Federation Day at the World of Tomorrow

Ninety years ago, the Federation of Polish Jews in America hosted their national convention and world congress in the New York City area. In this article, we will discuss some of what transpired at these events. Set at a tumultuous crossroads in world history, the Federation rallied Jewish groups throughout the United States and the world in humanitarian support for a war-torn Polish nation. The national convention and world congress were also set to have their own respective satellite sessions at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940. These satellite sessions are noteworthy in that they mark a Jewish presence at the Fair which extended beyond the Jewish Palestine Pavilion. They also mark a uniquely Polish presence, extending beyond Poland’s own Pavilion at the Fair.

‘Lines of Becoming’ Misha Black and Entanglements through Exhibition Design

In many historical accounts exhibitions are considered in isolation, in relation to specific political or cultural events. This article instead interrogates exhibitions as interlinked sites of personal and professional ‘entanglement’, connected entities that have capacity to sustain and develop multiple relationships, in this case across the career of a single designer, Misha Black (1910–1977). Through successive commissions, Black developed ideas about exhibitions as communication and propaganda, as well as developing his network and modelling formations for professional design practice. Exhibitions Black worked on which are discussed here included The Ibero-American Exhibition, Seville, 1929–1930; MARS Group Exhibition, 1938; Glasgow Empire Exhibition, 1938; New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940; Ministry of Information exhibitions mounted during the Second World War and the Festival of Britain, 1951.

Batman and the World of Tomorrow: Yesterday’s Technological Future in the Animated Film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Examining facets of modernist visions of our technological future and of theatricalized city and stage spaces in the 1993 animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, this article explores the cultural meaning of technology in graphic fiction. The confrontation scene between Batman and Joker in the grounds of Gotham’s World’s Fair, the author argues, echoes the 1939 New York World’s Fair with its modernist urban optimism and pop cultural fascination with new visionary technologies, as well as the modern history of moving pictures and multi-media spectacle. The article spotlights the power of the Batman story to participate in, and contribute towards, complex cultural inquiry and transmedial discourses around technology and popular entertainments. Through the exquisite medium of animation – which allows animated characters to be placed on an abstract architectural city stage – Mask of the Phantasm also embodies modernist visions of the ‘ideal’ stage character in a medium that creates non-realist art and more complex possibilities for movement, thus transporting modernist thinking into the 20th century.

Futuramas and Atom Bombs

This chapter shifts away from geographical landscapes to focus on technology during the period. Not only does the chapter examine debates over the “technological sublime” at the 1939/40 New York World’s Fair, it examines ways that science fiction authors use the “sf grotesque” to highlight the potentially devastating environmental and social consequences of uncritical forms of technological progress. The early work of Ray Bradbury and Judith Merril calls attention to the apocalyptic threat of the atom bomb by exposing its effects on the natural world as well as on human communities and bodies. Merril and George Schuyler also call attention to ways that ideologies associated with Western notions of science and progress have been used to support gender and racial inequality. In Black Empire (1938), Schuyler envisions innovative forms of renewable energy created by Black scientists that allow them to establish independence from Euro-American control.

The Time Capsule and the Cut-Up: Negotiating Temporality, Anticipating Catastrophe

The first feature film made about the design and deployment of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End (1947), begins with fake newsreel footage depicting the burial in a time capsule of a copy of the film and a projector to show it on. The scene, with its funereal overtones yet grim optimism that, even in the face of catastrophic destruction, the germ of civilization will endure, recalls the ceremonies surrounding the interment of the Westinghouse time capsule at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. Time capsules, this article argues, stand in a complex relation to war and temporality, seeking to at once anticipate and work through the challenge posed to futurity by the threat of global conflict. As a container, the capsule attempts to deliver and control the reception of a legible inventory of the present, yet the principle of selection and the impossibility of predicting how information might be received in the deep future – if it is received at all – threatens this aim. The dilemma faced by time capsule curators is, we argue with reference to William Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin’s so-called cut-up method of writing, one of control. By reading the time capsule through the cut-up, anticipated catastrophe can be seen to be functioning proleptically in the present and already active as a challenge to the capsule as proof against disaster.

Performing Japan in the ‘World of Tomorrow’

As Asia and Europe raced toward another catastrophic world war, the Japanese government engaged Nippon Kōbō, its de-facto state propaganda machine, to reinforce America’s love affair with all things Japanese at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. The temple-like national pavilion set amidst an extensive garden celebrated the strong diplomatic and trade relationship between the two countries, while highlighting the ‘softer’ and more feminine side of Japan through displays featuring attractive, kimono-clad women engaged in silk production, ikebana floral arranging, and the ubiquitous ‘tea ceremony.’ The reception given to the genderbending performing arts company, Takarazuka in May, 1939, suggests Americans were unwilling to change their perception of Japan as the land of cherry blossoms and willowy maidens.

Fashion, Dance, and Representing the Filipina

The New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965 offered an unprecedented opportunity for smaller Asian nations to reach an audience of 54 million American in the world’s most dynamic city. The country pavilion of America’s former colony, the Philippines, occupied a commanding position near the iconic ‘Unisphere,’ the fair’s symbol, with a structure that echoed tradition while proclaiming modernity. The beating heart of the pavilion were its many guides hailing from the country’s ‘best families’ who presented regular dance programs. The so-called ‘Philippines Cultural Invasion of New York’ on the occasion of Philippine Week in June 1964 generated an explosion of Filipino culture into midtown Manhattan, chiefly through folk dance and spectacular public displays of neo-ethnic and contemporary fusion fashion.