History Main / FutureSocietyPresentValues

* There was a ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone1959 Twilight Zone]]'' episode about two soldiers, one male and one female, from opposite sides being the last survivors of their war. The female soldier's combat uniform included a pleated skirt. And her only line is the Russian for "Pretty", referring to a dress in a store window.

** In ''Literature/SpaceCadet'', the Patrol, which the main characters belong to, is exclusively male.

* ''Series/YTheLastMan2021'':
** Given how transgender people have become more prominent since the comics' introduction, the producers have to make it clear that trans people with a Y chromosome also died in the plague while adding an [[CanonForeigner original trans man character]] to the show. It's also specifically noted that "the last man" only refers to cis men—many trans men are still around (including the aforementioned one, Sam).
** Dr. Mann also mentions intersex people, since certain conditions can result in women having a Y chromosome (or vice versa) and some were also killed (this is not mentioned in the comic). Intersex people have recently come more into public awareness too.

** ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'': The scope of this series is epic, but ''Literature/TheFoundationTrilogy'' uses gender roles practically identical to 1950s United States. When Dr Asimov revisited the series decades later, he included women more prominently, especially in the form of Mayor Harla Branno, his first female mayor. She is an IronLady ruler for Terminus and the Foundation, introduced in ''Literature/FoundationsEdge'' (1982), and wants to conquer the galaxy centuries earlier than the [[ThePlan Seldon Plan]] expects. However, Dr Asimov is clearly [[MostWritersAreMale more comfortable writing male characters]], despite continuing to add [[ActionGirl badass females]] like Dors Venabili and Bliss.

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' has the people in the Golgafrincham B-Ark -- the joke being that all the jobs they do are useless, 'pointless' jobs -- which have at least partially dated. While middle-management types and meddling marketers remain problems, people don't really look down on hairdressers as being 'pointless' any more (in the 1970s it was just beginning to become socially acceptable for a man to go to a hairdresser's instead of a barber's, but it was still seen as very weird -- nowadays men go to a hairdresser's as default, and viewing a service mostly of interest to women as pointless is seen as a bit misogynistic). Then there's the 'telephone sanitisers', who have ceased to exist along with the public telephones they service.

* In ''[[Creator/PiersAnthony Omnivore]]'', most of the melodrama pivots on Aquilon being torn between her feelings for Cal and Veg, her colleagues on a far-future space mission. It seems strange to modern readers that she's too afraid of looking like a slut to become sexually involved with either man. Maybe that's how scifi readers felt about things in 1968, but now it just seems like prudish {{Wangst}}.

* This is very prevalent in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' and it shows. From how the first few games deal with homosexuality, non-white characters to even the way the entire human society functions makes it seems very dated to the mid 2000s to early 2010s.

* In Creator/HarryTurtledove's career-making novel ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth'', members of the AWB (standing for Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging-Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or basically white South African [[{{ThoseWackyNazis}} Neo-Nazis]]) go back in time to help the Confederacy win UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. The novel was first published in [[{{TheNineties}} 1992]], and the AWB men act more like they come from that time period, rather than [[{{TheNewTens}} 2014-2018]]. It should be noted, however, that the only AWB men whose ages are mentioned are in their mid-late forties, and as such are just the right age to have joined a pro-Apartheid militia group right before it ended.

* Parodied on ''Series/MadTV'', with the Franchise/BuckRogers / Franchise/FlashGordon / ''Series/CaptainVideo'' -esque "Rocket Revengers" series, which ostensibly took place in a time TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture from the 1930s and 1940s that it took place in. Of course, depsite having a black man (played by Creator/PhilLaMarr on the three-man team, he was constantly talked-over by the leader of the team, who also espoused purely-American values. ("Thank the world's one God we all survived!") The main villain of the series was a YellowPeril caricature known as Tuca, Queen of the Chinese, and the sole woman outside of the Rocket Revengers group was treated as little more than a secretary.

