"To stay ahead of today's world, you'll need to know what's going on in tomorrow's."
So boasts the introduction to the Onion News Network's just-premiered "Future: News from the Year 2137," an ambitious, intentionally over-produced vision of the world 127 years from now. Transmitted via a "state-of-the-art wormhole satellite", we learn from "news giver" Zesty Lewis that all is not well in the next century: pollution is out of control, giant beetle attacks are on the rise, and president Performance H. Wilson (I think I heard that right) is under fire for not following through on his campaign promise to blow up the planet. As the people of 2137 would say, it's all terribly frustraging.
There's a hint of IDIOCRACY in the The Onion's sci-fi satire, but the tone is far bleaker. Whereas Judge's characters were too stupid to realize they were on the brink of destruction, the people of 2137 are aware of and eager for their looming extinction - the punch line, I guess, being that they're relying on the government to wipe them out rather than taking the initiative and doing it themselves. None of this is howlingly funny, but the commitment to the gag is impressive; given how fragmented our attention spans have become, the barrage of (mostly useless) information that assaults the viewer in this twelve-minute newscast seems a not-entirely-satircal approximation of where we're headed. This is the world the texters and twitterers and unthinking masses deserve.
As a solitary twelve-minute burst, I admire the daring of "Future: News from the Year 2137". According to the press release which accompanied my screener, it was two years in the making, and boasts higher quality graphics and visual effects than your run-of-the-mill cable newscast. What it lacks at present is a reason to keep me coming back for $1.99-a-segment at iTunes. While there's an evil, cynical brilliance behind the "Gaza Scrap" dispute (where the world's last surviving Palestinian and Israeli fight with the non-fatal fury of feuding siblings over what remains of the Holy Land), I can't imagine where else they can take this joke. Same goes for the idea that gays are still battling for equal rights; that they'll settle for the privileges afforded the "Lizard People of Arizony" seems to close the door on that gag.
There are some pretty clever jokes hidden in the clutter, but The Onion is currently giving away better on its homepage. And yet I'm more than happy to cough up another six dollars or so to see if they find their footing. Why? 'Cuz they're The Onion. They're the undisputed masters of modern-day satire. Surely they can figure out the future.
Here's a teaser for the first installment...
