Frank Lloyd Wright was arrogant, stubborn, and brilliant. But above all, he was a shrewd businessman who understood the importance of spectacle in keeping his business afloat. Wright put on many shows over the course of his lifetime, but arguably no performance was greater than his utopian plan to create the perfect community: Broadacre City.
It’s been nearly 40 years since Jim Baker died after diving off a cliff in Hawaii, but members of the utopian community he founded still call him Father. In recent years, they’ve gone about resurrecting the memory of the cult, and its weird philosophy which melded the decadence of 1960s pop culture with weird spirituality.
Happy Tax Day! Do you know where your tax dollars are going? No? Doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous? What if you could tell the government exactly how to spend your hard-earned money? Now you can—even if it is hypothetically.
In 1970, George Lucas needed dozens of actors with shaved heads for his sci-fi dystopian movie THX 1138. He had trouble filling the roles at first, since so few actresses wanted to cut their locks, but Lucas eventually found the extras he needed in a strange utopian community where everyone worshipped sobriety and expressed solidarity by shaving their heads. It was called Synanon, and over the course of three decades it would become one of the weirdest and most vindictive cults of the 20th century.
Utopia is one of the most loaded words in the English language. Utopia is perfection; utopia is unachievable; utopia is no place. Which is precisely what makes it so interesting. And why this week Gizmodo is taking a look at all things utopian.
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