer.
If you type in - disney nazi - at yahoo, and then click on "video" above the YAHOO logo on the top left a number of copies of this cartoon will show up. Choose the one that is 103mb. The others I think are cut short.
Published: September 21, 2005 8:26 AM
Let's not forget the X-men movies, both of which show government power abused constantly, and police utterly ineffective.
In the late '60s, there would still be shown once in a while the WW2-era Bugs Bunny cartoons, dive-bombing black birds with swastikas on their tails or inept slant-eyed "nip" soldiers stupid enough to accept hand grenades that looked like ice-cream cones.
The only obviously censored one that I remember is where a musical chorus of black-face singers backing up Bugs singing "Dixie" was cut in mid "Oh....". Looking back on that time, I can guess why it was cut. I was too young to understand about Watts riots, but I do remember seeing machine-gun advertisements in the newspaper.
Published: September 21, 2005 8:48 AM
Let's not forget Donald Duck in "Pay your income tax!"
Published: September 21, 2005 8:49 AM
I confess to having loathed the Jetsons as a child. My younger brother watched the show religiously and I would rush through the living room to avoid having the sound track pollute my ears. That does not mean I disliked science fiction. In fact it was my love of science fiction that was the source of my dislike for the Jetsons. I started reading Heinlein when I was eight and kept reading through the time I understood the real function of such writing.
The point of extrapolative fiction, of which science fiction is one kind, is to take human values into other contexts, in this case the future so as to create a vision of what that future may be like.
It helps us see what is possible.
I can imagine no less likely scenario to express a vision that connects the Mises Institute and all individualist, free market thinking with any vision of the future, except perhaps as a nightmare, than is represented by the Jetsons. The thrust of individual choice and the action of markets of consent is not to deliver extra time for mindless activity.
The Jetsons represent a collectivist world made up of people forced into the truncated roles of mindless cogs doing mindless jobs. That they spend less time in mindless jobs is irrelevant. That is not a valid view of commerce nor does it represent the present direction of American business, American culture, or American values.
In fact, one of the dominant trends in business today is new start ups by women. As women move into commerce they are changing not just the gender base of management but something far more significant; that is how businesses order themselves to create product, service, and interface with their customers. Commerce is the active interface of the human mind connecting with others to persuade and provide value, thus extending into the future a relationship that is in itself a form of capital.
Such change takes time. It is not revolutionary but evolutionary. Through the numberless human choices we remake the world one thought at a time.
Jeff Tucker is correct that the issues at point in the specific episode that he uses as his subject are at play today. But he is wrong when he assumes that the specific values and cultural attitudes have the persistence he claims for them. The roles of men and women, the activities of individuals in families and in their communities, how they spend their leisure time, all of these things express themselves in the Jetsons on the level of the lowest common denominator not today but when the show was produced.
We are in a new millennium. Time to trade in the reruns for reality.
Published: September 21, 2005 9:26 AM
Well done! An interesting column, though I don't agree that states necessarily whip up enemies. More likely: elites dupe others into believing force is a necessity....
Aspiring writers like the author (especially those knowledgible about California) welcome to contact us....
managingeditor@battlecry-ca.com
www.battlecry-ca.com
Published: September 21, 2005 9:41 AM
While it's true that the future "is an extension of today, just as today is an extension of everything that followed before," that extension is undergoing exponential, rather than linear, growth, leading to the merger of man and machine in what the scientific community calls the technological "Singularity," a phenomenon that inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil examines in detail in his new book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033847/qid=1127312351/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4649714-5176139?v=glance&s=books.
If so, then there is indeed a "dramatic hinge of history" in the offing that will in fact cause "all rules to change" -- most notably the rule of the state -- as humanity blows by the Jetson and embarks on "Our Post-Human Future."
Tellingly, died-in-the-wool statist Francis Fukuyama, in his book by the above name, scorns the idea of advanced humanity, preferring the statist quo's endless murder and mayhem instead. Accordingly, you can count on the state to do all it can to control the run-up to the Singularity via its militarization. Indeed, DARPA is already "in the business of creating better soldiers -- not just equipping them with better gear, but improving the humans themselves" (See "Perfecting Humanity in the May 30 issue of Fortune magazine). And what does DARPA mean by improvement? "We want every fighter to look like Lance Armstrong, strength and endurance that don't quit," says Joe Bielitski, former head of DARPA's Metabolically Dominant Soldier program. "The Energizer Bunny in fatigues kind of does it: keeps going and going."