* The 2005 version of ''[[Film/WarOfTheWorlds The War of the Worlds]]'' has this in the very first spoken line of dialogue. H.G. Wells's original novel, which was published in 1898, began with the words, "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own." In 1898, it was likely most people would agree with that statement. In the 2005 film, wanting to tie in the film with the book, the writers had the narrator say the same line, only updated: "No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own." Even a rudimentary Google search will show just how many people actually ''do'' believe just that. Indeed, humans have been looking ''for'' alien intelligences since the 1970s ourselves. Many believe they're already here.

Related to ValuesDissonance, FairForItsDay, ScienceMarchesOn, TechnologyMarchesOn, SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale, and FailedFutureForecast. EternalProhibition, OnceAcceptableTargets, and EverybodySmokes are specific cases.

* Film/RoboCop1987: The newscast at the beginning of the film depicts South Africa as not only [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra still under Apartheid]], but embroiled in what seems like a civil war. The besieged city-state of Pretoria has armed themselves with a French-made NeutronBomb and are willing to use it as their last line of defense. Three years after the film's release, the National Party began deconstructing the Apartheid system and transitioned to majority rule in 1994.

** The original [[Recap/StarTrekS1E0TheCage pilot]] of the series included a ''female first officer''. She capably commanded the Enterprise for most of the episode while the (male) captain was held captive by aliens. In fact, she was the one who dispassionately decided that letting the aliens breed humans for slavery would be unacceptable, when Captain Pike seemed willing to let it happen as part of a bargain to save the Enterprise. [[NumberTwo Number One]] coldly threatened to blow everyone up -- including herself -- instead, and this was what finally convinced the aliens to abandon their plot and let everyone go. If only they let Roddenberry keep that character in the show, it would have been an ''amazing'' aversion of this trope... but the pilot's test audiences failed to react well, and Roddenberry pissed off the network by casting his girlfriend in the role. The network also didn't like the idea of the ''Enterprise'' having a 50-50 gender split. Eliminating Number One and reducing the percentage of women were two compromises Roddenberry made (allegedly in part so that he could keep the character of Spock).

* In Frank Herbert's ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' (published 1965), the fact society has gone back to a kind of space feudalism ''sort'' of explains why Leto can't have more than one wife (thus preventing him from marrying the woman he actually loves, Jessica). However, when the powerful, feared, all-female psychic order of the Bene Gesserit exists, it really doesn't explain why teenage Paul the protagonist is brought into Leto's confidences, while Jessica--an adult, a highly skilled very badass Bene Gesserit, someone Leto trusts and loves completely and should have no reason to think can't handle the mess they're about to be in--is sidelined. Paul, mind you, ''is'' a prodigy with some pretty hefty superpowers himself (given the chance, he's actually stronger than his mother), so it's not that he shouldn't have been told, but the fact that he and Leto both unquestioningly exclude Jessica at first is very 60s. Incidentally, there ''is'' a justification for Leto being reluctant to share certain information with Jessica (the Atredies family's interests and those of the aforementioned Bene Gesserit do ''not'' fully coincide, and there's reasonable grounds to be concerned that she might be suffering from conflicted loyalties) but this is never directly stated to be the true reason.

** "{{Literature/Omnilingual}}": Written on the 1950s and set in the 1990s, where a multinational mission to Mars has a gender-equal crew and a female protagonist who makes an important discovery. All these people have a cocktail hour after work finishes for the day.

For writers, it often involves AcceptableBreaksFromReality: it's a lot easier to [[WriteWhatYouKnow observe the society you have]] than to predict which way it's going to go. Consequently the work is likely to appeal to a wider audience than a work which assumes the future will be foreign and puts in the appropriate amount of alien world-building. After all, whom in the 25th century will be reading this anyway? (Presumably, the same sort of people who read books from the 17th century now...)

