Friday, January 22, 2010

Amusing anachronisms

After attending a 35th anniversary screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail last night -- a movie which revels in outrageous anachronisms and (what some would call) thoroughly postmodern, meta-media commentary -- I'm moved to post below three videos, all comico-spiritual successors to the Python example, that have recently come to my attention. Each plays on film and TV conventions reflexively (and so often invisibly) deployed in relation to other historical times, to great comedic effect: the present treated as retro-future, the very recent past treated as distant past, and the present seen from distant future. They use their targeted tropes to distort a recognisable picture (past or present) which, being so familiar, makes the distortions themselves all the clearer. We could say more, but instead, let these astute satirical tidbits speak for themselves.







1: The Astounding World of the Future, dir. Scott Dikkers, 02001 (YouTube link).
(Thanks to Steve Duncombe.)
2: "Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization", Onion News Network, 02010(?).
(Thanks to Kurt Bollacker.)
3: "Beatles 3000", dir. Scott Gairdner, 02009.
(Thanks to Jake Dunagan and Alexander Rose.)

(Update 4 Nov 02015: embedded videos fixed.)

Related posts:
> Comedy ahead of its time
> Guerrilla futurists combat war on terror
> Satire's layers