“Futurama controlling you through a chip in your butt since 1999,”not really but I couldn’t help but putting this as an opening statement because it goes along so well with the main idea of the paper. Let’s start in the beginning, Futurama is a TV show that was created by Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, and for the most part was relativity popular for the few years it was on TV. In my opinion, the complex story lines, the complicated character webs, and the repeatability that never gets old puts Futurama in sync with the “Sleeper Curve” that author Steven Johnson discusses.
Steven Johnson is the author of a book called Everything Bad is Good For You, in the book he discusses that everything that is said to be bad for you, popular culture, is actually good for you. He describes the trend of the smartening of popular culture as “The Sleeper Curve.” Now the big points Johnson discuss about TV and movies are the flashing arrows, multi threading, filing in the gaps, and the repeatability of the show. I will discuss Futurama's relevance to these categories.
The first point I’m going to talk about that Johnson mentions are flashing arrows, Johnson says flashing arrows are “... a narrative sign post, planted conveniently to help the audience keep track of what’s going on.”(Johnson 73) Now these are easily seen in “first generation slasher movies,” with the obvious signs that something terrible is going to happen to the character on screen.( Johnson 72) However, as TV gets more complex and smarter shows tend to not use flashing arrows as much and we tend to be “kept in the dark” in order to make our minds work to try and figure out the story; now that we have been trained to be in the “dark” for a several years the writers of the shows can lose the flashing arrows, or our hypothetical “training wheels” used to guide us thought the plot.(Johnson 75-7) Now Futurama doesn’t use flashing arrows like some of the older TV shows like Murder She Wrote were they always showed you the killer in the beginning and the clue they left behind; it was the viewers job to watch and be impressed with how Jessica Fletche found the clues and suspect.
Futurama obviously isn’t a murder show but it does still have a few hinting areas in it. I wouldn’t necessarily call them flashing arrows more of just very clever foreshadowing. You might not notice them at first, but after watching the show again you would notice that that a certain scene is a foreshadowing of incidents bound to happen. A good example of this is in one of the episodes where Bender (the robot) started to hate humans, before he got off the ship to go to a planet of human killing robots Fry (guy from the future) and Lela (one eyed alien) told him to act like he hated humans, and he replied in a sarcastic voice “I’ll try.” This to me is a foreshadowing Bender will start to hate humans, and in fact he becomes one of the most famous human haters on the killer robot planet.
Now the next thing Johnson talks about is multiple threading. Multiple threading “weaves together a collection of distinct strands- sometimes as many as ten;” essentially it’s the connecting of several smaller story plots, in a episode, together to give it complexity instead of following one story line. (Johnson 67) Now Futurama fits perfectly in with this idea; it often has two possibly three or four story threads going at once. For example take the first episode “Pilot,” there’s the thread about how Fry was frozen and unthawed 1,000 years in the future. His life sucked back in the year 2,000 so he is happy in the cool new future. Then they present the story thread of Lela trying to do her job and implant a career chip in Fry (which he doesn’t want); while at the same time being upset with her job. Then they introduce the story thread of Bender who is trying to kill him self because he hates his job. They all “weave” together in the end with the story thread of the professor (Fry’s Great…Great Nephew) who is looking for a new three man crew for his delivery ship. (Johnson 67)
Now it may seem complicated on paper but the writers cut and splice scenes to make it flow together as if it was one story, but in reality its like four smaller stories put into one to make an episode. The shows smart multiple threading puts it right up their with Johnson’s “Sleeper Curve.”
Another thing Johnson discusses is filling in the gaps. “You’ll enjoy this more if your capable of remembering a throw away line from three years ago, or if you noticed that we’ve framed this scene to echoes the end of Double Indemnity.” (Johnson 87) Now Johnson isn’t crazy what he’s describing here is how TV sitcoms like The Simpsons and Seinfeld started to pull jokes and lines from past episode and throw a new twist to them in current or newer episode. This causes the viewers to pull the line or joke from their memory in order to truly understand it, aka filling in the gap. Johnson says, “the jokes come in layers… you can watch a episode and miss all the film riffs and still enjoy the show” (Johnson 87) However, it would be a “richer” and “more rewarding experience” if you did understand all the “film riffs.” (Johnson 87)
For instance in the one of the episodes of Futurama Lela sleeps with Zap Branagain (a jackass whose a commander in the democratic space fleet). In future episodes Lela and Zap have run-ins and every time Zap tries to impress her and acts like she’s his girlfriend. Now if you didn’t watch you might wonder why this guy is such a creeper; you might be able to deduce something happened between them, but if you just watched that one episode so many questions between those two characters are answered.
