The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)
In Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) an enthusiastic computer science professor uses biological metaphors to explain the basic parts and functioning of a mainframe computer recently installed in a Medfield college classroom. Comparing computational functions to the human brain and body, he explains how computers can be used to replace humans for everyday actions, even going so far as to argue for the superiority of the computer over many human abilities. But when it comes to a historical demonstration of a simulated space flight using a twenty-year-old program, the computer malfunctions, resulting in a shower of sparks, smoke, and a series of erratic actions.
Before the computer can be repaired, a lightning bolt strikes the classroom, causing a literal transfer of data and computational power to one of the students, Dexter Riley (Kurt Russel), who begins functioning as a data processor. Having been transformed–through the conjunction of computer hardware and an electrical surge–into a human computer, Riley now beeps involuntarily and recites lines of code in his sleep. When exposed to code word inputs, he verbalizes the contents of his "infallible" memory banks, which include illegal gambling records from the computer's previous owner, a crooked businessman and college benefactor (Cesar Romero). Although Riley now possesses the superhuman ability to ingest and recall information, memorizing entire encyclopedias and languages in a matter of minutes, he becomes disconnected from his old friends and increasingly socially isolated. Riley's humanity and ordinary intelligence is eventually restored after a strategically timed blow to the head and he is reunited with his social group, thereby restoring the status quo.
Disney's vision of the disruptive and dehumanizing potentials of computers is characteristically superficial but symptomatically revealing. As with many other computer narratives of this era (Sex Kittens Go to College, The Honeymoon Machine), a mainframe computer finds immediate application in the realm of gambling, flawlessly predicting the outcomes of horse races based on straightforward data analysis. The overstated superiority of machines over humans is rarely left unpunished in these narratives, and Riley's computational abilities correlate directly with his downward spiral toward criminal vice and personal arrogance. The only saving grace of Riley's computational abilities is that he leads a team to the finals of a national trivia competition with a $100,000 prize. The Medfield team eventually does win the prize, but only after Riley's ordinary intelligence has been restored and one of the other team members delivers the winning answer, thus marking the triumph of human over machine intellect.
Released the year after highly publicized campus protests at Columbia University and the year before the National Guard shootings at Kent State, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes offers a reassuring escape from the unrest fomenting on many college campuses during the Nixon era. At Disney's Medfield College, in contrast, the top subject of debate among faculty and administration is whether to buy a dishwasher for the faculty lounge or a computer for the classroom. Only a hint of real-world student protests appears in the promotional poster for the film, in which students hold up signs surrounding an anthropomorphized mainframe computer, one of which reads "Re-VOLT now." The computational kitsch aesthetics that playfully adorn the opening title sequence also include title cards with punched holes resembling the "IBM cards" used for Vietnam draft registration, only a year after the Supreme Court ruled against First Amendment protections for the destruction of draft cards.
Although lacking in subtlety, the flat humanist critique offered by The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes articulates a common set of cinematic tropes in the treatment of computers in this era. The successful uses to which computers are put are consistently either trivial or illegal; the only potentially interesting application of the computer (the simulation of a space flight to Saturn) results in near total destruction of the computer itself. Neither the computationally enabled human (Riley) nor the professor who initially makes a powerful, ethical argument for the necessity of including computer science in the college's curriculum succeed in modeling a relationship between humanity and computation that is anything but destructive.
Before the computer can be repaired, a lightning bolt strikes the classroom, causing a literal transfer of data and computational power to one of the students, Dexter Riley (Kurt Russel), who begins functioning as a data processor. Having been transformed–through the conjunction of computer hardware and an electrical surge–into a human computer, Riley now beeps involuntarily and recites lines of code in his sleep. When exposed to code word inputs, he verbalizes the contents of his "infallible" memory banks, which include illegal gambling records from the computer's previous owner, a crooked businessman and college benefactor (Cesar Romero). Although Riley now possesses the superhuman ability to ingest and recall information, memorizing entire encyclopedias and languages in a matter of minutes, he becomes disconnected from his old friends and increasingly socially isolated. Riley's humanity and ordinary intelligence is eventually restored after a strategically timed blow to the head and he is reunited with his social group, thereby restoring the status quo.
Disney's vision of the disruptive and dehumanizing potentials of computers is characteristically superficial but symptomatically revealing. As with many other computer narratives of this era (Sex Kittens Go to College, The Honeymoon Machine), a mainframe computer finds immediate application in the realm of gambling, flawlessly predicting the outcomes of horse races based on straightforward data analysis. The overstated superiority of machines over humans is rarely left unpunished in these narratives, and Riley's computational abilities correlate directly with his downward spiral toward criminal vice and personal arrogance. The only saving grace of Riley's computational abilities is that he leads a team to the finals of a national trivia competition with a $100,000 prize. The Medfield team eventually does win the prize, but only after Riley's ordinary intelligence has been restored and one of the other team members delivers the winning answer, thus marking the triumph of human over machine intellect.
Released the year after highly publicized campus protests at Columbia University and the year before the National Guard shootings at Kent State, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes offers a reassuring escape from the unrest fomenting on many college campuses during the Nixon era. At Disney's Medfield College, in contrast, the top subject of debate among faculty and administration is whether to buy a dishwasher for the faculty lounge or a computer for the classroom. Only a hint of real-world student protests appears in the promotional poster for the film, in which students hold up signs surrounding an anthropomorphized mainframe computer, one of which reads "Re-VOLT now." The computational kitsch aesthetics that playfully adorn the opening title sequence also include title cards with punched holes resembling the "IBM cards" used for Vietnam draft registration, only a year after the Supreme Court ruled against First Amendment protections for the destruction of draft cards.
Although lacking in subtlety, the flat humanist critique offered by The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes articulates a common set of cinematic tropes in the treatment of computers in this era. The successful uses to which computers are put are consistently either trivial or illegal; the only potentially interesting application of the computer (the simulation of a space flight to Saturn) results in near total destruction of the computer itself. Neither the computationally enabled human (Riley) nor the professor who initially makes a powerful, ethical argument for the necessity of including computer science in the college's curriculum succeed in modeling a relationship between humanity and computation that is anything but destructive.
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