Automobility in the age of apocalypse:: On the beach, nuclear nostalgia, and atomic (im)mobilities

Christopher O'Hara

doi:10.14324/111.444.1755-4527.1771

Automobility in the age of apocalypse: On the beach, nuclear nostalgia, and atomic (im)mobilities

Christopher O'Hara

School of English

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In the 1966 animated short film What on Earth!, viewers are presented with a news-reel styled broadcast—ostensibly from the ‘National Film Board of Mars’—detailing Martians’ first glimpses of alien life on Earth. As a car enters from the right, the narrator announces: ‘And then, the big news: there is life on Earth!’ The ‘cameras on our orbiting spaceship’ then follow these Earthlings through their daily rituals: ‘at dinner’ (fuelling with petrol), taking ‘shelter for the night’ (parking in a garage), and ‘browsing in curiously designed libraries’ (driving through a region inundated with billboards). Yet this colourful, comedic, slightly surreal animation takes a sinister turn towards its end as we glimpse the human occupants of the vehicle for the first time.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	28-37
Number of pages	10
Journal	Moveable Type
Volume	15
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.1755-4527.1771
Publication status	Published - 2 Feb 2024

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10.14324/111.444.1755-4527.1771

OHara-2024-Automobility-in-the-age-MT-15-1-28-CCBY
© 2024 Christopher O’Hara. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Final published version, 314 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Automobility in the age of apocalypse: On the beach, nuclear nostalgia, and atomic (im)mobilities

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