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

"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) "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)" "Insightful, reasonably comprehensive."--"Times Literary Supplement"--Roz Kaveney"Times Literary Supplement" (05/19/2006)" "An adroit review of past studies of images of science combined with his own reading of films, with contributions from a radio series. . . . Pretty comprehensive."--Jon Turney"The Independent" (10/18/2005) "Splendidly impartial account of how scientists have been portrayed, and he must have spent many days watching films of all kinds. . . . This most entertaining book has wide appeal. The illustrations have been carefully selected, and there is a long list of references. Above all it has been meticulously researched."--Patrick Moore"The Times Higher Education Supplement" (11/11/2005) "Certainly rings true. . . . Generally lively and entertaining writing style. . .Frayling gives us valuable insights about a very real problem."--Jay A. Labinger"Science" (12/16/2005) "Fascinating book."--Rosie Taylor"The Lancet" (02/18/2006) "Thorough and interesting . . .points to the importance of educating viewers to recognize the manipulation inherent in any movie."--Lucy Dickinson"MaterialsToday" (05/01/2006)" "Insightful, reasonably comprehensive."--Roz Kaveney"Times Literary Supplement" (05/19/2006) "Charming and fun to read. . . . Frayling writes from an erudite, but lively, historical perspective, focusing on the first half of hte 20th century."--Dave Pieri"Physics Today" (11/01/2006) "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" (10/01/2006) "Thorough and interesting . . . points to the importance of educating viewers to recognize the manipulation inherent in any movie."--Lucy Dickinson"MaterialsToday" (05/01/2006) "The portrayal of the scientist has been a particularly potent one in cinema, from Fritz Lang's wild haired Rotwang in Metropolis to the evil Dr Strangelove. . . . Frayling ponders the influence of this belligerence in the real world in this excellent and witty analysis." --Martin Tierney"Glasgow Herald" (10/07/2006) "Funny, insightful, and a delight to read, Christopher Frayling's Mad, Bad, and Dangerous? is a fascinating examination of society's changing view of science and scientists through popular culture. . . . This book illustrates our own forever evolving view of progress."--John Landis "He covers films from the first half of the twentieth century rigorously, detailing lost or forgotten reels with the precision and loving hand of a devoted film historian. . . . Frayling has certainly done his homework, and Mad, Bad and Dangerous is bulging with factoids."--Adam Rutherford"Nature" (11/01/2005) Funny, insightful, and a delight to read, Christopher Frayling s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous? is a fascinating examination of society s changing view of science and scientists through popular culture. . . . This book illustrates our own forever evolving view of progress. --John Landis " "A timely and insightful book."--"Publishers Weekly" "" -- David Archibald "Scotland on Sunday" (10/16/2005)

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.