Educational Media Reviews Online

Caroline Martel uses clips from industrial, training, and promotional films to trace the development of telecommunications as it revolved around the telephone operator. The films were produced by the various components of the industry during the span of the last century. We are taken from the days when the Bell Company feared that there would not be enough young women available to allow for continuous expansion of the telephone network to nearly the present when most of the operators’ work had been taken over by computers and synthesized voices.

A young woman starting as an operator was told that her voice was her appearance. For a long time the slogan was “a voice with a smile.” But while focused on this hidden workforce, represented only by their voices, this film shows us much about the development of big industry and women’s place in it. Needing an ever larger workforce, the company put out promotional videos that suggested that telephone operator was a young woman’s dream job – until she married.

The segments on training and supervision are particularly enlightening. Adopting scientific management, the phone company used clocks, cameras, and supervisors to monitor everything that the operator did. Training imposed standardization – of speech, expression, and courtesy. And when women replaced men in the telephone factory during World War II male supervisors were told that women didn’t mind routine, repetitive work and were particularly good at jobs requiring manual dexterity. Progress, in the form of dial service and then computerization, gradually displaced women workers.

Other reviews have used the terms “ethereal” and “science fiction” in describing this film. The presentation is highly imaginative and has an art film quality. The film clips are nicely edited, and their story is tied together by an other-worldly narrator who says that she is the ghost of invisible women workers. She speaks in French (the film was made in Canada), and there are English subtitles. Most of the film clips are in English. Unfortunately, the narration and various cinematographic effects used may be a distraction to unsophisticated viewers. For this reason, I would be reluctant to show the film to high school or lower level undergraduate students. More advanced students and adults should appreciate the film’s humor in addition to the lessons to be learned from the historical footage.

Awards

• Best Experimental Film, Brooklyn Underground Film Festival