Sex and The
Single Robot
What sex is this robot?
In normal life, we wouldn't begin to think of
applying this elementary biological criteria to any washing machine or computer or
automobile (though some do...). However, in Small Wonder, we have a machine
in the form of a lovely little girl, still, there has to be more to making Vicki a
"girl robot" than just plastic molded in pleasing ways.
When the preliminary background research on
Small Wonder was performed, we discovered previous market research into
domestic robotic aides by various manufacturers in late 1970s and early '80s. Though
largely a fringe-offshoot of market speculation than serious venture capital exploration,
the results largely agreed that the (then) pioneering foray into household robots was
grossly premature (as evidenced by the heroic failures of the Hero and Androbot series in
the early eighties) by the crippling limits of hardware and control and perceptual
technology at the period. Nevertheless, there was immense public interest in the basic
concept of domestic robot aides though with several crucial caveats. R2-D2 was cute -- in
a movie, but not in a home, as the makers of the Hero series discovered.
Once the problems of visual perception and CPU power
and bipedal dynamics are worked out, the biggest task facing robotic home aide makers
will be dealing with the finickiness and latent fears of the human public. The blindingly
pragmatic engineers' and science-fiction writers' view that families would simply look
upon autonomous robots roaming their rooms and halls like cute animated vacuum cleaners
was dashed by the reality of family friendliness, technology wariness, and household
aesthetics. (Please read Vicki On Dunahue.) The home robot of
the future had to inconspicuously blend into the decor and demeanor of its family
environment to be an acceptable and attractive functional complement to the home, and act
and look at least as innocuous as a television set or, well, a child. The studies found
on the most part that people preferred devices that looked as unintimidating as possible
in size and stature; were as easily understood as possible, and were an addition to the
general atmosphere of the home. The most popular references to an "ideal"
robot likenesses were to pets and small adults or children, and of the latter females
weighed in over boys in a significant margin. (Please read Why
Moms Loved Vicki and Why Seniors Doted on Vicki.) This
finding alone shaped Small Wonder's future early in 1984 as the
"default" male sex of the robot-to-be was reassigned as a female. This was not
an easy casting decision because, gender politics aside, most producers are aware that
the overwhelming majority of young actresses are rather technology shy in favor of
contemporary emotional roles, and here was a series whose "heroine" wasn't just
involved with technology, but was technology.
Expanding on these market research studies was the
job of the story tech consultant and involved dropping by various companies and colleges
to glean during lunch hours and in parking lots the opinions of engineers and human
factors experts on the concept of an anthropomorphic robotic domestic aide. The
summation was the robot in question (seldom was the term "android" ever used),
if it was going to be in human form, would have to function at least 90% of the tasks
that a full-sized adult could do, thus creating a baseline of sorts for the robot's
minimum height. Ergonomics and human physiodynamic studies for companies ranging from
toymakers to clothing firms nicely narrowed down the stature of a 9- to 10-year-old child
as being the minimum to perform the majority of adult tasks, from reaching kitchen
shelves to hauling heavy garbage cans. Prior to these figures, the robot girl of the
original Small Wonder draft spanned an age from 11 to 7 years, so getting a
technical handle on age for the pilot was a relief for both casting and storyboards.
Now the REALLY difficult task
began: How does such a robot behave beyond its everyday duty-task instructions? There was
no question that the robot child couldn't (for both practical and dramatic reasons) act
as a coldly functional machine. Such a robot must acknowledge and relate with the
presence of the family around it in a "family friendly" manner. This was not so
simple as acting a wooden pose and speaking in a flat nasal voice. If the performance was
too stilted then you lost the empathy of the audience, which was already being stretched
to feel for a machine, but if your robot acted too human then you lost that special
distinction that made your robot a robot. You could get away with this in a one-shot
TV-movie, but in a series a purely automaton robot would be received like a cold rock.
