Science and Film

Paper Summary:

This paper illustrates how the depiction of science and scientists in films and other popular media has long been characterized either by fear and anxiety at scientists' potential power or by wild acclaim for their accomplishments. It examines through a review of several films how there are variations on the basic stereotypes of the mad and the benignly inspired scientist and how filmmakers tend to express general societal concerns in their choice of type. It reviews films such as "Pi", "Contact" and "The Absent-Minded Professor". It also looks at portrayals of the most famous scientist Albert Einstein in "Insignificance", "I.Q." and "Young Einstein' which all address the problem of a public that idolizes what seems incomprehensible, but powerful, to them.

From the Paper:

"Stereotypes of the scientist also included the malignant varieties and even types whose benign neglect (caused by their single-minded attention to science with no concern for the consequences) was their main characteristic. Mad scientists certainly preceded and followed the biopic tradition. But in all these cases scientists were viewed as powerful beings. In the past twenty years, however, this trend seems to have reversed itself in two ways. On the one hand, films "increasingly portray science and reason as tools that are unsuitable for understanding our world in a new age of credulity" (Evans 45). Laypersons, for example, are often depicted as achieving better results, moral as well as scientific, than scientists. In Spielberg's E. T., one of the most popular films ever made, the extraterrestrial being is menaced by the cold, faceless forces of science and can only be helped by the kindly efforts of a little boy and his friends. Even the conclusions of more scientifically aware films such as Contact and Pi hint at the comfort offered by the existence of forces that truly are above everything the scientists have failed to comprehend or prove."

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