overlooked quote

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 8 23:15:26 UTC 2011


Jonathan Lighte wrote
> The movie _Queen of Outer Space_ (1958) atars Zsa Zsa Gabor as a Venusian
> physicist and freedom fighter.
>
> In the scenario, the busty, scantily-clad women of Venus have created an
> Earth-obliterating ray they've housed in a futuristic, polka-dot shed with
> some sort of blades on top.   A male astronaut exclaims dismissively:
>
>  "Oh, come off it! How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?"
>
> The film appears to be the proximate cause of both
>
> 1. modern feminism
>
> 2. the manned space program.
>

This quote is mentioned in a few articles and reference works. A 2007
review article includes the line and the interesting response that
continues the theme.

Cult Camp Classics 1 - Sci-Fi Thrillers. Review by David Cornelius.
Posted July 9, 2007. (Date from website)

And the sexism. Oh, the sexism! Surely Beaumont couldn't have been
serious when he wrote such exchanges as this one, in which the
astronauts discuss the aliens' ray guns:

"How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?"
"And if they did, how could they even aim it? You know what women
drivers are like!"

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/29049/cult-camp-classics-1-sci-fi-thrillers/

The reference "Keep watching the skies!: American science fiction
movies of the fifties, Volume 1" by Bill Warren includes this passage.

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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