Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/25/today-in-history-1921-the-wor.html
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Not sure what that means… but happy anniversary robots!
I think this highlights very nicely how concepts and ideas from science fiction can have real world impacts that show how we think about reality.
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Wow some of your ex’s are older than my father who turns 80 something this year.
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In (2013)The World’s End , certain characters pushed back against the label, “Robot”, citing this play. I thought that was pretty cool, for a movie ostensibly about drinking beer!
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Interestingly, the first robot to appear in a movie was in 1918. You can see it for yourself at the Houdini Museum, as I did a few weeks ago:
The Houdini Museum is worth visiting on its own even without this!
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Aren’t Čapek’s robots organic rather than mechanical? Does anyone know why “robot” displaced earlier English words for mechanical simulacra, such as “automaton”?
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Platform heels too by the look of it.
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That robot’s primary function in the movie was essentially to act as an electro-succubus.
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Good news everyone! I’m sending you all to Chapek Nine, a planet entirely inhabited by robots where all humans are killed on sight!
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I shall have to re-watch the original, my memory is blurring it with the anime version.
Plus it’s hard to see it without hearing Queen.
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The robot was disguised as a human woman for most of the movie. Her seduction dance was pretty racy even by today’s standards.
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That was some show!
I shall have to look that movie up properly, that clip was far weirder and unsettling than I remembered, and Art Deco is just the best sci-fi aesthetic ever.
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Yeah that film basically answers the question “what if C-3PO’s grandma led a secret double-life headlining as an erotic dancer?”
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You’re right, the robots in RUR are more like Roy Batty or Ash or Arnold than Robby or a Roomba. I don’t know when the name was first applied to tin men, I’m afraid.
I’d add that Capek is a wonderful writer. Arthur Miller called his works “a joy to read” and I agree. His Apocryphal Tales are a good entry – short and punchy and filled with sly humor.
He was a humanist in the best sense, fully aware of human frailties but not overburdened with cheap cynicism. He was an opponent of both fascism and communism before WWII, doing what he could to argue for reason and decency in a dark time.
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Even better is the way the Art Deco is combined with the Medieval clockwork imagery. All that’s really missing is one of the steam powered bird automata from the Byzantine court to fill out the timeline.
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For anyone interested in fantasy and/or Swiftian satire, I highly recommend Čapek’s War with the Newts.
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Before the Hayes Code, obviously.
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It was also a German film and thus not beholden to American film production guidelines.
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