*** The role of women on Earth is also extremely vague. Because resource-starved Earth cannot afford amenities, most people live in tiny apartments which do not have kitchens, eat in communal cafeterias, and have small families due to PopulationControl. These factors make the role of a {{Housewife}} largely redundant, yet Detective Baley interacts with virtually no women besides his wife, making law enforcement and government as male-dominated as they were in the real-world 1950's. ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'', written 30 years later in 1983, does introduce a female official and mentions policewomen, stating that the novels merely occur at a time women seldom choose these career paths.

** "Literature/TheOtherFoot": Bradbury assumes segregation in America will continue well into the future, and become so extreme that black people will eventually colonize {{UsefulNotes/Mars}} on their own. The all-black colony ends up in a very good position to [[PersecutionFlip retaliate against their former oppressors]] (and they almost go through with it, too) yet ultimately both sides are able to reconcile their differences and live together in peace. For added [[DramaticIrony irony]], the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement started in the 1950's, just after this was written.

* Published in 1959, ''Literature/AlasBabylon'' portrays breastfeeding and home canning as relics which have all but disappeared prior to the nuclear strike depicted in the book, but which must be reluctantly revived in the conditions prevailing afterward. Both practices have made a strong comeback since the 1950's.

* In Creator/MarionZimmerBradley[='s=] ''Literature/{{Darkover}}'' series, the titular planet is a FeudalFuture LostColony, while the rest of humanity has spread out into what is referred to as [[TheFederation "The Terran Empire"]]. While this is thousands of years in the future, the Terran Empire's social values are pretty blatantly those of 1960's - 1980's America. This includes women taking their husband's full names, and being expected to abandon certain careers if they marry. Homosexuals are still mostly closeted. The Darkovans are meant to provide a social contrast, being more regressive with their essentially Medieval treatment of women, while having somewhat greater tolerance for, but not full acceptance of, homosexuality than the Terrans. Neither society looks especially progressive in ''any'' respect to readers after the 1990's though.
* ''Creator/OrsonScottCard'' has this very blatantly in his Ender series, possibly due to AuthorAppeal. Written in the 80's, the multi-planetary society of the last three books is extremely religious considering 3,000 years have passed since modern day. Planets are weirdly segregated by nationality, despite those having long lost any real meaning, and they have "licenses" for official religions, even those based on modern secular societies. The protagonists and their companions regularly venture into theology, which is mostly no longer true for a society only 30 years after the books.

* Parodied and subverted in ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace''. The writing in the SoBadItsGood ShowWithinAShow is ''astoundingly'' chauvinistic and racist, making it seem like a prime case of ValuesDissonance from the 60's or so. Except the show was made in ''the late 80's'' long after such attitudes had been discredited; [[SmallNameBigEgo Garth Marenghi]] is just that much of a bigot. It's implied that this contributed heavily to ''Darkplace'' getting cancelled.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' takes place in the far-off year of 3000, but the world is socially and culturally pretty identical to how they were in the early 2000's of the show's production, just with a whole universe to explore and futuristic technology to use. [[InvokedTrope This was the point of the show]] -- rather than trying to paint an accurate picture of the future, it's mainly using the utopian and dystopian ideals of what {{science fiction}} largely predicted to be the future as a vessel to satirize the culture of today, illustrating that even with spaceships and robots and aliens, people will mostly remain just as [[HumansAreFlawed bumbling]] and [[HumansAreAverage average]] as we've always been.

* In-universe example: The professors in ''Film/ASongIsBorn'' have been so cloistered in their conservatory making their history of music that they've completely missed the modern music that has been evolving outside.

