Entertainment Science

Entertainment Science

‘We’re physicists’: Gender, genre and the image of scientists in The Big Bang Theory. Written by Dr. Margaret Weitekamp, who has earned aeronautics PhD from Cornell University. The science theme show The Big Bang Theory has drawn wide attention for years. In this article, Dr. Weitekamp point that The Big Bang Theory emphasis how its characters and its comedy build upon and play against long-standing gendered stereotypes from the gender, ethnicity and particularity point of view.

For a very long time, scientist in the popular culture appears as stereotyped or crazy characters in most of mainstream ideology rooted in a long-standing association of genius with madness. Also due to their devotion to their work, the character on the screen. For example, According to Nisbet et al.(2002) “In dramatic television or movies, scientists often appeared as the absent-minded professor, a socially isolated man,” for another example, Japanese ‘mad scientist murder’ detective fiction, the film A Beautiful Mind made the scientist become a series of identifiable stereotypes. Moreover, the depictions of scientist on the screen is more likely to be in drama than comedy, and audience paid less attention to comedy for science.

The depiction of scientist in the The Big Bang Theory build another stereotype core characteristics: the geek or nerd. As the devolvement of the computer science, the business of networked computers made millionaires and billionaires of its pioneers such as Steve Jobs, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, therefore, geek tend to be chic, and The Big Bang Theory emerge at that right moment. For The Big Bang Theory, nerds from both the subject and the audience .The Big Bang Theory capitalized on the new ardor on the science and technology, present scientist more relevant with daily life rather than drama, offering an entertaining, funny comedy to someone who would like to know more about the science. And The Big Bang Theory succeeded, The Big Bang Theory has attracted approximately 8.5 million audiences by broadcast, subscription on-demand streaming services and even Internet piracy, more importantly, achieve four Emmy awards during seven years.

As a science theme show, The Big Bang Theory take the science seriously, to say that, it has used the real science to drive epitasis and reinforce the authenticity of the character’s occupations. For example the white boards show the research topics and laboratory experiments which exist the real world. Moreover The Big Bang Theory has invited few real scientists as well as some key instances of science and technology such as Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson, string theorist and science author Brian Greene and so on, even NASA give support to filming; However, in the meantime its argued that The Big Bang Theory lack of academic rigor. To say