Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cinema - Hardcover

Frayling, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1861892551 ISBN 13: 9781861892553

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2005

Synopsis

Since its origin cinema has had an uneasy relationship with science and technology: scientists are almost always impossibly mad or impossibly saintly, and technology is nearly always very bad for you. In Mad, Bad and Dangerous?, Christopher Frayling explores the genealogy of the film scientist in films made in Western Europe, and especially in Hollywood after the 1930s, showing how in film the scientist has often been used to represent the prevailing phobias of the time. In the 1950s, for example, films were dominated by the fear of botched atomic research, and were a showcase of mutated, outsized creatures and radioactive zombies. Since Hitchcock?s The Birds, however, the role of the scientist has been less straightforward, and by the 1970s damage to the environment and the spread of diseases were the predominant consequences of science gone wrong. Scientists ? and the corporations that controlled them ? became the ?baddies?. The author also examines in parallel the portrayal of real-life scientists in the movies, noting how they are in the main depicted as misfits, immersed in their work, sacrificing any normal life to the interests of science, yet distrusted by the scientific establishment. Interestingly, the cinematic portrayal of fictional and real-life scientists follow very similar dramatic conventions, and Frayling concludes that the mad scientist and the saintly one are two sides of the same Hollywood coin.

About this title

Review:

"Funny, insightful and a delight to read, Christopher Frayling's Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema is a fascinating examination of society's changing views of science and scientists through popular culture. With the continuing growth of genetic research, cloning and psycho-pharmaceuticals, more and more science fiction is reality. People who quest for knowledge are never really trusted (the image of the scientist easily shifts from grandfatherly to malevolent), and this book illustrates our own forever evolving views of progress."--John Landis

"Fascinating book." -- Rosie Taylor "The Lancet" (02/18/2006)

"Insightful, reasonably comprehensive." -- Roz Kaveney "Times Literary Supplement" (05/19/2006)

"A timely and insightful book."--"Publishers Weekly"
""
-- David Archibald "Scotland on Sunday" (10/16/2005)

"A timely and insightful book."--Publishers Weekly -- David Archibald "Scotland on Sunday" (10/16/2005)

"Entertaining and illuminating."--Financial Times Magazine -- Christopher Wood "The Times (UK)" (09/29/2006)

"Fascinating book."--"The Lancet""" --Rosie Taylor"The Lancet" (02/18/2006)

"Frayling''s great strengths as a cultural historians are inclusivity and wry wit. He retains a schoolboy enthusiasm for stinks and whizz-bangs and bug-eyed monsters, but knows exactly where these tropes come from and is willing to consider all their uses and meanings."--Kim Newman, "Sight & Sound""" --Kim Newman"Sight & Sound" (10/01/2006)

"Entertaining and illuminating."--"Financial Times Magazine"""--Christopher Wood"The Times (UK)" (09/29/2006)"

"Fascinating book."--"The Lancet"""--Rosie Taylor"The Lancet" (02/18/2006)"

About the Author:

Christopher Frayling is rector of the Royal College of Art, London; chairman of the Arts Council of England; and a well-known historian, critic, and award-winning radio and television broadcaster. He is also the author of Spaghetti Westerns and Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula.

About this edition

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1861892551
• ISBN 13: 9781861892553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256