Geeky challenge

[drwex]

At dinner discussion last night one of my coworkers asserted that Tony Stark was the only engineer(1) in pop culture who is depicted as attractive. I dispute this, but so far I've only been able to come up with two counter-examples:

1. Kaylee (Firefly)
2. Geordi (ST:TNG) - not my type, but I've definitely heard women say appreciative things about LeVar Burton in that role.

(1) the rules of the game exclude doctors (e.g. Bruce Banner) and straight-up scientists (e.g Jon Osterman/Dr Manhattan from Watchmen).

Help me, oh geeks of my acquaintance. What am I forgetting?

ETA: I think we might include Bruce Wayne/Batman, at least in some incarnations, and MacGuyver. ETA 2: I think Dan Dreiberg from Watchmen also qualifies.

Comments

[aelf.livejournal.com]

MacGyver's the first one I thought of. I grew up on him.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Kevin Flynn.
The guy in Sliders.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Chris Knight from Real Genius.

Which makes me think if Knight Rider's mechanicy person would count.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Ash was an engineering major in the Evil Dead series. Bruce Campbell can be considered attractive.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

If you count Kaylee, do Bo and Luke Duke count as total grease monkeys?

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Jordan from Real Genius, too.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

The guy in Quantum Leap. Ok I need to stop now and have dinner with family.

Wait. Peter Weller, Buckaroo Bonzai. and everyone else.

[drwex]

Hilarious. OK, in reverse order:

I did think of Buckaroo, but he's disqualified on account of being a doctor. It's probably the case that the tinkering in that film is Hikita.

Quantum Leap's Sam Beckett is definitively listed as "scientist".

Jordan in Real Genius is portrayed as the opposite of attractive, and she's a physicist who tinkers out of neuroticism, not as an avocation. (Aside: a friend of mine from undergrad days knows the woman that character is based on and she was not pleased with how she was portrayed, partly due to how unattractive and neurotic that character seemed.)

I have no comment on Bo and Luke Duke. Just not going there.

The question isn't whether Bruce Campbell is attractive, but whether the character is portrayed as attractive, which I'd argue it isn't.

Chris Knight is definitely a theoretical physicist.

MacGuyver I think qualifies, though it's been so long since I saw that show I barely remember.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

If you accept that a total jerk can be attractive, then I think Army of Darkness Ash counts as attractive.

Many of the adults in the Spy Kids movies are engineering types. Antonio Banderas.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

I viewed Jordan in Real Genius as being geeky-attractive, Not drop dead gorgeous, not ugly. If Geordi can be considered attractive, I think Jordan counts.

I also think it can really hard to separate neuroticism from avocation... if I consider people I have known. :)

[drwex]

The point is that she (the character) is set up to be unattractive.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I thought Scotty from the Original Star Trek was attractive.

[drwex]

See my reply to woodwardiocom below.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

All the engineers from Star Trek, in addition to Geordi.

Many, many "wrench wenches" in anime, such as Winry and Belldandy.

Heck, Tinkerbell!

[drwex]

I think there's a distinction between "is portrayed as attractive" and "some people like that look." That's why I thought LeVar Burton was a stretch and I'd wager other Trek engineers are more of a stretch. Even in the modern reboot the new/young Scotty is much more geeky and less attractive than his shipmates.

I debate Tinkerbell as an engineer by any stretch; I don't know anime well enough to have an opinion there (even if I did just compare SHIELD's hovercarriers to Space Battleship Yamato).

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I debate Tinkerbell as an engineer by any stretch

In the Disney Fairies movies, she's a "tinker fairy", and can build a snow machine out of a cheese grater and two acorns. Trust me on this one.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't know this if I didn't parent a daughter who liked Tinkerbell once upon a time, but I'm with you.

[caulay.livejournal.com]

There are certainly more "Scotty gets the girl" stories than "Sulu/Checkov gets the girl" stories in (original) ST.

I dispute that he (in either version) is intentionally portrayed as "less attractive" and it is more an issue of "lower billing than Kirk/Spock/McCoy".

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

Fitz and Simmon's on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Alex on Continuum
Abby on NCIS
John Crichton on Farscape

[drwex]

*foreheadsmack* Fitz and Simmons are who I was failing to think of on the spot, though I think she's disqualified as being a doctor. He's the gadget guy, mostly, and I'm not sure his portrayal qualifies as "attractive".

Not familiar with Continuum or NCIS. IMDB lists an "Alec Sadler" for Continuum - I assume that's who you meant?

I debated about Crichton. He's an astronaut and theoretical physicist. The premise of the show is that the launch where he goes astray is testing his theory which I think makes him more scientist than engineer.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

yes, Alec, oops
I think of Crichton as an engineer because he not only came up with the theory but also put together and designed his ship.Maybe not an engineer by title, but certainly by actions and results.

[drwex]

I'm trying to remember whether Crichton is credited with the design of the module. It's definitive that this module is built to "test his theory" which I think makes him more scientist still.

[caulay.livejournal.com]

If being "a doctor" (in the same way that Banner is, ie, has a PhD) then neither Fitz nor Simmons counts, as they both have multiple PhDs.

OTOH, Simmons is very clearly portrayed as a engineer, just bio-oriented.

And Banner, in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a dual PhD in Biology and Physics, and not an MD.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Buckaroo Banzai!!!!

Would rule one also exclude astronauts?

[drwex]

Disqualified as he's listed as a neurosurgeon (doctor). I did think of him.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

According to Mike, he's not just a doctor, he's also an engineer and physicist. Are they mutually exclusive?

