“Modern Inventions”

Boy, the things we learn while going through these cartoons, huh? You might not think there was any kind of throughline from a relatively obscure Donald Duck cartoon (albeit my personal favourite), not even close to the most noteworthy Disney release of 1937, to Futurama, but it seems there is. Apparently Matt Groening came up with the “suicide booth” idea based on the assorted futuristic things in this movie wherein it’s probably safer to have a human do them. (I’ve long been a supporter of the uterine replicator, but the robotic nursemaid in this short is something we’ll be coming back to.) Though now I think about it, “safer” is definitely not the point with the suicide booth.

Donald (Clarence Nash) cheats his way into the “Museum of Modern Marvels” using a coin on a string, that he is able to pull back up after dropping it into the slot. He is greeted by a robot butler (Billy Bletcher), who takes his hat, to Donald’s great annoyance. Donald produces another hat. This interaction will happen repeatedly over the course of the short. Donald then wanders the exhibit, looking at “labor-saving devices” with varying degrees of quality. That one of them is labeled “Hands off! Do not touch!” makes you wonder about the rest of them.

Now, it’s not hugely surprising that the assorted people-caring products don’t have any kind of real sensor attached—the barber chair doesn’t notice that Donald is upside down, for example. (In another example of weird connections of this short, the grooming of Donald’s butt was the first gag contribution to the studio by a newcomer to the studio by the name of Carl Barks.) However, the robot butler is aware of Donald’s presence, picks up on the fact that he’s wearing hats, and even expresses anger. There doesn’t seem to be anything similar for the robot nursemaid, and that’s frankly horrifying. That’s not something you’d entrust your child to if you had an atom of sense.

It’s also interesting that one of the jobs that would be replaced by automation is that of butler. A mere fifteen years after the very invention of the word “robot,” it seemed clear to the fine folks at Disney that a robot butler is something anyone would be interested in having, but there’s nothing approaching the robot that’s probably most ubiquitous in homes today—the autonomous vacuum cleaner. Of course, a robot butler is also funnier, and the running “your hat, sir” gag is the best part of the short, but it’s a job that’s apparently dispensed with by even many of the wealthy these days.

Of course, no vision of the future is ever accurate. I seem to recall a gag from somewhere about cell phones’ getting so small that a character swallowed one, and of course they stopped shrinking once they got Smart. Even just a few years’ difference can make for massive change; who among us would have predicted [gestures vaguely] had they been writing five years ago? Therefore, no, none of the inventions in this short could have been expected to ever be real even if they hadn’t been created for the sole purpose of being funny.

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