Sex and machines: the ‘buzz’ of 1950s science fiction films

Abstract

Sex sells movies. It is part of the text we buy, part of what Matthew Fuller terms its ‘memetic buzz’, producing ‘an explosion of activity and ideas’ around the text. That ‘buzz’ is especially apparent in 1950s sf films, when the genre was struggling to find a new identity and an audience. This essay examines an element of that ‘buzz’ in film advertisements for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Tobor the Great (1954), Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Colossus of New York (1958) – all of which linked sex and technology in a fashion that reflected the anxieties and hopes that marked this cinema as it sought to shape its new generic identity.