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02-21-2023, 12:23 AM | #1 |
Bill Cosplay
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Staying clear of knee-jerk nerds.
Posts: 5,927
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Why do you think it was a thing to have huge wall monitors in so many cartoons? It started in the 70s, I reckon, and I can't be sure, but I think it showed up first in Japanese animation. My earliest memory of it is probably the Hall of Justice in Super Friends, and then it was so ubiquitous you just took it for granted. You sort of expected there to be a bigass screen in the baddies' evil lair and the good guys' HQ.
I don't remember seeing it in Johnny Quest, which you'd think would be a prime candidate for such goofiness, so I think it came about just after or around the same time. Probably thanks to NASA's Mission Control during the Apollo missions and Star Trek. And I think it was the Japanese we primarily have to thank for it showing up in cartoons. Whatever and wherever, it became an omnipresent fixture in cartoons and pop-culture and hung around for a long time.
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02-21-2023, 02:22 AM | #2 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Lincoln
Posts: 447
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Well, in data and security centers. This is pretty accurate. I am in the networking field and see these all over for graphing, security cameras, and other random stuff. So, it is pretty spot on for some fields. The size of the monitor differs and some like them bigger than others.
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02-21-2023, 03:29 AM | #3 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Jul 2021
Location: Phoenix
Posts: 375
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Quote:
Why do you think it was a thing to have huge wall monitors in so many cartoons? It started in the 70s, I reckon, and I can't be sure, but I think it showed up first in Japanese animation. My earliest memory of it is probably the Hall of Justice in Super Friends, and then it was so ubiquitous you just took it for granted. You sort of expected there to be a bigass screen in the baddies' evil lair and the good guys' HQ.
I don't remember seeing it in Johnny Quest, which you'd think would be a prime candidate for such goofiness, so I think it came about just after or around the same time. Probably thanks to NASA's Mission Control during the Apollo missions and Star Trek. And I think it was the Japanese we primarily have to thank for it showing up in cartoons. Whatever and wherever, it became an omnipresent fixture in cartoons and pop-culture and hung around for a long time. If "Failsafe" and "Dr. Strangelove" established the visual, Star Trek explored the narrative utility, and the moon landing locked it in as shorthand for a massive state-of-the-art operation, I think the primary function presented by cartoons of the 80s belongs to another source, which I don't think ever had a giant screen: Mission Impossible. Every episode of MI opened with a mission brief, presented via photographs and a recorded audio message. This expository device--concise narration of the objectives, locations, and conditions of a given episode's plot accompanied by illustrative images--is, as I recall, the primary function of these giant screens in GI Joe, Super Friends, etc. (Honestly, this shit goes back much further. War movies of earlier years often featured the mission briefing scene, usually delivered by a stuffy strategist who will never catch a whiff of the dangers he proposes so casually, or a grizzled XO, practically daring his hand-picked recruits to back out of this suicide mission. These scenes often featured slide projections, elaborate models, or, in a pinch, carefully arranged rocks and lines drawn in sand. I'll stick with MI, though, because there was a distinct absence of author behind it all. Who captured these images? Who edited this footage? Who wrote the copy? Who read it? Maybe it comes from some vague higher-ups? Maybe it's whatever Breaker is doing, tapping away on that keyboard? Maybe it's some sort of AI assembling a wikipedia entry on the fly? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. It's just exposition.)
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02-21-2023, 08:51 AM | #4 |
Crimson Guard
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: sitting in my tin can far above the world
Posts: 3,939
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It's the American Dream.
I live in a rural part of the country and here it is standard practice to have a little house falling down around a couch set five foot from an 80 sumpin inch screen tv.
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02-21-2023, 09:16 AM | #5 |
o-ring or nothing
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: In the 1980's
Posts: 5,701
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It seems like a Bond villain type of thing. And everybody secretly wishes they were the bad guy if only because they have the best stuff.
