I noted this article today:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/22/movie.tv.science/index.html?hpt=Sbin
It discusses the 'new' interest that TV and movie producers have in getting the science more believable in their productions.
Perhaps oddly, this worries me.
The article mentions two movies I think of when considering hollywood physics (and biology, chemistry, civil engineering...): The Core and The Day After Tomorrow.
The article regards the former as bad, and implicitly the latter as less so; The Core is less 'realistic', therefore The Day After Tomorrow is a better 'science' movie.
I think the reverse is true. The Core explicitly features Unobtanium as a plot element: if that isn't a giant flag saying "Hello! This is an action-comedy! Check your reality at the door and enjoy the ride!" I don't know what is. The 'errors' in the movie are probably eclipsed only by the plot holes... and who cares? The movie isn't trying to be taken seriously.
The Day After Tomorrow is a different beast. I never got the impression that the movie was intended to be a comedy, but it was guilty of both larger failures of 'reality' and of larger plot holes than The Core. The real problem, for me, is that it cloacked its failures of reality along lines that the public doesn't think about. It will thus tend to reinforce false beliefs of how the world works; IMO this is different from The Core - because no one will take that seriously enough to think about it.
Perhaps this is just my perception, or the number of times I've heard someone say "but I saw it on TV/in that movie" as if that were an authoritative source. They'll back it up by pointing out the 'scientists' that were 'advisors' on the media in question. Its much worse for me when the 'scientists' in question would be laughed out of a freshman thermodynamics class, but yet are somehow untouchable because of their pristine environmental (read: political) credentials.
The bottom line? I think that emphasising the 'scientific' or 'technical' accuracy of something which is NOT, in fact, completely accurate tends to further errode the already limited amount of correct knowledge the general public has.
Striving for consistancy and breaking reality as few times as possible is something I appreciate, provided at least as much time is spent acknowledging the remaining faults as praising the tiny bits they got right.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think people are generally uncritical about their sources. The numbe of people who believe a movie, a book like The DaVinci Code, or their local newspaper - is there a difference? Possibly movies/TV may have more impact because they're visual. I know when I got my MS that the professors had to do some serious explaining about what sources were acceptable as references in our papers (don't just do a Google search...)
I think you're onto something there; maybe its how I was raised, maybe its paramedic and/or engineer training, but I approach things rather more skeptically than most people seem to.
Post a Comment