Cultural Irony and/or Coincidence #5: The Anti-Human Movement of 1983

This morning I was reading through my old diary from 1983 and I came across the following entry:

"Last night we went to Chuck E. Cheese's becuase [sic] I got almost all A's on my report card. I got 3rd highest score on Ms. Pac-Man and David was being stupid about how he's better than me. Even so, I have grown tired of my humanity. What did Hamlet call it? 'This quintessence of dust'? Why am I not an eagle, an oak tree, the Western wind? Why a human? Anyway, I hope mom gets me a Garfield Trapper Keeper for my birthday."

After some investigation, I've discovered that I was not alone in my existential panic. Turns out the year 1983 was ahead of its Orwellian time. In 1983, George Brett illegally put pine tar on his bat, McDonalds introduced the McNugget, M*A*S*H went off the air, and Tokyo Disneyland opened. How can any of this create any excitement about being human. Answer: it cannot.

This same year, however, two short-lived television shows debuted, both reflecting the Anti-Human Movement of the time. On Manimal, "Dr. Jonathan Chase is a wealthy, young, and handsome man with the brightest of futures with a very dark past. From Africa’s deepest recesses, to the rarest peaks of Tibet, heir to his father’s legacy, and the world’s darkest mysteries is Jonathan Chase, master of the secrets that divide man from animal, animal from man, Manimal". In Automan, however, the crime fighter is not a man who becomes an animal, but a computer-generated man (Automatic Man...minus the "matic") who can exist both in reality and comptuer programs.



I urge you to revisit this dystopian era by watching the opening themes to both Manimal and Automan. (See posts below.) It will reaffirm the utter humanity that we are blessed with in 2006 and also rekindle your Flash-Gordon-crush on baby-face hottie Melody Anderson.




(Webster and The A-Team also debuted in 1983...which gave us all hope.)