Ok, three things:
- Asking that question alone just risks it veering into PolChat territory.
- You're just going to different variations of the same basic answer as Lucas and Spielberg. I'd just quit while you're ahead.
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TL-191: After the End
- Thread starter David bar Elias
- Start date
Ok, three things:
Got it, realized it was getting a bit repetitive. Wanted to know curiously since I do remember seeing David post that yes, Donald Trump doesn't exist ITLL, and also in part from my previous questions. So I wanted to know how different the family is. Also I'm new here so I'm not too familiar with what could be very contentious to ask, so sorry about that. While I'm at it, I'll shift to another topic that I've been meaning to ask.
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As a Mexican myself, how's México doing economically and socially up to the present? Are there any places where there's still underdevelopment? I'm assuming that corruption is not as prolific as OTL levels in the present. Is it still a large hub for outsourcing? Do Mexicans make up the largest immigrant population at the end of the 20th and beginning of 21st centuries as IOTL?
What about our country? Is the Philippines undergoing the postwar economic growth, same as OTL Japan from where the railways has been prioritized alongside with the computers, electronics, steel, and shipbuilding industries as our country by 2010s would become the largest exporter of consumer electronics?
How different is the U.S. highway and interstate system ITTL? Assuming the planning, would whole neighborhoods be mowed down to make them or would there be strong opposition to that? More on transportation, does the US have a fully operating high-speed rail way system across the country? Is bus travel still king for long distance travel where there's no railroads? Are cities' surface-level public transit dismantled to make way for cars?
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As of 2021, major US film studios based in Los Angeles include National Pictures, Pinnacle, Union Productions, and Battleground. A relative newcomer in LA is Burroughs & Graf, which produces many “independent” movies. Of course, in 2021, LA is no longer the center of US filmmaking. New York City, due to the presence of several major US film schools and several “local” production companies, is turning more and more into its own film and television-making center with each passing year. There are also local filmmaking communities of note in San Francisco and Tucson, even if they’re not as yet to the scale of LA or NYC.
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Alfred Hitchcock entered into service with the Royal Engineers on the British homefront at the very end of the war in 1917. After the war, Hitchcock worked, usually as a technical clerk, for a number of telegraph companies. He never became a filmmaker; in the bleak postwar British world of national loss and economic recession, survival was the paramount concern for a wide cross-section of society. Hitchcock did enjoy going to the movies whenever he could, even if he could never openly discuss enjoying US or German releases.
Hitchcock did find an outlet in creative writing, mostly in short stories submitted to any publication that would accept them. Of course, he never earned enough from while living in London to make it his full time profession. Hitchcock’s writing gravitated towards mysteries and thrillers.
The Silver Shirt regime, under the Churchill-Mosley alliance changed Hitchcock’s circumstances. Although never in any real danger of being targeted by the regime, Hitchcock had a genuine wariness of the authorities in the best of times. On the eve of the Second Great War, Hitchcock and his wife moved to Australia, through the offices of a London-based Australian “Poacher” (someone tasked by the Australian government with recruiting skilled immigrants). Hitchcock never returned to the UK; in Australia, his career as novelist began to finally take shape. Most of Hitchcock’s novels published in the 1940s-1950s were mysteries and thrillers centered around the expatriate British community. Australian cultural historians later credited Hitchcock (and similar writers) with creating a “paranoid style” in Australian literature and cinema. Many of Hitchcock’s novels were later adopted by Australian filmmakers in the 1970s, albeit more often than not with an American Nihilist aspect.
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Charles Chaplin never became a prominent movie star and director in TTL. An early point of divergence from our world was Chaplin not joining Fred Karno’s comedy company; he never had the opportunity to tour the US as a performer (it’s just as well, since US audiences in TTL’s 1900 would not have been particularly hospitable to a British entertainer). He did find steady work as a comedic performer in London theaters and music halls, while also improving his skills as a musician and composer.
Chaplin was in Britain when war broke out in 1914, and was eventually conscripted. He was wounded in action in 1916 and sent home. Any prospects he had once had as a public entertainer before the war were gone. However, Chaplin was able to find work in orchestras that accompanied silent movies. Eventually, he would find a place in the British film industry, such as it was, as a composer.
