Teach-8

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hanna-Barbera Productions created a series of half-hour animated situation comedies that took place in all different periods of history--"The Flintstones" (prehistoric), "The Jetsons" (the future), "These are the Days" (the early 1900s), and "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home" (1970s). In essence, the plots of all these animated series were pretty much the same, but with twists determined by whatever era they took place during. Humor was on two levels--both kids and adults could sit together and enjoy the show thoroughly. "Roman Holidays" was part of this genre; taking place in ancient Rome (AD 63), this show followed the adventures of the Holiday family. The characters were standard for this genre--a working middle-class family man with a strong, devoted wife, a dictatorial money-grabbing boss, a loyal buddy, even an intelligent family pet (in this case, a lion). I remember seeing this show on Saturday mornings when I was a kid and noting the similarities between its plots and that of "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons." Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, as did my parents, and I can still remember the theme song ("When in Rome, you do as the Romans do, you play as the Romans play together..."). It is a shame that there are no longer any series on TV quite like it--it showed imagination and relied on the fact that a good family show must appeal to both children and adults, and that cartoons were not supposed to be half-hour commercials for some action figures. "Roman Holidays" would be a great show to release on video/DVD.

The premise of a massive underground nuclear explosion that would create a moving rift through a supposedly solid crust was quite believable in the days before plate tectonics was generally known to the public; the special effects create an air of reality that made the whole thing seem almost a certainty. However, with a knowledge of plate tectonics, the whole premise vanishes, especially with maps of this so-called crack passing through crustal plates. I taped this movie off of AMC cable a few years back, and I show it to my earth science classes after covering plate tectonics, asking them to tell me, "What's wrong with this picture?" The kids enjoy it and still see the mistakes. Overall, an enjoyable movie, if blatant disregard for science facts doesn't bother you.

Unfortunately, there was never any such thing, scientifically speaking, as a "good" earthquake movie. Though located smack in the middle of Earthquake Country, Hollywood has reflected the unfortunate ignorance of millions of residents. Most of the monster quakes that devastate Los Angeles in the movies are on the San Andreas Fault, 50 miles from downtown at its closest approach--again, parrotting the common myth that this is where the next "Big One" will come from. "The Big One" is a refreshing departure from this illconcieved mold. Though by no means a great movie, it zeroes in on the fact that there are faults criss-crossing the Los Angeles Basin that could cause major damage without being a "monster." In many ways, it was an unintended preview of the Northridge earthquake in 1994--the movie's quake was centered on the Elysian Park fault, which is a blind thrust fault that runs under downtown Los Angeles, while Northridge was also on a blind thrust fault under the San Fernando Valley. Though the seismology "details" were typical movie fare--foreshocks, unexplained geologic occurrences, and a doomsday prediction by a scientist that everyone else tries to silence (or at least ignore), it does demonstrate that something like this could happen in a much more believable scenario. It is not a "great" earthquake movie, but it is certainly an improvement.