When someone wrote to Richard Feynman to tell him how his bongo-drumming habit “proved that physicists can also be human,” Feynman shot back a scathing reply: “I am human enough to tell you to go fuck yourself.” Why was Feynman so angry? Because for him, the notion that physicists had to “prove” their humanity by having non-scientific interests was an arrogant presumption. Why not point to a guitarist who enjoys doing math on the side, as “proof that musicians can also be human”?<\/p>\n
While it’s possible that Feynman overreacted to what was meant as a compliment, a quick glance at American popular culture demonstrates that he had a point. In the minds of many Hollywood writers, there are apparently only two kinds of scientist: (1) the asexual nerd who babbles incomprehensibly before getting killed around scene 3 (unless of course he’s the villain), and (2) the occasional character who’s human “despite” being a scientist, as demonstrated by his or her charm, physical agility, and fashion sense. The idea that one can be both nerdy and sympathetic — indeed, that nerdiness might even have positive aspects — is absent.<\/p>\n
This trend is so pervasive that, whenever a movie bucks it even partly, I’m inclined to overlook any other flaws it might have. Thus, for example, I enjoyed both A Beautiful Mind<\/a> and Enigma<\/a>, despite those movies’ liberal departures from the true stories on which they were based. But the most unabashed celebration of nerdiness I’ve seen in cinema is a little-known 80’s comedy called Real Genius<\/a>. I was introduced to this movie by Christine Chung, a friend at Cornell. Then I saw it again with friends at Berkeley. Yesterday I continued the tradition by organizing a screening for friends at Waterloo.<\/p>\n Briefly, Real Genius follows the adventures of Mitch, a 15-year-old who goes to a college obviously based on Caltech, having been recruited by the duplicitous Professor Hathaway to work on powerful lasers. Mitch is sympathetic, not because he defies the stereotype of a 15-year-old at Caltech, but because we’re shown some of the emotions behind that stereotype: the feeling of outsiderness, of taking up space on the planet only at other people’s mercy; the fear of failure, of letting down his parents, Professor Hathaway, and others who “expect great things from him”; but at the same time, the longing for the easy social confidence represented by his roommate Chris (who used to be a teenage prodigy like Mitch, but is now a womanizing slacker). All of this is shown with enough wit and humor that there’s no need for Mitch to make an explicit declaration:<\/p>\n Hath not a nerd eyes? Hath not a nerd hands organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a quarterback is?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When someone wrote to Richard Feynman to tell him how his bongo-drumming habit “proved that physicists can also be human,” Feynman shot back a scathing reply: “I am human enough to tell you to go fuck yourself.” Why was Feynman so angry? Because for him, the notion that physicists had to “prove” their humanity by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}