Review: Alien Revealed

A book I’ve been excited about getting for quiet sometime arrived today, as part of a birthday package from my father. Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards: Images of the American Scientist as Hero and Villain from Colonial Times to the Present by Glen Scott Allen details the history of the American perception of scientists from a sociological stand point. Through high and low culture, across hundreds of years, from Hawthorne’s fiction to comic book villains. It is a massive, complex undertaking that is comprehensive and detailed. Allen has clearly spent an incredible amount of time researching not just the scientists in American culture, but our perception of them and their role in American history. As someone with a massive interest in how we craft and perceive scientists in fiction, I thought this book was going to blow my freaking mind. In a lot of ways I guess it did. My copy was signed by Allen (something I wasn’t expecting at all) and there are some great diagrams and charts detailing stereotypes, common views and other related sociological speculation. What this book lacked however, is what prompted me to write this entry. This book lacked any nuanced approach to either race or gender in relation to the creation/perception of American scientists.

Granted, some concepts of race and bigotry are covered in chapters that examine foreign scientist villains in fiction, which is weak but better than nothing. Women scientists in American culture? WHAT WOMEN SCIENTISTS? The following quote is the only portion of the book that actually goes out of its way to acknowledge an absence of women scientists in its content. This quote can be found on page 260. The book’s content concludes on page 262.

As to gender, perhaps it could be argued that women as a population might be less enamored of the whole Master Mechanic ethos than are men. On the other hand, that argument may be to merely continue age-old stereotypes about gender. While it is true that, as previously mentioned, female Wicked Wizards in literature and film are almost entirely unknown, such an approach is an important one that requires its own thorough analysis.

LESS ENAMORED WAT? And so women scientists go back into the “too hard” basket for someone else to pick up and bother with at ~some point in the future~. Well, it’s not like female “Wicked Wizards” (what a nice, intrinsically male title you’ve got thar) exist, right? Allen has a point, doesn’t he? First off, how does the book define a “Wicked Wizard”? On page eight of the introduction, Allen clarifies that a “Wicked Wizard” is…

… a theoretician whose work is abstract and with a value either unclear or threatening to the average citizen, as it implies a critique or even an overturning of that traditional idea of progress.

If this seemingly broad label cannot be applied to women scientists (as they are “almost entirely unknown”), where does this leave characters like Qui’w Xux from the Star Wars EU? Maggie Walsh from Buffy The Vampire Slayer? Barbara Blight from Captain Planet and The Planeteers? Alexia Ashford from Resident Evil – CODE: Veronica? Elsa Schneider from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Pamela Isley from Batman (The DCU)?

And these are just the villainous, mad and subversive female researchers/scientists I can think of off the top of my head after having less than three hours sleep. Imagine how many characters one could think up if one actually wished to study the subversive woman scientist in popular consciousness!

I’m not silly, women scientists are represented in fiction far less often than their male counterparts. Even less so in a whole manner, outside their exterior form and displaced sexualities. This does not mean however, that they don’t exist in popular culture or indeed, the American consciousness. Their small role in the popular representation of scientists is in itself a fascinating nuance. If Darth Vader warrants an extended mention, surely an entire gender deserves something beyond a vague nod two pages before the end of an otherwise fairly extensive examination of the American scientist.

(I was going to review Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards: Images of the American Scientist as Hero and Villain from Colonial Times to the Present but quite frankly, I can’t be arsed.)

Tags: lolwat, women scientists