Published: September 21, 2005 9:59 AM
I loved the last bit of the article: " ...capitalist society is impervious to militarization. The state is seen as a pointless device for wasting time and money, something people will obey with their feet but will otherwise ignore with their hearts and minds."
I am a libertarian and respect others who have similar respect for the individual liberty. My highest respect however is reserved those who do not care about the state, do not participate in it, and pretty much ignore its existence and its silly rules, and look in the eyes of the state with complete ignorance when challenged. If everyone did this, how would the state get its power?
Published: September 21, 2005 10:47 AM
The original post is fun, but the comments here are great :-) How The Jetsons be seen as a viable view of the future any more than the Flinstones is as viable view of the past? Both cartoons reflected a fantasy reality which the audiences of the time liked. (And they liked the Jetsons less!) I've rambled some more here: The Attempted Neoconning of the Jetsons
Published: September 21, 2005 1:07 PM
Mike Forbes sez;
"An interesting column, though I don't agree that states necessarily whip up enemies. More likely: elites dupe others into believing force is a necessity...."
Being parasites, they wait for an opportunity to spring upon the body politic when it is too siezed with fear to notice. If not for crises, they hardly have the ability to get out of their own way (look at Bush's pathetic response to the P-3 downing in China).
Published: September 21, 2005 2:13 PM
David White quotes;
""We want every fighter to look like Lance Armstrong, strength and endurance that don't quit," says Joe Bielitski, former head of DARPA's Metabolically Dominant Soldier program. "The Energizer Bunny in fatigues kind of does it: keeps going and going.""
Great, now we will have prisoner torturers that never rest, and can leap tall piles of naked prisoners in a single bound....without a corresponding (or even surpassing)increase in moral and ethical strength and stamina, we should not be shocked when these lethal "Energizer Bunnies" eventually turn on us.
Published: September 21, 2005 2:17 PM
Vince,
The Energizer Soldiers' precursors and those who command them have already turned on us. They are the state, after all; it's what they do!
So it boils down to a race as to who gets to the Singularity first, society or the state. If the former, we'll be embarking on a truly fantastic voyage. If the latter, then oblivion awaits.
Published: September 21, 2005 3:11 PM
When George says: "You know the Space Guard. Anywhere out of this world, they build a camp", one can't help but think that maybe the State of the Jetsons has reached the "Singularly" first? Cos' in the libertarian Garden of Eden, where all scarcity has disappreared, why would anyone want to "build a camp" (read Colonise) - something that only the State does best.
Published: September 21, 2005 11:00 PM
I have never seen The Jetsons but whatever its content it does not seem to have had much impact on the political views of those undoubtedly enormous numbers of viewers who did watch the series, did it?
Nothing new here: The comic strips of my youth were Hergé's "Tintin", Willy Vandersteen's "Suske en Wiske" (published in English as Willy and Wanda, Bod and Bobette, and Spike and Suzy), and Marc Sleen's recently terminated "Nero". All of them started immediately after WW II. They were full of libertarian and anti-statist themes; but the generation that read them turned out to be as leftist as any.
The wonderful and often hilarious BBC series (not a cartoon, btw) "Yes, minister" should have given Britons a profound insight in the reality of high-level political and bureaucratic decision-making, but the people who viewed it overwhelmingly voted Tony Blair into office.
If I may venture a hypothesis here: these cartoons and television series do nothing to break through the private man / public man dichotomy that effectively immunizes official public discourse from criticism that people can only express comfortably in the language of every day life. The moment they try to express it in public they are hit over the head with jargon, statistics, and You-have-to-look-at-the-whole-picture type of arguments that they cannot answer.
So, perhaps, the cartoons and television series are just modern variants of the the medieval court jester: they provide a moment of private relief and thereby diminish or exhaust the need to press on with criticism.
