I’ll admit right off the bat that this is not strictly an architecture post; it’s technically a moment of retro 70s nostalgia. The 1976 movie Logan’s Run, a dark sci-fi dystopia about escape from a domed post-apocalyptic society which euthanizes its citizens at age 30, completely occupied my late childhood imagination. The movie was shot entirely in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas and most of the film’s key action takes place in the “Great Hall,” which turns out to be the fairly bizarre and also recently demolished Dallas Market Center Apparel Mart, not a great piece of architecture but one that did conveniently feature a quasi-sci-fi interior. If someone has the correct terminology for this style of interior, please advise – my guess is 60s mall rendition of Corbusier, Notre Dame du Haut era. The novel the film is based on was written at the height of  60s youth culture and student unrest, and it was explicitly written with a screenplay in mind. Though it was published in 1967, like Dune the process of turning the novel into a film was fraught with problems, and by the time the film was made, the decor and costumes were reflecting the 70s. The film’s commentaries on totalitarianism, a Brave New World-style docile populace distracted by pleasures, and youth-oriented culture are pretty heavy-handed, but I loved it when I saw it around age 12, too young to notice how wooden Michael York’s acting was but not young enough to avoid total infatuation.

Above, scenes from the film. Below, the mart as it was in reality and then during its demolition. Its destruction is strangely fitting considering the film’s ending. Oddly, the building is part of the vast trade complex JFK was headed for when he was assassinated – he was on his way to a luncheon for 2400 people, in a setup very similar to the one shown below. This particular part of the complex, however, was built a year later, in 1964.

All photos and information in this post are from racprops, aintitcool and snowcrest. The film’s “Love Shop” (image at top, with the odd, oozing brown leather seating, and the mall shot with somewhat anatomical neon sign) was the Oz Restaurant/Nightclub in Dallas. Other locations: Sandman HQ was Zales’ International Headquarters; the Sandman gym was the Arlington Health Center and the living units were the Burton Park Building. The video below was a long promotional trailer for the film intended as a preview for theatre owners, and it gives a sense of the futuristic 70s sets and costumes.

On a trip with friends to the west coast of Vancouver Island one summer, I found a Holly Hobbie mug that had washed up on shore. The next morning I showed it to my friend Jonathan, who was cooking us breakfast.

Me:  Look! Isn’t that sweet. “Good friends are like sunshine…”

J:  They come around every couple of weeks.

Me:  And give you cancer.

For those who don’t live in this part of the world, the line about the sun coming around every couple of weeks identifies this as a Pacific Northwest joke. Listen, the reason I’m bringing up Holly Hobbie and her ilk is that I’m going to implode if I don’t say something about the Rise of Cute. A scary proportion of the highest-traffic decor blogs and sites, not mentioning any names, has lately undergone some sort of bodysnatching by a powerful, unholy agglomeration of down-home samplers, gingham, cutesy illustrations of big-eyed, bonneted little girls in country dresses, grandmothery country kitchens, wan girls on bicycles, wan girls doing nothing but looking wan, posters with bromide-y mottos, lace, doilies, frilly stationery, tiny flower arrangements, illustrations of birdies on branches, tiny flower prints, early childhood decor in apartments not even occupied by children, general pinkness and the whole gamut of unrehabilitatable little-girl kitsch. The words “sweet,” “precious” and “darling” are appearing with a frequency that’s becoming really alarming.

This Little House on the Prairie Redux – all these children in patchwork and smiling women in frocks with their forearms dusted in flour – seems to be harking back to a simpler time that frankly never existed and even if it had, god forbid. Quite apart from my aesthetic recoil from this particular category of kitsch, I’m worried that on a broader level its flight from reality is an indicator of a politically conservative retrenchment. There’s also a lot of safe, semi-but-not-really-updated Edwardian or Victorian genteel traditionalism around in decor. It’s not as bad, but definitely on the same continuum. The Neo-Stuffy traditionalism of all this airless decor isn’t just mildly backward-looking. A lot of it actually feels like a disposal not just of adulthood, adventurousness and any engagement in our real historical moment, but of feminism, too, which is all the more distressing when this region of the internet, with its multimillion-dollar glut of cutesy decorative craft, is so completely female-dominated. More and more I’m having moments of wanting to stab myself in the eye with a fork. I can already hear people saying “live and let live” and “to each her own” and all that, but culture and aesthetics are not comfortably separate from the rest of the social realm; they’re not meaningless, sheerly personal follies. They’re the thin end of the wedge of politics and philosophy. I’m sorry to be ornery, but as Lizzie Bennet liked to say, I speak as I find. And what I find is that this Cute Utopia is my dystopia. [Stomps foot.]

Click below. And if you think I’m exaggerating, click here.

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For those who aren’t familiar with the song In Every Dreamhome A Heartache, it appeared on the 1973 Roxy Music album For Your Pleasure. See here for a live performance featuring Brian Eno on keyboards, looking like a sick Ziggy Stardust, and Andy Mackay wearing some quite amazing blistered spaceman pants in green satin. The decor-filled lyrics are below, but here’s a sample: “Open plan living/Bungalow ranch style/All of its comforts/Seem so essential.” There’s a certain nostalgia for 70s decor happening at the moment. Not surprisingly, back in 1973 there was a different, more skeptical take on opulent, “utopian” postwar interior design and its discontents. As an aside, I think the houses being sung about here were actually the 50s rancher bungalows Bryan Ferry would have grown up with, but then the 1970s “dreamhome” styles would probably have had their roots in 50s modernism.

The top two photographs are from 1973; the photo at far bottom is from 1974.

Thanks to glen.h and vytaute and Miss Retro Modern on Flickr.

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