The prefix “retro-” has been used in recent decades very liberally, and not least so as part of retrofuturism. Definitions of the latter term abound, but Frelik would like to propose that it is most productively understood as a visual practice that specifically exploits the tensions between the notions of futurity from our historical past – either actual predictions or fictions of the time – and the notions of futurity expressed in contemporary film, television, video games, comics, and other visual media.
Using selected examples from a range of audiovisual media, the talk will outline retrofuturistic parameters, provide examples of texts that consciously retrofuturism’s visual rhetoric, and suggest the cultural functions of sf’s retro mode, major among which is its expression of a sense of the generic identity and its proffer of a tool of ideology critique.
