Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future
I never thought I would be writing about this TV movie made by Channel 4 in the eighties. Not because it is actually lost (although you will read it is lost on the internet) but because I couldn't remember its name! I never saw it the first time round but had the book of the film. The book was simply called Max Headroom so I didn't know the real name of the film and it's taken until now for me to think of just the right thing to Google to find it. To steal a useful summary from a review of the book I had: Max Headroom was, arguably, the first forced meme before the existence of the internet. The wisecracking, glitchy proto-computer-generated talking head was saturation bombed on the public from 1985 to 1988 in a way that would guarantee subsequent apathy, mockery and derision -- meant to be a symbol of rebellion and edginess while at the same time made a mascot for the ultimate in normie shilldom, as an ad man for Coca-Cola. His guilt-by-association tie to a failed product,...