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In Reply to: Favourite mad scientist posted by Ronnie Ericsson on February 18, 2002 at 19:51:52:
Being a research scientist, I am constantly struggling to downplay the "mad scientist/megalomaniac" stereotype. Some of us are merely irritated, not mad.Instead, I choose to use the "overacting ham" stereotype to describe both Gregory Peck ('mad doctor' Mengele) and Sir Lawrence Olivier ('mad Nazi hunter' Lieberman) in "The Boys From Brazil," an awful piece of conspiracy crap about the potential evil of human cloning shown on AMC Monday morning.
Follow Ups:
I haven't seen enough films depicting "mad" scientists, but those that I have don't do it very well. There is a "genius", an abnormality, in the mad that those movies don't seem to portray very well. They are rather normal people's fantacy of what geniuses would do if the go mad, to reassure what they already believe or to self-satisfy with wonders of what they might be capable of. Not that I understand what really constitute the state of being genius, though. For example, Good Will Hunting is particularly bad of portraying an abnormal and brilliant mathematician.Pi is another film which depicts a mad scientist and gives no explanation or interpretation, as far as I understand. Now, this is a step better than those films which feel the burden to explain the mad in 'mad scientists'. However, with careful research, I think people can depict interesting aspects of 'mad scientists, without trying to explain or understand.
Dr. Lecter in Silience of The Lambs is not a "mad" man because his portrayal is or can becompletely reasoned out by human; his evil comes out of normality and reason. ANd that's why I think its agreat movie.
(roughly paraphrased) by 16th or 17th poet John Dryden. Implying
a thin line. Genius usually thought of as having an intense focus
within consciousness, defined as intellectual in character, but with
talent and temperment often as influential channels of expression.
Scientists, inventors, etc., with proclivities toward rigorous
intellectualism, sometimes - being mortally frail with regard to
application of the Godlike power to create, transform, destroy - falter when
crossing into realms of that power and are destroyed by it. Is
that the premise behind
the "mad scientist", a powerful and common metaphor(?) an infatuation
with because many identify with the dual qualities of insanity and
genius, if only for brief vicarious periods.
Lecter, was he by definition a psychopath? As I understand the
term, he would be both morally and legally responsible for his
actions; thus, although possibly a genius by intellectual standards, would
nevertheless, be deemed sane. - AH
it may be the other way around, the psychopath is evaluated by
psychologists and deemed sane according to certain criteria. The
psychopath, in contrast to the psychotic, has sufficient "reality
contact" to be deemed sane, therefore, morally and legally accountable
for his or her actions. If I'm not mistaken, that's one of the
defining characteristics of psychopathy - sufficient reality contact
to be able to adequately discriminate between right and wrong. Thus, Ted
Bundy and Ed Gein are two completely different type of killers. - AH
You could have picked a better example..one that was less based on fact.
in reference to the character of Dr. Carrington, the chief scientist
in "The Thing"-1951. Carrington was portrayed as being rational in
the extreme, thus lapsing into irrationality by becoming obsessive
in his view on how to confront and deal with the alien. Of course,
his views and actions were countered by the more balanced and pragmatic ones of the Captain. Nevertheless, Carrington
suffered a broken arm (it could have been fatal) by the alien, mistakenly
thinking that he could have rational discourse with it. - AH
nt
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