Showing posts with label reproduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reproduction. Show all posts

Friday, December 7, 2007

21st Century Eugenics (1967)

The CBS series 21st Century aired a program titled, "The Mystery of Life" on February 26, 1967. The program looked at genetics and the future of humanity.

In this clip, host Walter Cronkite interviews biologist James Bonner. Bonner advocates a "large-scale program of [breeding] better people," otherwise known as eugenics. Procreation by committee sounds like tons of fun!

The episode can be found in its entirety on the A/V Geeks DVD Twenty-First Century.



Bonner: Each baby, when it's born, must donate some of his sex cells, sperm or eggs, and these are put in a deep freeze and just kept. The person leads his life, and dies. And after he's all dead and gone, so the heat of passion is taken out of the matter, a committee meets and studies his life.

Cronkite: So during his lifetime then, he hasn't had any children?

Bonner: He's been sterilized, and hasn't had any children in the normal way. After he's dead and gone, the committee meets and reviews his life and asks, 'Would we like to have some more people like him?' If the answer's no they take out his sex cells of the deep freeze and throw them away. But if the answer's yes then they use him to fertilize eggs similarly selected on the basis of review and validation of a person's contributions during his lifetime. He just doesn't get to brazenly go out and propagate his own genes without assuring himself and everyone else that they're the best possible genes.

See also:
Future Shock - Babytorium (1972)
Instant Baby Machine (1930)

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Instant Baby Machine (1930)

This scene from the 1930 film Just Imagine shows how babies will be made in the futuristic world of 1980. The clip directly follows the scene we looked at a few months back about meal pills.



Thanks again to Amy Macnamara for this paleo-futuristic classic that hasn't yet been released on VHS or DVD.

See also:
Just Imagine (1930)
Future Shock - Babytorium (1972)

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)