EVENT OF THE MONTH: DECEMBER 2016

December 15 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of filmmaker Walt Disney. Disney, was known for championing traditional morality and promoting nostalgia for a simpler past epitomized by small-town America. At the same time, he was widely recognized as a visionary futurist who enthusiastically embraced the new horizons offered by science and technology.

The film in the Disney canon that offers arguably the most explicit warning about the abuse of science and technology is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), still the definitive cinematic adaptation of the Jules Verne novel of the same name. 20,000 Leagues depicts a supposedly civilized world where international powers employ technology for enslavement and death.

The dangers of science and technology can also be seen in Disney's comic fantasies, especially The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and Son of Flubber (1963). But perhaps Disney's most scathing indictment of the dark side of technological progress came in a 1952 animated short based on the children's book, The Little House, which tells how a beloved house in the country is eventually swallowed up by the encroaching city.

Link: http://www.dw.com