Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Future Shock - Babytorium (1972)



As I've asserted before, Future Shock is probably the strangest motion picture ever to claim the genre of documentary. While not altogether wrong about what the future holds, the film certainly presents its case in a rather dramatic and overstated manner. Case in point, "Babytoriums" of the future.

You can find Future Shock on the DVD Yesterday's Tomorrows Today, released by A/V Geeks.

See also:
Future Shock (1972)
Future Shock - Electrical Stimulation (1972)
Future Shock - Skin Color (1972)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The doc in this piece is Charles Epstein from UC San Francisco, professor of pediatrics and medical genetics. Interesting side note.... he was a victim of the UNABOMBER. Fortunately, he survived.

Eric Boyd said...

If you think "baby emporiums" are fiction, I recommend that you read "Genius Factory: the curious history of the noble prize sperm bank", the story of the first sperm bank and the reproductive services which sprang up around it. A fascinating look into a world few know anything about!

http://www.thegeniusfactory.net/

Eric
http://digitalcrusader.ca/

Anonymous said...

Wow, that doctor looks/sounds like Anthony Perkins! Talk about creepy! And is the narrator Orson Welles? Why on earth would you hire him to talk about babies? It sounds like the end of the world!

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Is this a Dharma orientation video?

Scott said...

Orson Welles!

Seemed like just about the only work he could get in the last decade of his life was narrating schlockumentaries like this one, but I still enjoy his presence here.

As usual in the sticky business of predicting the future, they goof up on the simplest part of the scenario. They can manipulate human genetics to customize babies, but they're still stuck with a lousy slide projector?

And apparently, Dr. Epstein's worries were for naught. Artificial insemination goes on daily and nobody worries "who the parents really are." Even Fundamentalist Christians participate with no qualms about "larger questions."