Retrofuturism

Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retrofuturism can be seen as "an animating perspective on the world".

In an example more related to retrofuturism as an exploration of past visions of the future, the term appears in the form of “retro-futurist” in a 1984 review of the film Brazil in The New Yorker.

Retrofuturism "seeped into academic and popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s", inflecting George Lucas's Star Wars and the paintings of pop artist Kenny Scharf alike".

[7] Surveying the optimistic futurism of the early twentieth century, historians Joe Corn and Brian Horrigan remind us that retrofuturism is "a history of an idea, or a system of ideas—an ideology.

It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mélange of past, present, and future elements.

In the movie Space Station 76 (2014), mankind has reached the stars, but clothes, technology, furnitures and above all social taboos are purposely highly reminiscent of the mid-1970s.

In the same way, futuristic retro owes much of its flavor to early science fiction (e.g. the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells), and in a quest for stylistic authenticity may continue to draw on writers and artists of the desired period.

Some, like the German architecture critic Niklas Maak, see retrofuturism as "nothing more than an aesthetic feedback loop recalling a lost belief in progress, the old images of the once radically new".

This dissatisfaction also manifests as political commentary in Retrofuturistic literature,[11] in which visionary nostalgia is paradoxically linked to a utopian future modelled after conservative values[12] as seen in the example of Fox News' use of BioShock's aesthetic in a 2014 broadcast.

In such cases, the alternative reality inspires fear, not hope, though it may still be coupled with nostalgia for a world of greater moral as well as mechanical transparency.

[15] Genres of retrofuturism include cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, and Raygun Gothic, each referring to a technology from a specific time period.

The modern form of steampunk literature can be traced back to works such as Mervyn Peake's "Titus Alone" (1959), Ronald W. Clark's "Queen Victoria's Bomb" (1967), Michael Moorcock's "A Nomad of the Time Streams" series (1971–1981), K. W. Jeter's "Morlock Night" (1979), and William Gibson & Bruce Sterling's "The Difference Engine" (1990).

[citation needed] The most recently named and recognized retrofuturistic genre is dieselpunk aka decodence (the term dieselpunk is often associated with a more pulpish form and decodence, named after the contemporary art movement of Art Deco, with a more sophisticated form), set in alternate versions of an era located circa in the period of the 1920s–1950s.

Early examples include the 1970s concept albums, their designs and marketing materials of the German band Kraftwerk (see below), the comic-book character Rocketeer (first appearing in his own series in 1982), the Fallout series of video games, and films such as Brazil (1985), Batman (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995), and Dark City (1998).

As applied to fiction, this brand of retrofuturistic visual style began to take shape in William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum".

[citation needed] The term was coined by William Gibson in his story "The Gernsback Continuum": "Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta [a noted pop-art historian] was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called 'American Streamlined Modern'.

With three of their 1970s albums, German band Kraftwerk tapped into a larger retrofuturist vision, by combining their futuristic pioneering electronic music with nostalgic visuals.

The only references to their earlier retro style today appear in excerpts from their 1970s' promo clips that are projected in between more modern segments in their stage shows during the performance of these old song.

"We've actually seen this look creeping up on the runway as early as 1995, though it hasn't been widely popular or acceptable street wear even through 2008," said Brooke Kelley, fashion editor and Glamour magazine writer.

The once-futuristic Los Angeles International Airport Theme Building was built in 1961 as an expression of the then new jet and space ages, incorporating what later came to be known as Googie and Populuxe design elements.