complexity, cars and the hudsucker proxy
it's a circle... you know... for kids!
One of the greatest comic turns of the twentieth century can be seen in the Cohen Brothers 1994 masterpiece The Hudsucker Proxy. Tim Robbins in his portrayal of the guileless Norville Barnes takes the ‘fish out of water’ character to it’s zenith.
Barns, a fresh faced small town graduate, becomes the CEO of a toy company where he is set p to fail by Sydney J Mussburger (Paul Newman) who stands to benefit when the company tanks.1 Things don’t go as Musburger plans
In the film Barns creates two of the biggest toy trends of the 1950’s. Both are introduced to the team at Hudsucker industries by Barns incredibly simply:
It’s a circle… You know… For kids!
The first circle Barns introduced was the hula hoop. It made the company massively successful. Barns followed the hula hoop with the frisbee with similar success.
We love simple the simple magic of simple things. With simple things, we have a sense mastery over the objects and agency in the world. Complexity creates stress on a preverbal level.…
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