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02-21-2023, 09:47 AM | #6 |
Cobra Viper
Join Date: Feb 2022
Location: CT
Posts: 354
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From a technical point of view, I believe it is to be able to see data quickly, and perhaps to be able to see the bigger picture. It makes sense when you think about it. As an individual, a 15 inch laptop screen/22/24 inch monitor gives you most of the space that you need to see everything. But try showing to another person what you are seeing. That person usually has to get close and sometimes even squint. On a military-kind of setting, where many people are making decisions, and you want to show data to many people at once, a huge monitor will do. Not to mention the flexibility of a computer screen in changing what is displayed on it.
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02-21-2023, 03:08 PM | #7 |
Grail Knight
Join Date: Feb 2021
Location: Elsewhere
Posts: 977
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Quote:
Can't back this up, but I'd suggest it originates with a pair of films from 1964: Sidney Lumet's adaptation of the novel "Fail Safe" and Stanley Kubric's satirical take on the same material, "Dr. Strangelove." Two years later, "Star Trek" made the giant screen a central storytelling device--sometimes a window, sometimes a presentation board, sometimes a means of closing the distance between characters on the Enterprise and characters not on the Enterprise. In 1969, coverage of the moon landing really cemented the idea, though, of an array of massive video displays as the focal point of a high-tech mission control center.
If "Failsafe" and "Dr. Strangelove" established the visual, Star Trek explored the narrative utility, and the moon landing locked it in as shorthand for a massive state-of-the-art operation, I think the primary function presented by cartoons of the 80s belongs to another source, which I don't think ever had a giant screen: Mission Impossible. Every episode of MI opened with a mission brief, presented via photographs and a recorded audio message. This expository device--concise narration of the objectives, locations, and conditions of a given episode's plot accompanied by illustrative images--is, as I recall, the primary function of these giant screens in GI Joe, Super Friends, etc. (Honestly, this shit goes back much further. War movies of earlier years often featured the mission briefing scene, usually delivered by a stuffy strategist who will never catch a whiff of the dangers he proposes so casually, or a grizzled XO, practically daring his hand-picked recruits to back out of this suicide mission. These scenes often featured slide projections, elaborate models, or, in a pinch, carefully arranged rocks and lines drawn in sand. I'll stick with MI, though, because there was a distinct absence of author behind it all. Who captured these images? Who edited this footage? Who wrote the copy? Who read it? Maybe it comes from some vague higher-ups? Maybe it's whatever Breaker is doing, tapping away on that keyboard? Maybe it's some sort of AI assembling a wikipedia entry on the fly? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. It's just exposition.) The other thing to consider is that the TV in the average home was a lot smaller in the 80s. So, by making the screen in GI Joe Headquarters huge, it allowed them to do shots with characters in the foreground watching the screen, without making it difficult to see Cobra Commander or whatever on the screen itself. It allowed for more dynamic animation, without sacrificing storytelling time. Example from The Funhouse: https://youtu.be/QYBaoLhKNK4?t=146 |
02-21-2023, 03:56 PM | #8 |
Hisstank.Com General
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: UK England
Posts: 10,222
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Its true, all the 80s toons had those large screens. Gi Joe HQ, Cobra Temple, Thundercats Lair, Autobots Teletraan 1, Decepticons, Galaxy Rangers, Mask HQ, Shredder's Technodrome, Silverhawks base, Starcom, Dino Riders to name some.
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02-21-2023, 04:23 PM | #9 |
Hisstank.Com General
Join Date: Dec 2021
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Posts: 8,539
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I always figured the large computer screens were because of the Villain's lair type of trope. Feel like a bunch of Bond lairs had these things in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
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02-21-2023, 05:09 PM | #10 |
Cobra Elite Trooper
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Blackwater Prison
Posts: 1,378
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Quote:
"I'm told what we will hear at this end will be a high shrill sound. That will be the ambassador's phone melting from the heat of the fireball. When we hear that sound the ambassador will be dead" Thank god they made Dr Strangelove to add some levity to the horror a couple years later. |
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