Science and Technology in the Popular Culture

Soma Rédey

With my presentation I wish to emphasize the role of science-fiction movies in context of
scientific truth and the created knowledge. With a beginning of short introduction on film-history,
I try to show the milestones of movies, where science appeared in any kind of form:

first steps: G. Melies versus Lumiére brothers
in the ages of silent movies
the classical Hollywood Sci-Fi’s (1930-50’s)
the European new waves (Eastern - Soviet, Czech, Polish - movies compared to the
Western – British, W.German, French – ones.)
the new Hollywood directions (Kubrick: 2001 – A space odyssey, 1968)

Henceforth I wish to deal with the connection of the visual appearance of the latest technical
innovations. What did influence the main direction of sci-fi movies and how deep the realitycontent
were (in the early ages)? (e.g.: Mélies: A Trip to the Moon (1914); Browning: Dracula
(1931) – Whale: Frankenstein (1931); Whale: The Invisible Man (1933),).
Science advisors and consultants can guarantee the bases of the truth in a movie. With the help of
David A. Kirby’s work I wish to analyze the factor of science-validity in the above mentioned
films.

In the sci-fi movies, where does the original idea of a new topic come from? There are
perceptible coherences between movie makers and popular novel authors. With the beginning of
Jules Verne, we can observe further connections. The special case of Herbert George Wells
should be interesting for us. Although the first version of his work War of the Worlds was
screened in 1953 (directed by Haskins), the American citizens could meet with this theme a few
years earlier. The famous radio-play by Orson Welles shocked a relevant percent of the New
York citizens in 1938, as it was first presented. The case is interesting from another aspect: how
influential the scientific facts can be for us?

This element would be the next part of my presentation, how strong and shocking can be the
world created by a movie (or a radio-play?). Analyzing the above mentioned case, it could be
instructive, how easily people believe in scientific news if they are confirmed by (fake)
professors and further scientific facts. Can we turn to these facts always with absolute trust?
There are some classical cases of films (The Real Mao by Siklósi 1994, The Wapra-Report by
Kocsis for instance), where actually the original idea was the scientific misleading. According to
these movies the audience is better to behave suspicious.

On the other side there are also profitable solutions and ideas firstly appeared on the silver screen
(or in fictional novels) and then in practice. In the field space research for instance, we can find
notable coherences between the realized and the predicted world of spacecrafts, -shuttles and -
stations by Jules Verne.