The Past Is Watching Us
This cartoon appeared in a 1971 Sir magazine. Other than the laughable design of the remote control, they pretty much pegged the future (their future) of television watching in our time. Hot and cold running porn on TV on the big screen, baby!
Caption reads “You want to watch ‘Wanda In Bondage’, ‘Orgy-In’, or a documentary on fellatio in the 21st century?”
Cartoonist is Jim Lindensmith.
Reminder to our younger readers: this is what they were actually selling for TVs in 1971:
It wasn’t until 1972 that color TV sets outsold black-and-white sets.
Elsewhere on Bondage Blog:
Maybe I’m wrong, but as far as I know, remote controls already existed at the time but didn’t have dials, and they certainly didn’t need to be held up by a freakin’ tripod. Great pic otherwise! Good find.
I’ve seen a few TVs from that era that did have remotes with dials, on long cables (mechanical, like old car odometers) stretching from the remote to the TV. Never saw a tripod, though.
There were some “real” remote controls but they didn’t have deep market penetration. One system was ultrasonic … in theory … but it was prone to changing the channel if somebody jingled their keys.
That’s interesting! I do remember that my family’s first ever VCR had a remote control that was attached by a long wire, much like the controllers of older video game systems. Except my terminology isn’t right. It wasn’t a VC*R* because it couldn’t *R*. It could only PLAY tapes, not record. And I think it was Beta.