Sublime sacrifice or total revenge: images of science and the scientist in an American horror film

Abstract

Hollywood horror films, which belong to a special genre of cinema, have been extremely sensitive to the topic of scientific and technological progress and the role of research scientists in shaping and promoting the technological picture of the world since their inception. The steadily increasing popularity of visual images of science and scientists in popular culture sets the tone for the development of themes and storylines of this genre. They became the immediate fabric of horror films, but unlike politics, art, and religion, Hollywood cinema first looked at the situation from the point of view of its existential dimension. And if the leading social institutions were interested in science only from the point of view of its social utility and pragmatism, then Hollywood horror cinema managed to reveal the existential emptiness and tragedy of the researcher, whom the government plunges into a continuous and mad race for scientific discoveries. It is in this genre that the destinies of human and the nature represented by human mind, enclosed in the narrows of technological civilization, are most clearly drawn. The image of a scientist in an American horror film is outlined in two main trends, negative and positive. Negative visualization is associated with the image of a mad researcher who uses the potential of his intelligence for sophisticated revenge on the social environment. The positive model, due to the demonstration of outstanding achievements of scientists, involves a nightmarish visualization of all possible deviations of power and defects of the social system that are not able to adequately operate with the achievements of science.