Week 9 - Art + Space

In looking through this week's materials the most interesting thing to me and the subject that helped me grasp the connection between space and art was the affect of the space race on artistic forms such as writing, film, and television.  We have talked before about how science fiction has actually helped technological advancement but the space era really created a widespread obsession of space and discovery by a large portion of American's.

The obsession is however a product of a relationship between science and culture which is a theme we have seen throughout this quarter and a main idea behind this course.  We looked in lecture at The Jetsons and Lost in Space and this helped me connect the space age and the space race to the cultural focus on space in art forms that continues to this day.  Out of the top 10 grossing top grossing films of all time, five focus on space or include it in their plots.  Space as a topic of art is too far reaching to even document; there are so many books, shows, comics, museums, movies, and other mediums in which space has played a major role.  What is fascinating about this pervasive view of space and culture is how the space race in the 1960's catalyzed this phenomenon and brought national fascination in the sky's above.

I attribute much of the modern space culture with the cold war and tech race that led to putting Neil Armstrong on the moon and solidified the idea that space was in fact a setting for any art form.  Since the birth of film Stanley Kubrick's 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey was the first hugely successful film centered around space after nearly a decade of worldwide news and media attention on the sky.

Since that movie however there has been more than 15 top movies that are part of the top grossing films of their decade.  It is just amazing to me the from 1915 to 1968 that there was little or no inclusion of space in film and since it has exploded into a widely popular topic and a staple in many genres.

Works Cited

"All-Time Top Box-Office Films By Decade and Year." All-Time Top Box-Office Films By Decade and Year. Film Site, n.d. Web. June 2015. <http://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice2.html>.

Dunbar, Brian. "Societal Impact of the Space Age." NASA. NASA, 07 Nov. 2005. Web. June 2015. <http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_09.html>.

Kennedy, Randy. "When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed." The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Sept. 2007. Web. June 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/science/space/25pop.html?_r=1&>.

Schwartz, David. "Space Race Permeated Pop Culture." NPR. NPR, 30 Sept. 2007. Web. June 20. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Ftemplates%2Fstory%2Fstory.php%3FstoryId%3D14845436>.