From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 4 Oct 2022 09:41:01 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn   
    wrote:   
      
   >TCM is showing robot movies on Saturdays this month.  The introductions to   
   the movies didn't specifically focus on the meaning, philosophy, or technology   
   of the robots, but there is an interstitial with such.  To see how dead this   
   newsgroup is, I'm    
   going to focus on the meaning, philosophy, and technology of the robots in a   
   series of posts.  I'll also take the opportunity to calibrate my ratings scale   
   on the quality of cinematic robots which is based on the extent to which we   
   believe the robot is    
   not just a man in a tin suit.   
   >   
   >As opposed to the field of robotics, the fictional subject of robots also   
   includes artificial life, essentially, as an extension of exploring artificial   
   intelligence.  Almost any writing on the subject will include Frankenstein and   
   other ways of    
   artificially making people, biologically or even magically.  The subject also   
   branches into removing self-determination, or "robotizing" people, whether   
   with a sci-fi twist of using a person's "mental pattern" or very brain as the   
   basis of an artificial    
   being, or ancient superstitions such as zombies.  This being October, there'll   
   be a few classic movies of that type shown.   
   >   
   >We begin with "Metropolis," and the robot Maria, or, as some pedants say,   
   "false Maria."  Some call her Hel, after the idea (cut in some shorter   
   versions) that she is modeled after the dead woman of that name whom the   
   scientist loved, but who had    
   married the industrialist instead.  (Other names include the german   
   "Maschinemensch," in the '70s some used the term "robotrix," probably now   
   deprecated.)  TCM points out that in modern terms this is a sexbot; I suppose   
   the concept of that goes back at    
   least to the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.  In between then and now was   
   the 19th Century "Tales of Hoffman", where a man mistook a dancing automaton   
   of the time for a real woman.   
      
   IIRC, the Mad Scientist Rotwang explicitly states that the robot is   
   "Hel reborn" or something similar.   
      
   >Which brings into doubt Maria's status as the first robot on film.  They were   
   making movies about dancing automatons--played by dancers-- since the days   
   when they could only make a movie a reel at a time.  There's also Charles Ogle   
   as Frankenstein's    
   creation, which at least is visually designed not to look   
   >like a regular person.  Paul Wegener's costume as the Golem makes him look   
   like a made thing, in this case a statue.  Where Maria's design may be first   
   is in being mechanical, although now I have to search if there were any early   
   movies about self-   
   driving cars.   
   >   
   >   
   >The second movie was "Forbidden Planet."  Robby, the robot of the '50s   
   reflected further thinking.  Isaac Asimov, creator of robotics (well, the   
   word) fought what he called "the Frankenstein complex," the idea that if you   
   build a robot, it would run    
   amok and kill you.  Robot-induced damage does not come from meddling in God's   
   domain, but from bad design decisions.  He came up with the Three Laws of   
   Robotics, which this movie demonstrates by putting Robby through the drill:    
   It will preserve itself,    
   but will obey orders to stick its arm in a disintegration beam, it can fire a   
   ray gun, but not at a human being.  Only the fact that it is not built like an   
   action-movie hero prevents a more dramatic scene of it throwing itself in   
   danger to prevent    
   humans from coming to harm.   
   >   
   >   
   >Now for the ratings.  Based on whether we believe it's a robot and not just a   
   person in a tin suit.  That seems like a simple binary choice: 0 we don't   
   believe it, 1 we do, but the logic can get kinda fuzzy, so there are values   
   between the two.   
   >   
   >0 are those androids indistinguishable from humans, which I'm sure I'll get   
   to rant about in later movies.   
   >I'll let the rating climb to about 0.1 as they become less and less   
   indistinguishable from humans.  That is, the less the characters in the story   
   are able to believe they are people, the more we are able to believe they are   
   robots.   
   >   
   >Then we come to robots that only approximate the shape of a human.  This is   
   where I put Maria, about 0.3, a bit below her "grandson," C-3P0.  Those   
   exterior pistons on his arms really do a lot, plus, in her movie, Maria is   
   magically given the appearance    
   of "real Maria," allowing her to be played by Brigitte Helm out of the suit,   
   and somehow in physical interactions with her no one notices she is hundreds   
   of pounds of unyielding metal.  (I almost wrote "cold, unyielding metal," but   
   I realized she excited    
   a crowd of men to carry her off on their shoulder with a dance the gyrations   
   of which would have taxed her motors, and may have heated her to be warm or   
   even hot to the touch.  It takes a lot of engineering to stay within the   
   narrow range of human body    
   temperature.)   
      
   She is transformed in a scene which some have tagged as the granddaddy   
   of all Mad Scientist Laboratory Scenes. No magic involved, just really   
   advanced science. And, for its day, some impressive effects work.   
      
   >Somehow I rate these suit of armor designs like Maria and 3P0 above the   
   boiler and stovepipe suits of cruder robots (see the Republic robot, or   
   Volkite, used on "Voyager" in the Captain Proton holodeck program as   
   apparently in public domain.) despite    
   the fact that the boilers look less human.  Should it go the other way?   
   >   
   >Robby is the first I heard of a designer disguising the shape of the human   
   operator.  The operators' heads (there were two in alternating shifts, not   
   counting Marvin Miller who supplied the voice, although effects technician   
   Eddie Fisher (not that one)    
   wore the suit in building it, the Screen Actors Guild decided that since Robby   
   had lines, it had to have a member play it, Frankie Carpenter and Frankie   
   Darrow got the job) the operators' head was just above Robby's chest plate,   
   and they looked out from    
   between the voice light tubes.  (Argon and mercury vapor? Check. With high   
   voltage electricity? Check. In fragile glass tubes? Check. Inches from your   
   operator's face? CHECK!)  I want to set this at the midpoint.  Well, just   
   below the midpoint, with his "   
   brother" the Robot from "Lost in Space" just above.  Either Robby at 0.49 and   
   the Robot at 0.51 or make the difference between them a round 10 milliislands,   
   and take us to three digits 0.495 and 0.505.   
      
   Who says actors can't be brave? Or stupid, depending on your point of   
   view.   
      
   >I've heard the robot Tobor from the movie "Tobor the Great" (Tobor is robot   
   spelled backwards) thrown into this family.  Does anyone know a source that   
   Robert Kinoshita designed it as well as the other two?   
   --   
   "In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant   
   development was the disintegration, under Christian   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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