A Trip to Rocky Moontain High

In 1902, I believe the use of recreation marijuana was legal. No one can make such creatively twisted films such as this if not for drugs. Just ask the Beatles.

But yes if I was there to witness the film in its first screening, I would be certainly dumbfounded. Yes indeed, I would’ve been.

The avant-garde, visionary short film, “A Trip to the Moon.” The film was made in 1902, while the first touchdown on the moon was in 1959, by the Soviet-sent unmanned Luna 2. The first human being touching down on the moon was a decade later, in 1969, by the US Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and an oft-forgetten man named Michael Collins (he may have led a singing career instead, I think).

Now you see, the film was made in 1902, while the first human beings who brought back substantial evidence such as video, surface samples, etc was in 1969, around the height of Beatlemania and “living in a yellow submarine (which is the shape of human space ship, and perhaps also its color). 67 years in between. So certainly, the film would have gotten a lot of facts wrong. There are no moon inhabitants called Selenites. And some other facts.

But perhaps this wasn’t the point of the movie. The point of the movie was to speculate about the moon’s surface, and thus produce a desire to explore it. Much in the same ways the stories of mermaids, sea monsters and endless gold, riches and spices called upon the brave and audacious to set sails towards discovery.

The lack of dialogue helps the movie in that the message becomes universal. Not English, nor French, nor Spanish, nor Russian, nor German, nor any petty difference would have divided the human race. Unlike the sea explorers of the age of (sea) exploration, the age of (space) exploration this time would have united the human race.

Certainly, if I was part of its first screening, I would have reacted much in the same way Victorian pirate wannabes did to the stories of explorers. With much excitement, with eyes wide open, and with desire to see and step on the lands no one has seen or been. Like Star Trek.