This career was cut short by the rise of the Silver Shirt regime. Although Chaplin had never been political in the activist sense of the word, he was well known in his own circles for having anti-war and internationalist views. This was enough for him to be blacklisted within the British film industry; it wasn’t long before he found himself in Australia as another exile, in Melbourne.
Chaplin discovered the hard way that there was not exactly a high demand in Australia for film composers. However, he was able to find relatively steady employment in orchestras and as a private musician. Chaplin is thought to be the real world inspiration for the recurring character of Aldershot, a down on his luck musician who appeared in several of Alfred Hitchcock’s Australian mysteries and thrillers.
Chaplin spent the rest of his life in Australia. His interwar film scores would later enjoy a renewed popularity in the 1990s among Australian fans of Fabrika-Punk music (which, as in Russia, was accompanied with a 1930s/1940s “dieselpunk” aesthetic), who used his scores, rearranged with modern instruments and styles, as a basis for what ultimately became Australian Fabrika-Punk’s New Old sound.
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Leni Riefenstahl had a very different career to our world. During the interwar years, she started as a dancer for several theater companies, before eventually becoming a (Berlin-based) playwright and director. None of her productions from this time are particularly well-known or remembered as of 2021.
After the war, Riefenstahl attempted to reinvent herself professionally, first as a photographer and later as a documentary filmmaker, with a focus on exploring the American West; these documentaries were fairly popular for a German audience that still enjoyed the Western genre. An intended longer stay in Los Angeles was interrupted in 1967 by the mass evacuations that preceded the Fourth Pacific War, which Riefenstahl participated in with the goal of making another documentary. As luck would have it, she would be in Tucson for the very first Battlefield Jamboree concert in 1968, which turned out to be the third act of her documentary Running. She retired from filmmaking afterwards.
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Luis Buñuel, as in our world, had a lifelong fascination with cinema. However, due to a rather different set of circumstances, he did not go to Paris in the 1920s, as in our world. Instead, Buñuel would eventually wind up as one of the most influential film theorists and critics of the Twentieth Century, albeit with a tendency to enthusiastically promote any movie that appeared to challenge established conventions. He left Spain during the civil war in the late 1930s, and eventually reestablished himself in Los Angeles, among a large Mexican artistic community that had largely left their own country following the Imperial victory in Mexico’s own civil war. He remained in Los Angeles for most of the rest of his life, always on the periphery of the US film industry while never succeeding in breaking in.
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David Lean never became involved in filmmaking in this world (due, in part, to never receiving a camera as a gift while still a child). He started his career as an accountant before moving to Australia in the late 1920s. Lean made this move due to a combination of boredom with his work and a desire for some sort of radical change in his life, although ultimately he wound up working as an accountant in Sydney as well. He was, however, an enthusiastic movie goer throughout his life.
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Federico Fellini, in TTL, was a man of many hats, working at various times in 1950s-1960s Rome as a journalist, film critic, writer, fixer, and at one point as the part time owner of a nightclub (which failed). He never became a world famous movie director, although he always had an enthusiasm for cinema, and appeared, at one point by the late 1960s, to be at least an acquaintance of every major figure in an Italian film industry attempting to challenge the dominant Austro-Hungarian/German mega studios.
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Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda don’t exist in this world.
Nice! Seeing that Luis Buñuel is part of a Hispanic filmmaking community got me thinking that there's most likely a place for Bill Meléndez and other Mexican filmmakers as well as actors of the time ITTL. Speaking of the Battlefield Jamboree, from what I remember, isn't that like a TL-191 version of Woodstock?
In music, does the center of the US music industry remain in New York? I know that IOTL there was a slow shift from there westward during the 50s and 60s.
As of TTL’s 2021, the analogue to our world’s Trump family mostly lives in the New York City area. It’s not a family that’s particularly wealthy; among other butterflies, Fred Trump never wound up building up a successful real estate business. The Trump family in TTL leads, for the most part, a normal middle class existence in 2021. As previously mentioned, Donald Trump does not exist in TTL.
