I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.
Aug. 9th, 2003 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinSomething I've wondered about before:
From whence came the movie and TV science-fiction cliché of giving robots and computers effeminate male voices (sometimes to the extent of making them outrageous gay stereotypes)? Did it start with Douglas Rain in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Up to the late sixties there seems to be a marked tendency to give robots manly, Stentorian voices (Dick Tufeld on Lost in Space, say-- Dr. Smith was the robot's comic foil, not the robot). But androgynous computer voices in written science fiction certainly go back further than that, and "androgynous" might have turned into "effeminate male" in somebody's head (or "butch or schoolmarmish female," like the voice Majel Barrett was doing on Star Trek).
From whence came the movie and TV science-fiction cliché of giving robots and computers effeminate male voices (sometimes to the extent of making them outrageous gay stereotypes)? Did it start with Douglas Rain in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Up to the late sixties there seems to be a marked tendency to give robots manly, Stentorian voices (Dick Tufeld on Lost in Space, say-- Dr. Smith was the robot's comic foil, not the robot). But androgynous computer voices in written science fiction certainly go back further than that, and "androgynous" might have turned into "effeminate male" in somebody's head (or "butch or schoolmarmish female," like the voice Majel Barrett was doing on Star Trek).