STS Reaction Paper on Futurama

Kristine Faith D. Valle

           

            Futurama is a science fictional cartoon series with the main character Philip Fry, who inadvertently goes inside a time machine and travels 1000 years into the future. Hoping for a better life, he finds himself being assigned to the same job, as a delivery boy and decides to run away from it. In this episode, various perspectives related to life are presented. With a mix of humor, Futurama, as reflected in this episode actually provided important insights about the relevance of making your own decisions and living a full life.

            It is evident that in the future, people were programmed to do specific tasks, which disallows them to make choices for themselves. It was seen how Philip, Turanga, and Bender try to change that by defying the law and escaping their fate on earth. They were dissatisfied with their present condition because they did not feel as if they were doing the things that they wanted to do but hence, they were only given tasks which they did not even choose, for the sake of fulfilling a job. They found it very pointless and therefore, decided to escape that despite the consequences of exile. The future, played in the context of Futurama, was presented to be a pessimistic environment wherein people were provided with easy means to take away their life and were not given choices to decide what they truly desire. The mere existence of a suicide booth showed that society valued their lives less in that context as they can easily take away their lives with just a cheap amount of one coin. The depiction of the future in this series presented a paradox. Generally, 1000 years from now, people would always imagine a better society. While society was scientifically and technologically advanced and it was in “order”, happiness of people were sacrificed and thus, the ideal or a “better society” was not achieved.  This reflects another truth regarding science and technology. While developments and innovations in this field provide good to humanity, there are consequences that must be faced in exchange of these benefits.

            Futurama definitely brought me humor while at the same time, presenting relevant truths that are important reflections of our society at present. I’ve only watched one episode, but seeing that already encouraged me to watch more episodes from the series.