While this might not sound like a big deal, it presented a host of concerns to the Apollo mission planners. Prior to the first Moon landing, scientists had good reason to believe the lunar surface was covered in a fine layer of dust. Science Fiction stories written before the Moon landings are also liable to describe thick layers of extremely fine lunar dust on the Moon’s surface that are treated as functionally equivalent to quicksand. Quicksand is a common and deadly element of swamp, jungle, and desert terrain. You know what basically killed the quicksand trope? The moon landings. The quicksand trope is used far less commonly these days. Look up famous quicksand scenes from cinematic history and it readily becomes apparent that a sexually desirable woman flailing about and pleading in quicksand is a common male saviour fantasy, which is one thing, but I suspect it’s also a ‘trapping and dispatching with women’ fantasy. There’s a disturbing misogyny behind many of the live action quicksand scenes of the 20th century. Regardless of quicksand’s cultural status today, impressionable audiences who grew up during its heyday, have given birth to an aging community of quicksand fetishists that re-create versions of our favorite quicksand films with an erotic twist. It has since disappeared from the mainstream psyche. There is a VICE documentary about quicksand fetishists: Quicksand FetishĪt the height of its popularity quicksand appeared in one out of 35 Hollywood films. Quicksand was probably the number-one hazard faced by silver-screen adventurers, followed by decaying rope bridges and giant clams that could hold a diver underwater. Unless there’s a vine to grab a hold of, he or she disappears without a trace (except maybe a hat floating sadly on the surface).
The unlucky victim starts sinking down into the muck struggling only makes it worse. It used to be a standard trope in action movies, although you don’t see it much these days: a patch of apparently solid ground in the jungle that, when stepped on, turns out to have the consistency of cold oatmeal. However the popularity of the old quicksand trope suggested quicksand was a disproportionate hazard, when I should have been warned instead about burying myself too deep in sand holes: Though nowhere near as common as drownings, children dying in sand still happens. My high school friend’s older brother suffocated to death under a collapsed sandcastle on Nelson’s Tahunanui Beach in the 1970s at the age of nine. Quicksand warning at Tasmanian beach - but expert says threat is minimal, ABC News (Australia) A quick-thinking dog owner has described the moment she got caught in quicksand while trying to rescue her toy poodle at a beach in southern Tasmania as akin to the infamous swamp scene in the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story. “There wasn’t any suction stopping me from getting out but it felt like there was nothing stable for me to stand on”.
0 kommentar(er)
