The past of the future of the deficit.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Artifact - Ridley Scott's The Deficit Trials: 2017 political ad - Brief article

IN 1980 Blade Runner director Ridley Scott put together a lavish ad called The Deficit Trials: 2017. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the spot shows angry, shivering urchins crowded into a ruined courtroom.The adults in the scene stand accused of failing to control the deficit before it was too late. "By 1986 the national debt had reached $2 trillion," the kid playing the prosecutor says to the grizzled old man in on the stand. "Didn't that frighten you?"

In a contemporaneous news piece, Dan Rather called it a political commercial on "the sticker shock and future shock of deficit spending." But the spot turned out to be too hot for TV. Broadcasters refused to air it. "The networks," Rather explained...