Opinion: Mainstreaming science in the movies
From Gravity to The Theory of Everything, Hollywood depictions of science and scientists are helping make the STEM fields more mainstream, even if scientific accuracy sometimes gets short shrift, writes Berkeley undergrad Alison Ong.
January 13, 2015
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.”
Science, math and technology have had a good ride in Hollywood lately — from science-fiction films such as Interstellar to dramatic biopics like The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game.
In a blog post on berkeleyByte, Alison Ong — a UC Berkeley energy-engineering student who grew up on Star Trek — looks at how science, technology and math are becoming more mainstream at the movies, and notes the tension between scientific accuracy and good storytelling.
“If Sandra Bullock delivers a compelling performance in Gravity,’ she writes, “is anyone besides Neil deGrasse Tyson really going to care that her hair isn’t floating in zero-gravity scenes?”
Read her full post here.