When I was a kid, the classic stop-motion puppetry film by George Pal about John Henry and the Inky Poo, wherein the Steel-Drivin’ Man’s heart bursts in his heroic effort to defeat the machine, induced a kind of sadness in me I had not known before. When John Henry’s friend turns to camera after John Henry’s mother screams, and exclaims “John Henry’s dead!” it broke my heart.
On a meta scale, the Industrial Age was, one humongous scene about human beings like John Henry and machines like the Inky Poo. About people keeping up with the inexorable march of machines, facing the threats of being replaced by them, devoured by them or cast adrift into space by them. (more…)
