Past-Arama

We've talked about a few animated TV shows on this blog already, but none of them are as widely viewed by adults and teenagers as the show I'm going to discuss today: Futurama.

The one and only!

What is "Futurama?" Well, it's sort of like a sci-fi, wackier, more mature version of "The Simpsons" (which makes sense because they were created by the same person). The main character is a normal guy named Fry who gets cryogenically frozen in the year 2000 and is unfrozen 1000 years later. Fry works for a package delivery company (run by his great (x30) nephew) along with a ragtag group of future people including a robot, a mutant, a crustacean alien and a Jamaican. The show involves a lot of trips to strange far away planets, time travel and other sci-fi elements, but from time to time the show delves deeply into the background stories of all of its characters. When "Futurama" delves into Fry's past, it will usually make fun of archaeology a little bit. This is featured prominently in an episode titled "Jurassic Bark." I'm going to focus a lot of this post on that episode, but also talk about the show as a whole.

Why am I talking about a show that takes place in the future in a blog focusing on the ancient past? The thing that is really interesting about archaeology in "Futurama" is that it's mentioned all the time; it's just in the background. Since Fry is the main character, you would think there would be a lot of "fish out of water" kind of themes in the show as he gets used to the future. Thing is, Fry is kind of stupid and just accepts a lot of what happens to him. What usually happens on the show is that from time to time people will mention a fact about the "past" (our present) that is either blatantly false or well known to us today. Here's an example of a joke in that vein:

This clip, and a lot of clips like it, make it obvious that "Futurama" is set in a future where archaeology is either not taken seriously or is just completely shoddy. With this in mind, it actually makes quite the statement about what the world would be like with crappy archaeology. What is this statement? Well, lets see. 

When I thought about archaeology in "Futurama," I immediately thought of "Jurassic Bark," an episode that actually got nominated for an Emmy once upon a time. While at a museum, Fry finds his old fossilized dog on display. He gets it back and tries to clone it while his best robot friend Bender starts to get jealous. The whole episode is on Netflix for those of you who want to see it (S4E7), but be warned, it has one of the saddest endings to a TV episode I have ever seen. The first half of the episode makes a lot of little pokes at archaeology. Fry is at the museum because archaeologists uncovered the pizzeria that Fry used to work at, and he is showing Bender how "people of his time" used to live (to which Bender says "Interesting! No wait, the other thing: tedious"). 

There are a lot of interesting little visual tidbits that I can't show due to copyright reasons, so I'll describe them and make some comments:

• The banner above the museum reads "Treasures of the Stupid Ages: Loot From the Recent Pizzeria Excavation". This is just a passing comical thing, but it shows how people of the "Futurama" age sometimes look down upon the past like we do now. 
• When Bender first walks into the very, very downtrodden looking pizzeria, he exclaims "Truly, they were as gods who built this place!", poking fun at how archaeology glorifies things that were probably very ordinary in their time. 
• Next, a museum curator walks in and says "Next, we come to the splendidly preserved wooden pizza paddle" (shows animatronic boy being paddled) "Scientists theorize it was used to gently discipline the delivery boy" (Fry jumps in) "For your information this was not just used to paddle my butt. It was also used to move pizzas and crush rats!" (Curator) "I don't know where you get your facts, sir, but I am a volunteer housewife with 45 minutes of orientation and a harlequin romance about archaeologists". 
• Fry decides that he will protest in front of the museum to get his fossil-dog back. He then performs "My people's native dance" (the hustle). Leela, Fry's friend, reads from a history book (called "Dances of the Ancient Bronx") and says "It says this part of the hustle implores the gods to grant a favor, usually a Trans-Am". 
• Fry finally confronts the archaeologist in charge of his dog who says "No, we're sorry, there's just too much the fossil can teach us about dogs from your time" (Fry) "His name was Seymour. He was once intimate with the leg of a wandering saxophonist. He had wet dog smell, even when dry, and was not above chasing the number 29 bus" "The 29? Interesting. That's all I needed! You can have your dog back". 

Oh Fry, always the joker.

The themes present in "Jurassic Bark" aren't unique to the episode. In a clip that was posted earlier but is now broken, the gang visits an old car museum where they learn about the traffic jams of old New York as places of "free discourse" (swearing at each other) and how "primitive robots" built the first "automo-car". Of course by built they mean robots in togas beat the cars with clubs. This clip does a lot of similar things to what "Jurassic Bark" does: It blatantly gets things wrong about the past, it displays very normal things like pizza paddles and traffic jams and makes them seem culturally and historically significant, and it makes little jokes about how the things archaeologists are looking for are sometimes unimportant (like the 29 bus thing). Overall, both parts of the show display archaeology as kind of a trivial study that doesn't get the picture of the past quite right. To be fair, this show is a comedy, and comedies are not known for glorifying any sort of profession. That being said, these clips do make some fair points. Archaeology does put ordinary things on a pedestal, but besides making fun of this, "Futurama" never goes out of the way to say if this is good or bad. It pokes fun at other professions just as harshly as archaeology.

The thing I like about what this episode (and a lot of "Futurama") does is that it puts us in the shoes of people in the ancient past. What will people in the future think of us? How are they misinterpreting the clues we left behind? Are we doing the same thing today? Though this show is in no way serious, if you look under the hood there is actually some intelligent commentary about the ancient world, how we perceive it and how the public in general perceives museums and archaeology as a whole, and it's funny while it does it. 

Nothing like a little comedy to lighten up a commentary.

What's Right?

Surprisingly deep commentary about how we view archaeology today and what the world would be like without it. 

What's Wrong?

Very stereotypical view of archaeologists (but what TV show doesn't have this).

Grade: A-