There was a movie I saw maybe around 1970 that already looked a bit old. It was black and white. A small band of scientist and astronaut types were in trouble - their spaceship was lost, or they’d crashed, or somebody else was about to crash, or some such crisis. They had to do some kind of calculations by hand to figure out what to do or where to go next (I think this was pre-computer). There was a paternalistic leader figure calling the shots, and he said he would do the calculations, and also told the meek woman on the team to do the calculations, so they could compare results as a kind of check. When they reconvened and compared results, the two were completely different, so the paternalistic leader figure said something like “There is no time to recalculate so we must use my results.” The meek woman looked at the floor in shame. Nobody acknowledged that anybody was behaving dickishly; the significance of the scene was to underscore what difficulties threatened them. This is going out on a limb because the memory is very foggy and I’m a bit face blind anyway, but I kinda think the paternalistic leader figure looked kind of like Howard Hughes, and the meek woman looked kind of like Veronica Lake with dark hair.
I don’t know what movie it was, but the premise doesn’t make sense: If they disagreed, the captain’s calculation stands, and if they agreed, of course the captain’s calculation would also stand. So why have the woman do the calculation, too, if her result wasn’t going to matter?
It makes more sense to have at least three people doing the calculation, so that if one differs from the other two, you use the two that agree.
Yes, I know that. For that matter, if you have to choose between two people’s calculations, and all you know is that one of the two people is a jackass, aren’t you going to choose the other one anyway?
I think the superficial premise was that it was a big deal they were under so much duress they had to make tough choices, and the subtext was that the writers could presume about their audience the mutual understanding that it’s cool to be a sexist jerk. Which is actually why I’m trying to remember the movie itself. I am interested in how people presume being a sexist jerk will be considered cool. But, in this thread, I’m really just hoping for the name of the movie.
I’m surprised I didn’t remember it because MST3K did this film! It’s an old, classic Joel episode.** Here it is on YouTube.** The scene in question starts right at 0:40:00 and Joel & the bots react as you’d expect!
Wow. I’d say that’s even more sexist than the OP remembered. For those who can’t watch it, the woman initially objects to the man’s decision, and he accuses her of being “emotional”. She says that she’s sure she didn’t make a mistake with her calculations and that with people’s lives at stake he can’t just insist on using his results…but before he can respond, she apologizes and looks down in shame. The man says she doesn’t need to apologize for “momentarily being a woman”.
What gets me is that they’re doing all these vital calculations with paper and pencil only, while the spacecraft (excuse me, rocket ship) is traveling toward the Moon at at least seven miles a second. Not a computational aid in sight! :rolleyes:
Reminds me of a Gerry Anderson pilot from 1977 called Into Infinity (which mercifully did not become a television series): an interstellar ship was being sucked into a black hole while the Chief Engineer used a slide rule to figure out what course change was needed to escape!
Even if the ship’s designers had neglected to include an on-board navigational computer, they had handheld calculators back in the late '70s! (Maybe the CE had just forgotten to change the batteries before they embarked on the mission.)