Dan Dreiberg from Watchmen, he offers.
And every astronaut and original test pilot, ever. Though they were often trained scientists as well as engineers.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Now my husband and I are arguing over whether or not Leonardo DiCaprio is attractive (I say no, he says yes) from "The Aviator", playing Howard Hughes. Which is apparently who Tony Stark is modeled on.

[drwex]

We're looking for engineers. I continue to think that although Buckaroo is a jack of all trades, he's primarily a hard-rocking physicist and neurosurgeon.

I agree that Stark is modeled on Hughes and I agree with your husband that Hughes (as portrayed by DiCaprio) is intended to be attractive. Even if it's not your kind of thing, that's the intention of the portrayal. However, Hughes is a real person and we're looking for pop-culture characters. That also lets out actual real-world astronauts. We're not looking for "persons who are attractive" but "characters created in a way that portrays them as attractive."

This, I think, lets Dreiberg out (though I'm sort of waffly on this) because he's portrayed as nerdy and not really that attractive. Though you could argue he is, but just doesn't realize it.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Ahh, so they need to be pop culture fiction. I've been trying to think of real life pop culture icons (like Carl Sagan) who were also attractive and I've been struggling.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

Well, several incarnations of the Doctor - which I don't think violates the stated doctor rule...

The Professor from Gilligan's island, if you like the type...

Does Batman design and build his own toys? In some of the movies he seems to have.

Going down the MacG route - the A-Team has build how much crazy stuff? And wasn't there a show in the 70s about a rocket built from junkyard leavings....

Now them all is good guys. Who are the Team Evil gizmo builders who are attractive? I'm having more trouble with that...

[drwex]

The Doctor is distinctly possible, though one gets the sense that he's an engineer by necessity, not trade.

The Professor is disqualified as scientist, not engineer.

Batman, in some portrayals, would seem to qualify.

The only one I remember from A Team who was pictured as attractive was "Face" and he wasn't an engineer.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

Oh, Batman movies, Lucius Fox. Morgan Freeman is attractive.
You're kinda talking to wrong crowd, we tend to skew towards thinking geeky is attractive

[drwex]

As I noted above, the question isn't whether the individual is attractive, but whether the character is created in such a way that they're intended to be attractive.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I recall any one person on the team coming up with the plans for the stuff they build, but I guess there is also a line of gadgeteer v engineer. But I think that would toss MacG out... Then you have the line of Programmer v. Computer Engineer to worry about.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

"Salvage 1" was the rocket show thingie. but I don't think Andy Griffith was particularly attractive...

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Do video games count? Gordon Freeman is an engineer (and a physicist).

[drwex]

Source?

By the way I'm going out for the evening. I'll reply more later.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

He's from Half Life. He's a scientist by training, so you might disqualify him due to that. That's tough because it knocks out lots of tinkering-engineering types because if they were educated they tended to be educated in science.

Like the guys in the train steam punk movie, Wild Wild West. Were they formally educated? I don't remember it being mentioned in the movie but it's been ages.

[drwex]

I don't think formal education is the issue here so much as "what do they mainly do"? To take the prototype (Tony Stark) - what he does mostly is build stuff. There are lots of scientists who also happen to build things, often because nobody else can understand their ideas. They also tend to program computers, but I don't think of them, per se, as programmers.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Then Chris Knight from Real Genius shouldn't be disqualified on the basis of his education, because he's definitely into building things. I read him as one of the people who's interested in making things, and gets the education because it supports that drive. (Whereas I could go with the reverse for Jordan from the same movie, she's interested in the theory, and the doing is something she's also driven to do, but it's an "also" and not necessarily a primary.)

From my view, Dr. Walter Bishop from Fringe wouldn't count because he's primarily a scientist and he builds things primarily to support his science. But his son is more of an engineering type.

[drwex]

He's not per se disqualified on the basis of his education so much as he's disqualified on the basis of how the character is presented. It's a scientist character, who makes things to test out his crazy theories. Compare with Tony Stark who makes things and develops the theories necessary to make the things.

(I and my coworkers are engineers so it's perhaps not a distinction obvious to others. I hadn't thought of it that way before.)

[aelf.livejournal.com]

I read the Chris Knight character differently from you. That could be because I haven't seen the movie in ages, but it could also be because we see it differently - much like I don't think Jordan was presented in the movie as being unattractive. I think she was presented as being "awkwardly" attractive, in direct contrast to the cheerleader types who were conventionally attractive. Chris Knight clearly enjoyed designing things, not only to test out his theories, but also to just be goofy with people.

I make/design things and have engineers in my family and among my friends. Many engineers don't develop large theories, they build things, often putting things together in unexpected ways (if you're considering how they're presented in popular media). If you're aiming more for people who derive grand theories you're by definition looking for more scientist types and less pure application types (which seems to be the reverse of your initial proposal which excluded more pure science types).

I've kind of been thinking about it as the difference between inventor/engineer/scientist, but I think you have a different taxonomy in your head.

[lsl.livejournal.com]

Almost any of the Sparks from Girl Genius.

[drwex]

Oh that's a good call. Yes, all the main characters in that comic qualify.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Clearly, we need to add some attractive engineers to pop culture! Perhaps our writers, filmmakers, comic artists, etc. can get on the job. :-)

[lsl.livejournal.com]

How about (Alec) Hardison from Leverage (TV)?

[drwex]

I don't watch the show but I'll try to ask my g/f tomorrow - she watches it.