From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri May 03 2002 - 11:56:16 MDT
Having watched Dark Angel for a while now, I must agree that it is an
extropian show. While I enjoy watching Enterprise, I agree that it does
carry on the Roddenberry tradition of futuristic luddism and general
left wingism.
Another show I've been watching with interest is on PBS, called Frontier
House. It is a reality tv show combined with social science experiment
in which three families from the modern world attempt to survive for
half a year using 1880's technology in the Montana wilderness, and are
graded at the end of the show on how well they were prepared to survive
the first winter, which was usually a good indicator of whether a
homesteader family would survive the 5 years required in the Homestead
Act to acquire the government grant of 160 acres.
While it was entertaining to watch the consumer oriented Clune family
from California stumble along, nearly starving at one point, being
eternally short of protein and money until Gary Clune brought in an
1880's still he had his company in CA construct for him, while the Glenn
family from Tennessee did physically better at surviving and prospering
at the expense of their marital harmony, the best performers were a
young black fellow who was the only one to build his own cabin from
scratch (along with help from his father) wherupon his white social
worker fiancee arrived for an on camera wedding. This couple did the
best of all in being prepared for the winter despite starting off the
least prepared in having no home at all.
In the area of women, Mrs. Clune, a gourmet cook in real life, found
that cooking and cleaning absorbed her whole day in the 1880's. Mrs.
Glenn's feminist attempts to impose a matriarchy on her frontier family
only resulted in the eventual separate, with her frequently threatening
divorce throughout the show.
After the end of the experiment, the families returned to their real
lives, all professing to be profoundly changed by the experience. The
Clune boys now hunt for rabbits in the hills of Malibu, CA which the
family enjoy thoroughly and have filled their freezer with. The Clune
family as a whole now finds itself bored and lonely in their newly built
7,500 square foot mansion filled with modern day conveniences and
entertainments.
The Glenn family is now separated, with Mrs. Glenn having found new
purpose in her church community, while Mr. Glenn feels he is the most
changed, and says he found greater purpose as a man and human being
living for 5 months in the 1880's than in his entire life (Mr. Clune
feels the same way).
The young newly weds are now travelling and are far more confident in
their ability to have a future of accomplishment. Their only problem is
in deciding what that future will be.
Those interested in more on this should look for reruns of this on their
local PBS, or read the article on the experiment in this months
Smithsonian magazine. While I too hold a great degree of desire for a
simpler, frontier-like lifestyle, I am bound to the future by the
promise of technology. I did become greatly concerned at the sort of
messages that this broadcast is trying to send in the area of promoting
the romance of a primitive pastoral existence over modern life. I bet
that is the reason why the show and experiment only went for 5 months
instead of a whole year. I'll bet that the world would get a very
different conclusion if the families were required to make it through
the winter....
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