Pornography, violence and JG Ballard: High Rise, the 1970s' internet The film High Rise is set in the 1970s and based on JG Ballard’s 1975 book. That’s roughly two decades before Tim Berners-Lee would “create” the web. Heck, you were lucky then to have a colour TV, never mind a phone in your house. Yet, High Rise provides a vision of what was to come: the internet community. That is, an …
"When I bought my first home in the late '80s , it came with an antique '30s Bakelite rotary phone worth several hundreds of pounds, and a 3 digit phone number."
Not only that, but also weighting several pounds
.
I've two from early 60s, made by L.M. Ericsson. About 7 pounds each, no idea of value though.
Saw it on Saturday with a film group, and the general opinion was not positive.
It starts strongly, the visual style is striking, I particularly dig the 70s style, and there are some great scenes. However, it needs a severe editing - it drags, changes pace suddenly for no apparent reason, jarringly includes a music video, and is inconsistent about what is happening outside the high rise.
I'm sure that parts of it are highlighting various parts of society, social hierarchy, and social climbing. I don't care : it's not a good film. Worth watching once, but not more than that. It could be halved in length and improve over its current state.
Watch The Lobster instead, it's excellent.
UK 70's Phone & line rental & call costs were v. expensive compared to lot's of peoples pay, hence very slow adoption of phones in non wealthy households.
As for TV sets back then, B&W licences were cheaper than colour, a TV was very expensive so most people rented their TV, switch from B&W to colour TV meant hike in licence fee & hike in rental fee.
On the subject of the 70's, people who were around then as kids & still slogging away as wage slaves may bitterly remember all the optimistic predictions about how technology would mean we would all be living a life of easy leisure in a few decades.
"On the subject of the 70's, [...]"
In my nostalgia the 70s were a period of great promise. Great job in computing, good pay, left home for my own flat. Social mores were rapidly becoming more liberal. The Churches had lost their social control - and trendy clergy admitted to doubts. Tugging your figurative forelock was no longer expected in many places.
Admittedly most of the strife of the 3 day week and "Strike Britannia" was seen through the lenses of overseas postings - reading newspapers and Punch a few days or weeks past the events.
Then along came Mrs Thatcher with libertarian financial policies for the rich - and regressive non-libertarian social policies for everyone else. She was disappointed to discover she couldn't recreate the apparently philanthropic Victorian era just by passing laws.
Interesting times for historians to pick over like the proverbial Curate's egg.
Odd that Jim Ballard should be characterized as 'analogue'. When I interviewed him at his home (somewhere beyond Heathrow, Thames Ditton I think), I also invited him to write a piece for the magazine I was representing. He suggested a theme of the potential of computers. This was 1975 I think, some time before the microprocessor. (Although the IBM System/360 was already a decade old.) Unhappily his agent nixed the commission.
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