Futurama (New York World's Fair) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Before General Motors invited Bel Geddes to submit a proposal for the exhibit, they had planned to put in another production line as was featured at their exhibit in the Century of Progress Exposition of 1933 in Chicago. However, after they heard Bel Geddes outline his project all other plans were scrapped as they favoured his design for its appeal to a broader audience. The Futurama exhibition was subsequently presented as one of the 1939 New York World Fair’s main attractions, as it was the “Number one hit show.” It captured the fancy of the public and critics alike, with journalists competing to find adequate words to convey Bel Gedde’s “ingenuity”, “daring”, “showmanship”, and “genius”. One neutral survey of 1000 departing fairgoers awarded the General Motors exhibit 39.4 points to only 8.5 points for second place Ford as the most interesting exhibit. Business Week described the scene: “More than 30,000 persons daily, the show’s capacity, inch along the sizzling pavement in long queues until they reach the chairs which transport them to a tourist’s paradise. It unfolds a prophecy of cities, towns, and countrysides served by a comprehensive road system.”

His ideas of the future had a remarkable degree of realism and immediacy, striking a chord with an American audience slowly recovering from the Great Depression and that was longing for prosperity. At the time, Futurama’s imaginary landscape of 1960 was seen not as just a novel physical space, but as a glimpse of future time.