The Core and dodgy Hollywood science
But I was inspired to post after being unfortunate enough to catch the last hour or so of the film The Core last night: the plot of this involves a team of people having to drill/float/fly to the centre of the earth to start the earth's core turning again (very 21st century Jules Verne). This being a disaster movie, they save the world but get killed off one by one, leaving only - what a surprise - the two good-looking ones.
My physics isn't so hot, but even I found people wandering around 700km below the earth's surface (with only lines like 'These suits are holding up pretty well against the pressure!' to protect them) kind of unlikely. And indeed, Wikipedia's page on the film has a whole list of inaccuracies (ranging from the laughable to the subtle).
My question is: does this kind of thing matter? Normally I'm not too fussed about bad science in films - it's fiction, right? - but in this case I found it distracting. Do you think it's important that science in fiction is good science?
4 comments:
Just a quick one. I was passing. And I watched this film last night, not knowing anything about it. But I'm obsessed by films with experts in. Proper Hollywood Experts, B-movie experts, screeming at those in authority to listen to the science.
This film was indeed a tub of hot crap. But it presented two contrasting models of expertise. One, the trad arrogant scientist, assuming that his scientific understanding could be extended indefinitely - Latour's "absolutism".
The other, the handsome young expert, knew the limits of his own knowledge. His expertise was about adjusting to situations, putting knowledge in context and admitting uncertainty.
And there were themes of secrecy, the military and bad science, technical expertise vs scientific expertise, tacit knowledge etc. etc.
All very post-deficit, you see...
If anyone's interested, we've just published this pamphlet on expertise...
http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/receivedwisdom
Sarah - I think, in part, Jack's comments answer your question - he obviously found something of interest in it, even if it was a "tub of hot crap"
I'll never forget working at CND just after the Armageddon movie came out (Bruce Willis saves the world from comet with nuclear weapon) - everyone in the office loved it. They could have got all upset about the portrayal of nukes in popular culture, but decided to leave political discussion of such things to political contexts.
But I do take your point about "bad science" distracting from the film. Realism in movies/ books, etc is a tricky thing. I do think, however, that there is a difference between finding such bad science annoying because it effects your personal experience of it, and complaining because you are worried about protecting a "public" you assume are more ignorant than you.
Jack - I assume you've read David Kirby's stuff? Also Haynes's Faust to Strangelove - I wonder how much of her stuff could be considered in the context of expertise.
"post-deficit"? New one on me. Though I like "post-PUS" (I think there are a lot of people who are "post-PUS" without being "post-deficit")... but it's too near the end of term to get into semantics.
Hmmm. Skipping over a conversation about the personal being political (and not leaving things in the realm in which they 'naturally' belong), your mention of Haynes is a useful one. I think a Haynsian-type analysis of the 'scientist' figures in the film might be quite interesting (and fun!). You have the arrogant expert, the scientist as engineer figure, the heroic adventurer, and - um - a French weapons expert. Plus a geeky hacker and assorted white coated minions of - as Jack noted - the military-industrial complex.
It would be interesting to chase the ancestries of these - rather familar - stereotypes. This is, of course, what Haynes did, but I'm not aware of any updating of her work.
I'll skip over that personal/ political point too, if only because I think you are reading something into my comment which wasn't necessarily there.
Haynes - there was a PhD thesis from the LSE recently, applying her framework to interviews with "the public". I don't think the researcher "updated" them though. My research will develop some of Haynes' sterotypes by bringing in concepts of maturity and ideas of naturalism associated with childlike images of scientists.
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