In 2021, Mexico is a generally prosperous country, although there are regional variations in terms of development. Mexico is a close ally of the United States, and maintains one of the largest conventional militaries within the CDS.
Economic ties with the US are also close, especially since the Reynolds Administration in the 1980s, when the first moves were made towards lowering barriers to trade between the major nations of North America, although there was also opposition in Mexico (as in Quebec and Texas) to what developed into the North American Trade Accord, due to fears that it would enhance US power over the local economy. The outsourcing of some manufacturing jobs from the US did not happen to the same extent as in our world, given that a wealthier and higher income Mexico (compared to the OTL 1980s/90s) had to compete with the CDS member states in Southeast Asia, as well as China, for the outsourcing of manufacturing.
In 2021, Mexican-Americans are among the largest immigrant communities in the US, although it is also a very widely dispersed community within the US. Los Angeles, which was a popular destination during the late Imperial period in Mexico for political dissidents and artists, is still widely viewed as a key center of Mexican-American culture.
Illegal immigration from Mexico to the US never became as significant an issue as in our world, due to effective security cooperation between the two countries following the Second Great War, and there being clear legal avenues for those wishing to pursue seasonal/temporary work in the US.
Following the Fourth Pacific War, the Philippines has enjoyed general high levels of economic growth, although growth rates were negatively affected by the Tech Recession in TTL’s 1990s. The Philippines also benefited from postwar reconstruction assistance from the US, especially in terms of infrastructure. The Philippines, in 2021, is also a key trading partner of China.
As in our world, the US developed an extensive postwar interstate highway system. This was one of the major priorities of the Dewey Administration, as part of wider efforts to reform and improve national defense. The Dewey Administration also pursued policies to modernize US rail lines. Highways in general were not built through existing urban neighborhoods.
Different US cities tend to pursue different urban transportation strategies. The emergence of more outlying suburbs (referred to as “exurbs” in TTL really only started to become a significant factor in the 2000s and 2010s, which also has encouraged the greater usage of cars.
In 2021, there are some high speed rail lines, but these are still heavily concentrated within the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Travel by bus for long distance isn’t as common as it once was, given general affordable rates for air travel.
New York City is still the dominant center of the US music industry, although Los Angeles is a major center for the domestic music business in its own right, given the involvement of the major movie studios.
Based on this, the drug trade never proliferates as much in México along with cartels the cartels controlling said trade. On that topic, are there parts of the world where the drug trade is a major issue? On trade and industry, how's the Midwest holding up in manufacturing? Specifically the area referred to as the "Rust Belt" IOTL. Back to México, do they have great transportation infrastructure (e.g. modern highways, long-distance railroads, airports)?
The annual Battlefield Jamboree has some similarities to Woodstock, but is also intended by concert organizers as a celebration of the US military.
The drug trade in 2021, is an international concern, as in our world. However, different countries tend to vary in terms of their respective policies on drug usage.
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As of 2021, there is a “Rust Belt” in the Midwest, although it is not as large as IOTL. However, there have still been dislocations caused by outsourcing and a growing tendency of companies to downsize their workforces wherever possible; conflict over these kinds of corporate policies is also pronounced due to the power of organized labor. This will have repercussions in the 2024 presidential elections.
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In 2021, Mexico has a modernized highway and rail system on par with the US. This in part a legacy of the close postwar cooperation between Mexico’s post-Imperial government and the Dewey, Truman, and Humphrey Administrations, which each viewed Mexico as a key component of the postwar doctrine of Continental Defense. The US also played a key role in modernizing air transport infrastructure in Mexico under the Continental Defense doctrine, which later benefited civilian air travel within Mexico.
Not in the US of 2021. While the US does have its share of billionaires, there are no fortunes of that amount, as yet, amongst the USA’s well-to-do.
Makes sense I suppose. The post-Blackbeard US defense plan and the various government projects (like the ones about green architecture from the 1990s IIRC) ain't gonna pay for itself. Not to mention the presence of the socialist party means that there likely is a wealth tax in TTL's America.