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. Complexity when you have ADHD makes things worse.
As a culture we’re moving towards more and more complex technical solutions. These solutions further distance and alienate us from ourselves. With every new piece of unfixable technology, every new thing that’s beyond merely being ‘a circle… for kids’, we become less able to understand and care for our stuff.
We become more dependant and less free.
Nothing these days is more alenating than a new car. These things beep and flash and vibrate when you cross lanes. The damn thing yells at me when I look out the window to see the surf. I don’t have a car. I have a battery powered nanny state surveillance app on wheels.
And don’t even get me started about the battery. The car’s a plug in hybrid. The battery is damn expensive. I can’t fix it. I can’t take it out. I need to pray to god that I don’t hit a bump and damage it. And if the damn thing catches fire in a parking garage? Good luck.
The entire process makes it such that people don’t own their cars, the dealers own them.
As things have become more complex, simplicity looks more and more attractive. Though the Prius Prime is a great car, my next car will be a truck. There will be no back up cameras nor batteries.
Naw…
I’ve got a line on a 94’ Chevy C -1500. It’s got a big ole 350 8 block into it.
When I look at the engine, everything makes sense. It’s an engine that I can work on. It’s an engine designed to be repaired.
It’s a truck that will put more money in the hands of my local, talented mechanic than those parasites at the bank.
When the new culture of techno supremacy doesn’t work, how can you find comfort in simplicity?
The past wasn’t nearly as bad as the cultural studies profs would have you believe…
Best work ever by Paul Newman!
I was managing a dealership service department back when points and condensers became obsolete. Many mechanics failed to make the leap to understanding black box operations.
Now, if you have an older car, good luck finding someone who can set the dwell and timing.