* ''Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery'':
** Played for laughs when the [[FishOutOfTemporalWater recently-defrosted]] Dr. Evil's proposed evil schemes (making a hole in the ozone layer and destroying Prince Charles and Lady Diana's marriage) are things that have already happened by the time of the film (1997). Frustrated, he decides to just fall back on the classic "Hijack nuclear weapons and hold the world for hostage" plan.
** Another in-universe example, also played for laughs, comes when Doctor Evil plots with his henchmen for holding the world at ransom, where he will then demand...[[ComicallySmallDemand one million dollars!]] His henchman Number 2 points out that a million dollars isn't what it used to be, and that their organization's legitimate front company makes almost twenty billion in annual profits alone. Doctor Evil then decides to make it a more exorbitant for the era one hundred billion dollars.
** Inverted in the sequel, wherein Dr. Evil, back in The 60's, again demands $100bn, only to be met with derisive laughter, since such a vast sum simply didn't exist in that era.
** Austin's having casual sex with [[PunnyName Alotta Fagina]] worries Vanessa as well, who asks if he used a condom. He scoffs at that, replying that only sailors use them, [[{{Hypocrite}} because they're so promiscuous]]. She tells him he really should, as while his attitude remains that of the carefree late 60's hedonist, since the rise of HIV/AIDS unprotected sex is far more of a concern.
* A source of humor in ''Film/TheFinalGirls'' comes from the differences between the main characters and the 80s campers they find inside the movie. Particularly, the treatment of LGBT people (Chris, who [[HasTwoMommies was raised by a gay couple]] gets easily mad at one of the campers making homophobic comments) and technology (Vicki trying to explain to another camper how smartphones work).

** "Literature/MotherEarth": InUniverse, the Pacific Project [[InvokedTrope used biology to prove]] that the [[PlanetOfHats Outer Worlds will each develop different quirks]]. The [[BatmanGambit assumption]] is that developing these quirks would make them more accepting of deviations from the norm, and racism would no longer exist. The next story in this setting is ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'', [[spoiler:where the Outer Worlds have become [[InvertedTrope even more isolationist and xenophobic]].]]

* ''Series/BlackMirror: Recap/BlackMirrorSanJunipero'': In-universe. Yorkie is worried people will react negatively to being seen dancing with another woman in a nightclub, but Kelly assures her that such prejudices really aren't a problem anymore. [[{{Foreshadowing}} This is the viewer's first clue]] that this actually isn't TheEighties, but a future simulation of that period.

** ''Literature/PodkayneOfMars'', set in the distant space-faring future, features a main character who would like to become the first ever female spaceship captain. The first instance of a woman ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Collins Eileen Collins]]) captaining a spaceship occurred in July 1999. The fact that Podkayne will face discrimination on account of her sex is clearly labelled unfair. Heinlein makes the same point in 'Rolling Stones' in which Hazel Stone is passed over for promotion on account of her sex.

** "{{Literature/Runaround}}": InUniverse, we see the robots from the first [[TidallyLockedPlanet Sunside Mercury]] Mining expedition, who call all humans "Master". In contrast, Donovan and Powell are there fifty years later, and their robot, SPD 13, just calls them "boss".

** ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' uses this InUniverse in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E13FarBeyondTheStars Far Beyond the Stars]]". Captain Benjamin Sisko is living the life of Benny Russell, a black man living in 1950s New York City as a sci-fi writer for a pulp magazine. His readers don't know his background because otherwise they wouldn't buy his stories; one of his female colleagues uses a male pen-name as well. When he writes a SelfInsertFic about a future captain commanding a starship and exploring the galaxy, the story is dismissed out of hand by the editor because nobody would believe a black man would be in charge of anything. This and other tragedies in his daily life cause Benny to have a SanitySlippage.

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* Used in ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'' which is written InTheStyleOf a 1950's sci-fi story.
** Women under thirty are referred to as "girls", African-Americans as "Negroes", B'Elanna is a "half-caste" and Chakotay is a "Red Indian".
** Earth is undergoing an OverpopulationCrisis as while scientists have invented the birth control pill "it had little effect on the morals of society".
** The PrimeDirective is a ban on miscegenation (albeit referring to [[BoldlyComing interspecies]] rather than interracial romance).

