Lets make our way past the beakers full of bubbling, fizzing solvents and crackling electrical machines to quickly and succinctly explore the various myths of the mad scientist that abound and how they affect real scientist. You know, the ones who are highly educated, motivated, normal, and perpetually surrounded by ammonium nitrate bottles.
It seems every culture has some distinguished mad man in a lab: Dr. Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll, Doctor No, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Frakenfurter. I wonder where they all get their degrees? RU Mad? Here all week, folks! Anyway, in one way or another they're all exiles forced to continue their experiments in secret until that day (always a day when the hero rolls in own) when the world will bow in recognition of their superior intellect.
They never succeed, thank goodness. It gives us a reason to keep coming back to our Saturday matinees and thumbed-through paperback novels. We love a good story and we love a good story and a bad scientist. And the climax is always the same. The heaving exposition that usually goes something like this: "They all laughed at me. But I will show them. One day it will be I who laughs last!" And so the journey into the mouth of madness, from the comfort of our chairs and couches, continues.
It's hard not conjure one of the many campy and creepy portrayals by the likes of Bela Lugosi, Charles Laughton, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, and the exceptionally wonderful, Vincent Price. Thanks to these men and bad screenplays, we've come to accept this new archetype, this sinister face of science. Not usually two words that goes together: sinister and science. Perhaps that's why we love the union, love the possibilities, and love the madness.
H.G. Wells relished our fascination and our fears -- he knew we would come to fear other worlds as well as ourselves, our capacities. His Dr. Moreau seems particularly malevolent. He's not a raver not a showman -- he just goes to work, quietly using his foul chemicals to turn animals into humans. Moreau is lord of his creations; a demi-god trapped by the parameters of is inability to fully realize his experiments. He is incomprehensible and perhaps that's what makes us smile with irony at Vincent Price or Lon Chaney. We love to laugh at that which we don't understand. And science can be very hard to understand.
It seems every culture has some distinguished mad man in a lab: Dr. Frankenstein, Doctor Jekyll, Doctor No, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Frakenfurter. I wonder where they all get their degrees? RU Mad? Here all week, folks! Anyway, in one way or another they're all exiles forced to continue their experiments in secret until that day (always a day when the hero rolls in own) when the world will bow in recognition of their superior intellect.
They never succeed, thank goodness. It gives us a reason to keep coming back to our Saturday matinees and thumbed-through paperback novels. We love a good story and we love a good story and a bad scientist. And the climax is always the same. The heaving exposition that usually goes something like this: "They all laughed at me. But I will show them. One day it will be I who laughs last!" And so the journey into the mouth of madness, from the comfort of our chairs and couches, continues.
It's hard not conjure one of the many campy and creepy portrayals by the likes of Bela Lugosi, Charles Laughton, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, and the exceptionally wonderful, Vincent Price. Thanks to these men and bad screenplays, we've come to accept this new archetype, this sinister face of science. Not usually two words that goes together: sinister and science. Perhaps that's why we love the union, love the possibilities, and love the madness.
H.G. Wells relished our fascination and our fears -- he knew we would come to fear other worlds as well as ourselves, our capacities. His Dr. Moreau seems particularly malevolent. He's not a raver not a showman -- he just goes to work, quietly using his foul chemicals to turn animals into humans. Moreau is lord of his creations; a demi-god trapped by the parameters of is inability to fully realize his experiments. He is incomprehensible and perhaps that's what makes us smile with irony at Vincent Price or Lon Chaney. We love to laugh at that which we don't understand. And science can be very hard to understand.
About the Author:
Sneak past the bottles full of ammonium nitrate and enter the realm of the mad scientists. Be sure you bring the popcorn!
Comments (0)
Post a Comment