Scientists and Intellectuals in Entertainment Read online

Scientists and Intellectuals

  in Entertainment

  Dr. William Haloupek

  Copyright 2013 William Haloupek

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  The cover image is “19th century engraving of Homunculus from Goethe's Faust part II” from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Faust_image_19thcentury.jpg .

  If the general public has misconceptions about scientists, it is not hard to see why. Scientists and other intellectuals are often poorly portrayed by the entertainment industry. An easy choice for an evil antagonist is a mad scientist. An equally easy choice for a ridiculous fool is a scientist without common sense. These stereotypes are reinforced again and again in movies, television and literature. It’s amazing when any child grows up wanting to be a scientist, in our culture.

  The undermining of scientists’ public image is especially acute in science fiction. The genre appeals to people who are interested in science, and they are badly served by writers who misrepresent scientists as bumbling idiots or evil megalomaniacs. The early history of science fiction has some of the best examples.

  The legend of Faust, or Faustus, dates back to the 16th Century. The general idea is that Faust has sold his soul to the Devil, in exchange for scientific knowledge. His mortal sin was that he preferred human knowledge over divine knowledge. Hundreds of plays, poems, operas, novels and films have been based on this legend, such as Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (1604), Goethe’s poem/play Faust (many revisions), Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus (1947), and the movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).

  The desire to know more about science has often been perceived as evil and dangerous. I find that idea evil and dangerous.

  Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818) featured Viktor Frankenstein, who was not a doctor, just a well meaning, but naïve genius, whose experiment went horribly wrong. Later, movie adaptations made him into Dr. Frankenstein: an insane, evil, mad scientist. If you want to make someone menacing and sinister, put Doctor or Professor in front of their name.

  Jules Verne wrote several novels featuring mad scientists in the late 19th Century. Most of Verne’s scientists were not so much evil as misguided. They didn’t realize that their discoveries would be used for evil purposes. The general theme was that people with great scientific understanding usually lacked common sense.

  In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886), the doctor has an evil side to his character, and a potion reveals this in the transformation of Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. This is an odd reversal. Usually, a character is made to seem more sinister by replacing Mr. with Dr.

  H.G. Wells created a more sinister antagonist in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). He went even further with the character Griffin in The Invisible Man (1897). Griffin was a medical student, driven insane by the power of invisibility, which he had discovered. In contrast, Griffin’s friend Dr. Kemp was likeable, honest and courageous. Several films were made from this book, and in most of them, Griffin became Dr. Griffin, and Dr. Kemp became more of a cowardly villain.

  The pioneers of science fiction, in the 19th Century, may have generated some interest in science, but they also created misconceptions about scientists. I can hardly think of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne as friends of science, although they were great visionaries.

  It’s not always scientists who are cast in the role of evil antagonist. Occasionally, other intellectuals can be made to serve the same purpose. It is rare to find mathematicians, historians, philosophers and poets as characters in popular entertainment, but when they appear, they are usually cast as wicked geniuses and/or absurd fools.

  Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 4 novels and 56 short stories, from 1887 to 1914, featuring Sherlock Holmes, a private detective. His chief adversary was Professor Moriarty, a mathematician. Of course, Holmes always outsmarted Moriarty, but he wasn’t a doctor or professor.

  The motion picture industry lost no time in misrepresenting scientists. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Metropolis (1927), Bride of the Monster (1955), Dr. No (1962), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Spider-Man (2002, 2004, 2007) featured typical mad scientists. The same theme has been repeated hundreds of times. An evil (and often quite mad) scientist doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care about the consequences of his experiments. Things go horribly wrong, and ordinary people, relying on courage and luck, save the day.

  The film Forbidden Planet (1956) had two scientist characters, Dr. Morbius and Dr. Ostrow. For some reason, they were not evil or ridiculous. Score one for the scientists!

  As some science fiction films became more comedy and less horror, scientists and intellectuals were more often depicted as ridiculous fools than as dangerous criminals. Dr. Strangelove in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), Professor Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Dr. Durand-Durand in Barbarella (1968) Professor Klump in the Nutty Professor movies (1996, 2000) and Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies (1997, 1999, 2002) were incompetent idiots.

  Ghostbusters (1984, 1989) involves three parapsychologists, Dr. Venkman, Dr. Spengler and Dr. Stantz, who are fired by Columbia University, because their research is, of course, hogwash. They go on to be unwitting heroes, fighting real ghosts.

  Many science fiction movies, like Star Wars (1977 – 2008) and Alien (1979, 1986, 1992) get by with no scientists in major roles. I don’t know how you can have science fiction without science, or science without scientists, but at least these films don’t misrepresent scientists. I suppose they see the scientific community as a necessary, but uninteresting segment of society.

  Even Star Trek (1979 – 2002), with ten movies in all, has little use for scientists. There is Dr. Carol Marcus, the well-meaning but naïve head of the misguided Genesis Project, and Dr. Gillian Taylor, well-meaning but reluctant whale expert, and of course the redoubtable Zachary Cochrane, who was really more of an engineer than a scientist.

  There are a few counterexamples. Michael Crichton has written several science fiction novels, many of which have been made into movies, like The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Jurassic Park (1993, 1997, 2001), in which the scientists are depicted as heroes. They still have their human weaknesses, which almost have catastrophic results, but they are the good guys.

  Steven Spielberg, who directed and/or produced the Jurassic Park series, and many other movies, also has a pretty good record. Not all of his movies have scientists as characters, but he doesn’t usually rely on the cheap trick of inserting a scientist whenever he needs a character with character flaws. In the Indiana Jones series of films (1981-2008), the hero is an archeologist, sometimes referred to as Dr. Jones. Although the plots have almost nothing to do with science, and everything to do with action and adventure, it is nice to see a scientist who is not an idiot or megalomaniac. Of course, his arch enemy is another archaeologist, the unscrupulous Dr. Belloq. Other Spielberg films, like Coma (1978) and Twister (1996), pit Dr. against Dr. We can’t always be the good guys!

  Psychiatric hospitals are convenient venues for horrific experiments, or at least sadistic mistreatment. After One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), 12 Monkeys (1995), Shutter Island (2010), The Ward (2011), and many others, it’s amazing that anyone would allow their loved ones to get psychiatric treatment.

  Mathematicians make especially easy targets. A Beautiful Mind (2001) tells the true story of a brilliant mathematician with severe mental problems. I suppose that a movie about any of the thousands of mathematicians without mental problems would not have seemed believable! Pr
oof (2005) was a fictional depiction of another brilliant mathematician with mental problems.

  Good Will Hunting (1997) tells the highly fictional story of a brilliant, sociopathic, young mathematical genius who has no academic background and never studies. This causes a lot or jealousy and resentment among the academic mathematicians, who spent years in college and graduate school, learning their trade.

  Pi (1998) also features a young, brilliant, extreme sociopath, brilliant mathematician. Mathematicians seem to get a particularly bad rap from Hollywood. Remember, the Jeff Goldblum character in the Jurassic Park movies, the only one of the scientists who