Like in the episode “A Flight to Remember”, as Fry and Lela were walking on the ship she noticed Zap. Zap said, “my, my if it isn’t Captain Lela, might you accompany me on this cruse.” Lela responded saying, “I would love to but I have a boy friend.” Then she pulls Fry close to her and said, “Zap I would like you to meet my boy friend, Fry.” Now you would understand if you never knew they slept together that Lela just wasn’t interested, but if you did know that information from the past episode the joke of having a fake boyfriend would be “richer” and have more meaning. (Johnson 87)
One last thing I want to touch on that Johnson talks about is the repeatability of the show. Johnson says, “already, any given episode of a successful television show will be seen by more people in syndication than it will during its first run on network TV.” (Johnson 160) Basically what Johnson is saying is that watching reruns and DVD forms of the shows are already get the show more views than its premiere on network TV. Because of this shows are now adding in more features “that reward great scrutiny;” like little hidden things in an episode, or watching a episode for the fifth time and noticing a joke you don’t remember hearing. Malcolm Gladwell agrees saying, “The extraordinary amount of money now being made in the television aftermarket—DVD sales means that the creators…. have an incentive to make programming that can sustain two or three or four viewings.” (Gladwell)
Futurama definitely fits into this category because I never watched it on TV, but now that I’ve seen it on DVD I can’t get enough of it; I went and got two other seasons of it, and I continuously watch the episodes over and over. I watch the episodes that much because I like the challenge of trying to find the hidden things in each episode. Like in the episode “Pilot,” theirs a scene were Fry and Bender hide in a Head Museum (were all the dead celebrity’s heads are cut off and kept alive in a jar), and they have a camera shot of them hiding behind a shelf of heads. One of the heads on the shelf is the head of Matt Groening (the creator of the show.) That little discovery made me feel so good about my observation skills and urged me on to try and find other hidden secrets in each episode.
Joe Rhodes of the New York Times agrees with me about Futurama saying, “…with its share of inside jokes, many requiring freeze-frame study to appreciate it fully.” (Rhodes) Rhodes is just reinforcing my argument that Futurama isn’t just a once you’ve seen it your done with it, kind of show. A good example of this is the foreshadowing example I presented earlier. I didn’t notice that what Bender said was a foreshadowing of future events; however, after a second glance it dawned on me that it was a big indicator of what would happen next.
Although not everyone fully agrees that Futurama is a clever show that is attributing to our culture in a positive way. “…The show lacks the vision of The Simpsons, the snappy rhythm and the kind of far-reaching humor that keep it dizzyingly smart even after a decade on the air. Is there anything good to say about Futurama? Sure, it's better than Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza,” said by Ginia Bellafante. (Bellafante) Now Mrs. Bellafante said this about the shows premier episode which in my opinion isn’t a fair assessment of the shows full potential. Also if she had bothered going back and using a little wisdom from Johnson and watched the episode again she may have seen it in a different light, and had a different opinion on it. I think her quote fits right in the old category of don’t judge a book by its cover. The show wasn’t meant to just be viewed once and skimmed over. It’s a show that has some depth to it and deserves a second look in my opinion.
So In conclusion I do believe that Futurama fits into the “Sleeper Curve” pretty well. It has no flashing arrows just clever foreshadowing like in the Bender example I gave. It has a nice multiple threading like with the example of the “pilot” episode. It has a variety of jokes and lines that are brought up over several seasons for filling in the gaps like in the example of Lela and Zap. And of course it has repeatability that makes you want to watch it over and over like in the example I gave about the Head Museum. If you don’t like the show just don’t kick it to the curb give it a second try you might find it has grown on you, and then you might actually find it amusing. Like other shows of today’s popular culture Futurama is no exception to Johnson’s “Sleeper Curve.”
Works Cited
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good For You. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Bellafante, Ginia. “Futurama.” Time. 29 March 1999. 31 May 2008.
Rhodes, Joe. “Back to the Animated Future, this Time on DVD.” New York Times. 27 November 2007. 21 May 2008.
Gladwell, Malcolm. “Brain Candy.” The New Yorker. 16 May 2005. 21 May 2009.
“Pilot”. Futurama: The First Season. Writ. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. Dir. Matt Groening. Fox. 28 March 1999. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2003
“A Flight To Remember” Futurama: The First Season. Writ. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. Dir. Matt Groening. Fox. 26 September1999 . DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2003
“Fear of a Bot Planet” Futurama: The First Season. Writ. Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. Dir. Matt Groening. Fox.20 April 1999. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2003
By Zander Shumar
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