P.S. Over time "Suske and Wiske" became an epitome of political correctness, simple-minded do-goodery and environmentalist hype. Thus, instead of being a celebration of the life of the "ordinary man" (warts and all), it became an acceptable vehicle for propagating the education establishment's "social values" and its agenda of "social reform". Tintin and Nero escaped this sad fate because, unlike Vandersteen, Hergé and Sleen did not want to hand over their creations to corporate interests who would exploit their popularity and reputation.
Published: September 22, 2005 5:27 AM
Boy did this article take me back! I remember seeing that Jetsons episode about 42 years ago, and if my memory still serves, I think Mr. Tucker left out the funniest part of the scene where "the next person to take the IQ test" after George is lauded for original thinking and declared "officer material" for breaking the test machine by trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Maybe I'm wrong (we're talking over 4 decades here), but as I recall it, the "next person" was a gorilla from the zoo.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Published: September 22, 2005 12:14 PM
The sermon is, as usual, a bit of a poisonous cake with a tasty frosting.
Is there anything wrong with simple-minded joy of Jetsons' life, a little bit consumerist, but not too much, a little bit naive but not outward stupid, a little bit desinfomed, but with the know where South America is.
So what's wrong with them (I do not mean the character, of course, I address the metaphora it is used for).
Everything.
Becuse with this attitude they will unlikely have a "happy" life even as miserable as it is.
They will drown in mortgages, they will eat a tastless food, they will spend 2/3 of their budget leftovers and 50% of their time in a pharmacy.
That is what technology progress has brougt us so far, has it not?
So what is there to like and aspre?
Tell me.
Published: September 22, 2005 6:38 PM
What a good article! My appreciation for The Jetsons just shot up a few notches.
Published: September 22, 2005 8:11 PM
The entire setting of the Jetsons underscores another point that is lost on most every writer of this genre: technology does not change human nature or dramatically rearrange the meta-structure of limits and opportunities that form the basis of the social order.
The first part of your conclusion is correct, the second part is not. Technology does not change human nature, but it surely has had a massive impact on social order. Look at the social structure in agrarian societies versus industrialized versus technological societies. There is no comparison. Sorry, but using one episode of a dumb cartoon to illustrate your hypothesis just falls flat.
Published: September 23, 2005 7:10 AM
I enjoyed the Jetsons when I was young, and I rather enjoyed this article. But I think there's a danger to reading too much into something like this. It's like a joke--if you have to explain it, then how many people are really going to "get it"?
Published: September 23, 2005 9:18 AM
These guys are not exactly cartoon or comic book characters, but maybe we need to nominate them for the position as No.1 libertarian cartoon (or cartoon-oid) characters... "The Thunderbirds".
They rescue people in distress; they aren't aggressors and they aren't pacifists either; they operate out of sight and out of reach of all the world's governments; they are an international and private organisation with members from many nations; they celebrate technology, courage and humanity; one of their leading heroines (Lady Penelope) is an aristocrat and certainly pretty damn rich, and their founder / patron is a former astronaut - turned billionaire. They don't come more politically incorrect!
Published: September 24, 2005 2:48 AM
Hmm. stumbled on this site oddly enough, interesting view points here. I agree that Militarization of people is odd because it seems seperated from the people. The people no longer are their own keepers and defend themeselves by alliancing with each other when the time comes, but now have a few people who in fact volunteer to do the fighting for them, rather then get involved in something that they believe is important. To be more clearer we've gone from a militia based army in the begining to a professional volunteer force that is not representive of the whole population.Its now more seperated from the people because wars are started without the consent of the people(which is to be done through congress).
I disagree however, that things are totally like Jetsons or they will be for that matter. For one there are anti-capitilist people in this world who view the quest to make profit evil. The extremism I'm alluding to is of course middle eastern terrorists. These people do not like western culture and do not like what people do with their own money. So to say that we shouldn't be concerned like the jetsons is reckless because there are battles to be fought. jetsons is a fantasy and such it won't happen not only because of people against its idealogy but politics as well.
if this is unclear sorry its kind of hard to explain my view point.
Published: October 2, 2005 2:50 AM