by Dr. William Haloupek ~
If the general public has misconceptions about scientists, it is not hard to see why. The entertainment industry, such as it is, delights in portraying scientists and other intellectuals as conspicuously peculiar.
An easy choice for an evil antagonist is the mad scientist. An equally easy choice for a ridiculous fool is the obsessed scientist ? so distracted by his scholarship that he can?t tie his shoes or pull up his pants, never mind talk to a pretty girl. These stereotypes have been reinforced again and again in literature, cinema and television. Given our entertainment culture, it?s a wonder any child grows up wanting to be a scientist.
The undermining of scientists? public image is especially vexing in science fiction. Naturally, the genre appeals to people who are interested in science.? What a shame that this eager audience is so badly served by writers who insist on representing their main characters, scientists, as bumbling idiots or evil megalomaniacs. The early history of science fiction has some of the best, or worst, examples.
Literature
The legend of Faust, or Faustus, dates back to the 16th Century.? Faust sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for scientific knowledge. His cardinal sin was that he preferred human knowledge over divine knowledge. Sacrilege!? Hundreds of plays, poems, operas, novels and films have been based on this legend; 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).
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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 Victor Frankenstein, who was not a doctor, but a well meaning if na?ve genius whose experiment went horribly wrong.? Movie adaptations later converted the character into Dr. Frankenstein: an insane, evil, mad scientist. If you want to make someone menacing or sinister, just put ?Doctor? or ?Professor? in front of his 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.?? Verne reinforced a general theme that people with great scientific understanding usually evince an appalling lack common sense.
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886), a doctor has an evil flip side revealed by a potion that transforms him from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. A character is usually made more sinister by replacing Mr. with Dr.? In a twist, the good doctor?s execrable experimentation is responsible for creating the wicked mister.
H.G. Wells created an even 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.
While the 19th Century pioneers of science fiction may have generated some interest in science, they also created misconceptions about those whose life work it would be.? H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were great visionaries but they were hardly great friends to science.
Cinema
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 terrifically 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 often depicted as ridiculous fools more than dangerous criminals.? Such was their treatment in 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); incompetent idiots, all.
In the Cinema classic,? Dr. Strangelove (1964), the inimitable Peter Sellers was the glorious combination of ridiculous fool and dangerous criminal.
The ?Hollywood Treatment? and Dr. Strangelove:
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The Harry Potter movies (1997-2011) have been remarkably successful and influential with today?s youth. The evil antagonist is, of course, Professor Snape.
Many science fiction movies, like Star Wars (1977 ? 2008) and Alien (1979, 1986, 1992) get by with no scientists in major roles. It?s difficult to know how you can have science fiction without science, or science without scientists, but at least these films don?t misrepresent scientists.
Even Star Trek (1979 ? 2002), with ten movies in all, has scarce use for scientists. Dr. Carol Marcus was the well-meaning but na?ve head of the misguided Genesis Project.? Dr. Gillian Taylor was the kindly but ineffectual whale expert. Then, there was the redoubtable Zachary Cochrane, really more of an engineer than a scientist.
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) and The Ward (2011),? it?s a wonder anyone seeks out psychiatric treatment of their own volition.
Mathematicians make wonderful targets too. A Beautiful Mind (2001) tells the true story of a brilliant mathematician with severe mental problems. I suppose a movie about any of the thousands of mathematicians without mental problems would not have seemed believable!?
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 of 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. Yes, mathematicians seem to get a particularly bad rap from Hollywood.
Television
Dr. Smith
The television industry really does a job on scientists.? Lost in Space (1965-1968)? featured Dr. Smith as a conniving, petty, cowardly, selfish, good-for-nothing scientist.? Other than that, a great guy.
The hit series Gilligan?s Island (1964-1967) featured seven people stranded on a desert island. One was a scientist, who had no name other than the Professor. Two of the three female characters were young and single, but it was clear that there would be no tropical hanky panky going on. The Skipper was too fat, Gilligan was an idiot, Mr. Howell was married and the Professor was ? a scientist! He was a good looking and well-mannered man and he was always inventing some way to get the lot of them rescued ? until Gilligan screwed it up. I never understood what was wrong with the Professor.
Batman had his own laboratory, and he was always outsmarting the villains, like Dr. Hugo Strange, Dr. Jane Blazedale (Blaze), and Dr. Kirk Langstrom (Man-Bat). Of course, Batman (Bruce Wayne) himself was not saddled with any fancy academic credentials. (Many of Batman?s villains also had some physical deformity or disfigurement, supporting the idea that such misfortune corresponded to moral degeneracy. That?s a topic for another article).
While Star Trek (1966-1969) featured the logical and effective, Mr. Spock,? scientists introduced as supporting characters were usually evil or misguided.?? They?d often end up dead too.? This stellar trend continued in the many Star Trek spinoffs.
The Big Bang Theory (2007 ? present) follows three young PhD physicists and one non-PhD aerospace engineer. Of course, they are socially awkward, and their personal lives seem petty and ridiculous.
Truth
Carl Sagan
I know hundreds of scientists and other intellectuals.? They are certainly not incompetent cretins. They are not any more lacking in common sense than ?average? people. They don?t have evil plans to take over the world or perform hideous experiments on the innocent.
The vast anti-intellectual conspiracy does profound harm to the pursuit of knowledge by characterizing the searchers for truth as eccentric cranks.? This, they are not.? They are Carl Sagan and Michael Elias DeBakey and Steve Jobs.
We could all tick off the names of a hundred movie stars and pro athletes.? They fill up our news coverage. But, the average person would be hard pressed to name more than a handful of scientists, engineers or intellectuals ? living or dead.
The film star and sports hero earns hundreds of times as much as a scientist could ever hope to make.? Indeed, capitalism rewards most who work hard but chooses the wrong people to reward extravagantly.? We reward our best and brightest with neither fame or fortune.? They toil for little and do it in relative obscurity.
This society would be just as well off without anyone who could hit 70 home runs in a baseball season.? We would be far worse off if we didn?t have anyone researching the cure for cancer.
~ Dr. William Haloupek is a PhD in Mathematics (U of Wisconsin-Madison)
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