The tradition of  technological utopianism has been much more important in

literary science fiction than media science fiction. One way to offer both

images would be to incorporate literary works, such as those of 1930s-1940s

SF, into your course. A second suggestion, which I also do in my SF course,

would be to include images of machines and technology from non-SF films --

I use Buster Keaton's The Electrical House, a clip from Eddie Cantor's Kid

Milions, Fleischer Brothers cartoons, etc. which translate technological utopian

 thinking into an alternative genre. I certainly think you could talk about

 THINGS TO COME, the final

sequence at any rate as emerging from a techno. utopian tradition, even if

H.G. Well's scepticism gets in his way. Just the image of the city in the

 closing segment of the film and of the machinery evokes long-standing concepts

 in the techno. utopian tradition.  You might also try to get your hands

on the documentary, WORLD OF TOMMORROW, which dealt with the 1938 World's Fair,

a key moment in the utopian tradition in SF culture. The documentary was aired

on PBS several years ago. I have lost my copy and have not been able to find

a distributor for it. Anyone else know where we could get it? The footage from

the fair should make clearer to your students the ways that THINGS TO COME

reflects the techn. utopian movement. You might also look for a film called

THE MACHINE AGE IN AMERICA, which was made for a traveling art exhibit about a

decade ago which suggested the ways this tradition influenced many arts,

 including set design in cinema. I also wonder if your students might be taught

 to think about THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL as reflecting that tradition,

 although

Earth seems unwilling to initially accept the gifts from the perfect society

and we may be uncomfortable with the fascism behind having Gort look over us.

 You might look

at WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE as ending on a moment of agricultural utopianism. The

best works that deal with tech. utopianism are the STAR TREK films and programs.

 Utopianism is a founding myth in Gene Roddenberry's universe, as any fan of

the series would tell you. The problem is that utopias don't make for very

good stories. In written forms, they are often structured as sociological

descriptions or spatial stories rather than plots. Utopias, historically, have

lacked a strong temporal dimension, not explaining fully how they came into

being, not having a future since what is there to change within a perfect

 society. Film SF has prefered to tell stories centering around dramatic

 conflict

with the result that even the ST films which posit a technologically perfected

Federation must introduce problems and threats to that society for the

 characters to confront. Therefore, it is easier to locate utopian moments in SF

 Films

either at the opening or closing than to locate works which maintain a

 "benevelent future" throughout. JUST IMAGINE, dreadful though it may be, is

 interesting

as a parody of Edward Bellamy's LOOKING BACKWARDS, the ur-text in many ways

for the American technological utopian tradition. There has been a virtual

absence, apart from ST, of this line of thinking in post-1970 SF, even on the

level of set design and costuming. This shift has a lot to do with the shifting

audience of SF, as Adrian Mellor has argued, and with the tendancy towards

dystopian thinking in literary SF, embodyed most fully by the cyberpunk writers.

 It is always dangerious to talk about media SF apart from larger movements

in literary SF culture, even though the two have rarely run exactly parallel

to each other. Anyway, I hope these thoughts help. If anyone is interested,

with a bit more time, I can give you cites for a few good readings on this

topic.

 

--Henry Jenkins, MIT