Other robots/androids of TV and film inevitability develop far-future-class human traits
and even emotions which made it easy to commiserate with them and much easier on the
actor, but keeping true to today's technology with Vicki in the mien of a feasible late
1980s robot was to prove a very difficult narrow line to tread. It would've been much
easier for all concerned to have not been so accurate in this, but then the series
premise of portraying just what it'd be like living with a real 1990s-feasible robot aide
would've been tossed out the window. It'd turn out that one of Small
Wonder's lasting strengths was it largely adhered to the technical parameters
gleaned during its technical background, though there was a sober price to be paid for
Vicki's robotic fidelity.
By "nature" a robot is asexual, so to
imbue it with any semblance of family-friendly "natural" humanity you must
endow its instinctless stoic "behavior" with humanlike Body English, and
particularly coloring its gender as such apt to said form and role. There are such things as a
"boy-gait" and a "girl-gait" and nuances of gestures and facial
expression that define gender beyond the assertions of philosophy and politics. Vicki
would also possess a "fem-slanted" vocabulary and vital elements of feminine
modesty (to be covered in "Sibling Roommates" feature). A real-life V.I.C.I.
would have installed a "behavioral" database of human female kinesthetics via
digitized videotaped movements of real children by which to mimic her human actions and
responses, and Small Wonder portrayed this likelihood. This mimicry wouldn't
be near perfect even for 1990s technology, and the automatonic portrayal of Vicki in the
first episodes, while technically accurate, wasn't really that desirable if she was meant
to be an empathic character, a point that became obvious to the production even before
the fan mail rolled in. This was the beginning of Vicki's "smoothing", or
subtle humanization, and it would be a challenging slippery slope tempered by adhering to
the show's technical bible and heeding the comfort of Vicki's player.
Just how "feminine" Vicki should act was a
hotly contested issue, ranging from her as a coy nymph primly curtseying after every
service to the family to singing tra-la-la and skipping in whenever beckoned (which
would've made great gags were those left at least partially intact). Even Vicki's
"docile doll servant" pinafore costume rankled some of the more feminists on
staff. Some asserted that being female is more than wearing skirts and makeup, while the
males wanted to daintify Vicki into more than "an altar boy in drag", but
political correctness intervened and left her more or less a well-mannered quiet tyke
with sex-neutral prepubertal overtones, her "girlishness" more physically
perceived than an overt dramatic effect, with exceptions in a few shows such as "Company Picnic" and "Little Miss Shopping Mall".
So playing it safe, Vicki was left without a feminine "clothing sense" or
"chat preference" and doesn't even regard herself as a girl -- robot or
otherwise -- so her nonchalantly assuming a boy's role in such episodes doesn't clash
with any gender-core autocognition. In any case, that android-type robots will be sexed
appeared a moot point to those on the staff, especially when the market considerations of
seniors is taken into account, whose fan fondness voiced wished for "very
young" Vickis to have at home. (See Why Seniors Doted on
Vicki).
While Vicki was passively feminine in demeanor, her
advanced twin on the farm, Vanessa, would've been a very different animal, though still
in keeping with Small Wonder's technical premise of pre-2000 technology. The
star of the stillborn "Too Good To Be True" would've been a tempermental blend
of dainty-pie and tomboy from a database compilation of digitized behaviors of widely
assorted live child role-models. Thus, Vanessa acts very close like a child her age
(early adolescence), but although she has an energetic quasi-ego unlike Vicki, like Vicki
she still doesn't actually possess any mind or "soul", though that's a moot
point when you could say that that's just like how a real capricous girl would've acted
in her place. Vanessa also posed the fascinating challenge of adolescent misadventures
with her incomplete rules of already impetuous teenage behavior and how she'd take off on her own
"sense" of fiery femininity copying others like some psychological computer
programs do today. The untouched potential and human drama and comedy of TGTBT, even
beyond Small Wonder, is a loss in showing new social sci-fi facets of the
interactions of quasi-humans and real people in a contemporary setting.
The role of Vicki Lawson demanded a passiveness from
its central player that was never required on television before. It was trying and grueling
work for Miss Brissette to play a deadpan and straight-faced character without any
volition every day, in effect playing not a person but a Thing/It. As the series settled
into gear there were several in production who wondered how long the fun and novelty for
her would wear off and she'd be pining for more normal and expressive roles. That
Brissette hung in there so long to her teen threshold is alone a testament to her stamina
and being a stalwart trouper.
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