[[/folder]]

* ''[[http://www.thekeep.org/~wombat/Stories/MaiHime/index.html Mai-Hime: Future]]'' is set in 2028, so the teen protagonists would have been born in the early 2010s, still in the future when the story was started. It predicts that around this time, there would be a widespread trend for Japanese parents to give their children Western names (extending to roughly half the teen characters in the story). We're now past the deadline and this hasn't happened.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* ''Manga/Area88'', originally a 1979 manga, then a mid 80s OAV, and finally a 2004 TV series, which are all clearly set in the year the original manga was made (or at least, that is when the story begins). The premise has dated and is completely implausible now. The information age, the fall of Communism, the end of the Cold War, and the current political climate in general, have made the idea of a small Middle Eastern country like Asran (Aslan) refusing to export its oil for profit very improbable. There are now more ways than ever for foreign capitalists (or countries) to manipulate a small North African country and get their heads of state to see things a different way. A protracted war would be completely unnecessary. Also, the idea of the Foreign Legion as a place for people to disappear, no questions asked, was dated even when the story was originally written. Today, they are not only more selective and do background checks, but you also have to prove your competency before the contract is even offered. So the idea of tricking a drunk person into signing up for the FL is completely ludicrous. Also, today, it wouldn't take much effort for Ryoko to immediately find out why Shin vanished (also, Shin could easily contact her by e-mail), thus exposing Kanzaki's sinister schemes. Finally, the idea of a mercenary air force being a quicker and less expensive alternative to training and maintaining one's own air force is no longer that relevant since air to air combat is now borderline obsolete. Besides, drone aircraft are even cheaper than merc pilots and a country could train its own operators quite inexpensively. Today, the war would be fought within the country, on the ground, and would look to outsiders as just another grassroots terrorist insurgency movement.
[[/folder]]

For writers, it's often a NecessaryWeasel: it's a lot easier to [[WriteWhatYouKnow observe the society you have]] than to predict which way it's going to go. Consequently the work is likely to appeal to a wider audience than a work which assumes the future will be foreign and puts in the appropriate amount of alien world-building. After all, whom in the 25th century will be reading this anyway? (Presumably, the same sort of people who read books from the 17th century now...)

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'':
** After the {{Gendercide}}, the Secretary of the Interior (seventh in line) becomes the president because she's the highest-ranking woman in government. This is in line with the real-life president of the day's, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's cabinet in 2002 when the series started. The series follows a real-life calendar and wraps up several years later. However in 2005, Bush appointed Condoleezza Rice to Secretary of State, which is third in line for succession which was then the highest rank a woman had ever been.[[note]]Madeline Albright had previously served in the role during the Clinton Administration; however, as a naturalized citizen she was ineligible to become President.[[/note]] By the time the series ended, Nancy Pelosi was second in line as Speaker of the House and she remained the highest-ranking woman until the election of Kamala Harris as Vice President in 2020. Outside of America, UsefulNotes/AngelaMerkel became Chancellor of Germany in 2005, which means as of today the second and fourth biggest economies in the world would have veteran female leaders who know the ropes and could lead without the issues the presented in the series.
** Israel was depicted as becoming the world's superpower after the plague, because at the time there was no other country with a big military that allowed women to serve in active combat, but now much more populous countries like China, India, the UK, the US, and Germany allow women to either serve in active combat or at least have greater participations in their militaries. If the Gendercide were to happen today, then the world powers would likely be a Harris/Merkel-led Western coalition by economic might or India and China by sheer military numbers, and while Israel would certainly become a major military power in the Middle East, they would also face fierce competition from newly formed Kurdish states whose armed forces also permit for women to serve in active combat (including a few [[AmazonBrigade Amazon Brigades]] such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Protection_Units Women's Protection Units]]).
[[/folder]]

* ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' was first published in the 80s and depicted a dystopian future in which homosexuality was outlawed and most of Britain's LGBT people were persecuted in death camps. This kind of thing still felt plausible in the 2000s when the film adaptation was made, but in TheNewTens, acceptance for LGBT people got a massive amount of traction - making it come across as rather fantastical from a modern perspective that the public would accept such a thing.

