Critiquing "Old" Media

Most of the posts this semester have focused on so called "new" media - Internet technologies or console or computer gaming, which is a big concern when talking about media literacy and youth in schools. However, I ran across a post in the New York Times this week, "Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs", that made me remember that it’s just as important for students to know how to appropriate, use, dissect, and critique "new" media as it is with "old" media like the television (I know we've sort of talked about how not as many young people are actually watching TV anymore, but I think they are still watching TV shows; they're just watching them online).

"Exploring the Complexities of Nerdiness, for Laughs" is about the show The Big Bang Theory on CBS that chronicles the lives of two physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, and their neighbor Penny who is of course beautiful, blonde, and from a completely different social circle - okay, a completely different social universe! The show is quite popular (there's even a website where one can find links to purchase shirts like the one's the characters wear in the show), and I know quite a few of my graduate student friends who don’t miss an episode, but when the show was proposed, and even now, some were worried about the types of stereotypes that the show was perpetuating, which is what Dennis Overbye addresses in this article. The show attempts to be scientifically accurate and realistic while remaining funny. Nevertheless, the stereotypes that the show seems to perpetuate of the socially awkward scientists who are interested in science fiction and gaming and who are overwhelmingly male is a stereotype that many are trying to get away from. There are a few women on the show, and one happens to be a pretty good scientist who competes with one of the main characters occasionally, but the show doesn’t do nearly enough to truly challenge the overarching stereotypes concerning some scientists. As Bruce Margon, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is quoted as saying in the article, "The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy". And to an extent, I agree. How are we supposed to convince those who do not fit this stereotype that they will be welcome in the scientific community if they keep seeing these images? I sometimes watch and enjoy the show though, so…

Not all people feel this way though, and several famous scientists have actually appeared on the show including Nobel laureate George Smoot and Lisa Randall who is a Harvard particle theorist who has appeared on the show as an extra. The scientists who support the show emphasize that the show is funny, defends science more than it mocks it, and has broken the mold a bit by having one of the characters, Leonard, actually dating Penny. So, opinions of the show seem to differ a bit in the scientific community and almost certainly amongst non-scientists as well.

I mention this article because it sort of shows that the ability to be critical of images, information, sources, and presentation is just as important with "old" media as it is with "new" media and that it's perhaps not as easy as one would think. I think that some of the skills that we have discussed teaching our students about dissecting information encountered on the Internet would be just as useful when coming across information in other places. This show presents interesting opportunities for that with the show topics where students could investigate the scientific information that is shared if they would like to know more about the topic, or they could even do more research into the veracity of the staging of the show. For example, is that really what it’s like at a university? Do people working at a university actually make the amount of money necessary to sustain the lifestyles of the show’s characters? What percentage of academia, and specifically the sciences, is made up of women? What is the viewer supposed to take away from seeing the living situations of the characters in the show? What impressions are made on the viewer by seeing how people of color are represented in the show? I think there are several paths of inquiry that we could engage in based upon this one, simple half-hour long sitcom and of course, other shows was well.

In thinking about how we could teach others how to think more critically about this type of media, I found it interesting that Overbye notes in the article that neither of the show's lead characters understand the scientific dialogue that they deliver so convincingly. They also don’t quite know some of the references to popular culture that are in the show including references to "Star Trek" and comic books. The actor that plays the character named Sheldon says that what he is trying to say with the references is more important than actually understanding the reference. I guess… This sort of illustrates though that not only is investigating the stereotypes that some say are perpetuated by the show, e.g., the dumb blonde stereotype, important, but the actual content of the show is prime for investigation as well. And I think it might actually be useful for students to see that the skills that are useful in online contexts are just as important offline and vice versa.