** On the other hand, lots of jokes based on George complaining about his "button finger" (with the implication that what we are lazy about will just get more crazy in a world where you just push buttons all day) are more HarsherInHindsight due to increasing awareness of Repetitive Strain Injury.

* While the vast majority of ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'' has aged rather well, many jokes/aspects of the earlier seasons definitely wouldn't fly if they had came out today and not in the 2000s and early 2010s. ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheBloodGulchChronicles The Blood Gulch Chronicles]]'' probably gets this the worst, as the various examples of InnocentlyInsensitive UnfortunateImplications during its events[[note]]I.e., the usage of "retard" (which is now seen as an offensive slur against the mentally disabled) in casual parlance, the uncomfortably common homophobia and misogyny displayed in jokes from as "recent" as ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheRecollection Recreation]]'', Sister being written only as a "loud slut" until ''The Shisno Paradox'', and Donut's entire character being pretty much one big Gay Panic joke until (arguably) ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheProjectFreelancerSaga The Project Freelancer Saga]]''[[/note]] would '''all''' have gotten a noticeable backlash if they were to have been first released in 2019. [[AuthorsSavingThrow Though to]] Creator/RoosterTeeth's credit, the series ''has'' actually adapted relatively well to the times by taking these criticisms into account, with it in turn focusing on having more politically correct humor as the series has gone on while either removing the series' more problematic elements or giving them a suitable {{Revision}}[=/=]{{Rewrite}}.[[note]]I.e., Church and Tex's StarCrossedLovers status[=/=]BelligerentSexualTension from during ''The Blood Gulch Chronicles'' is re-framed in ''The Project Freelancer Saga'' as the genuinely toxic and mutually destructive romance it really is, Tucker gets called out on his increasingly {{Jerkass}} behavior and toxic masculinity by Kaikaina during ''The Shisno Paradox'' (with him even eventually [[TookALevelInKindness taking a noticeable level in kindness during the events of]] ''Singularity''), and Donut's AmbiguouslyGay characteristics get increasingly downplayed with more focus given instead to his status as TheDitz of Red Team along with his NaiveNewcomer and GranolaGirl qualities.[[/note]]

** This is particularly bad in Literature/SpeakerForTheDead and its sequel, Literature/{{Xenocide}}, where a lot of the plot points are being derived from Card's assumption that Brazilian society (the basis for the location of the book) would remain as conservative and Catholic as it was when he traveled there for his missionary mission.

*** The role of women on Earth is also extremely vague. Because resource-starved Earth cannot afford amenities, most people live in tiny apartments which do not have kitchens, eat in communal cafeterias, and have small families due to PopulationControl. These factors make the role of a {{Housewife}} largely redundant, yet Detective Baley interacts with virtually no women besides his wife, making law enforcement and government as male-dominated as they were in the real-world 1950's. ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'' does introduce a female official and mentions policewomen, stating that the novels merely occur at a time women seldom choose these career paths.

** All of Heinlein's work is prone to this. ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'', for instance, despite showcasing many cultural differences in the lunar society (not the least of which is ubiquitous polyamory) portrays gender issues much as a 1950s writer would be expected to think of a post-feminist world: touching women without their permission is a major societal taboo... but it is up to the woman's ''male'' friends or relatives to protect her, and women are still generally considered unintelligent (or at least irrational or illogical) and unfit for many positions. The main reason the culture's attitudes toward women have changed at all is that women are a substantial minority on Luna. The rival Earth society, where the sexes are still 50/50 in numbers, shows female nurses giggling at having their rears pinched, rather than filing sexual harassment lawsuits.