Researchers Gone Crazy: The Mad Scientist Character in Film
Frankenstein, Jekyll, Doofenshmirtz, Doom. It seems the villains of our screens and pages all share one common prefix: Doctor. Eccentric men in their lab coats hunched over the workbench or screaming to the sky about their new discovery are often the image we associate with the character of the “mad scientist.”
Why is a scientist always “mad,” though? Why must he–always a “he,” never a “she”–be obsessed with ruling the world and molding it to his will, conducting evil experiments along the way? What does history have to say about the bad rap of scientists?
When thinking of a modern-day scientist, you may imagine someone wearing a white lab coat and safety glasses holding an Erlenmeyer flask full of unknown liquid, inspecting it carefully. Why is it, then, that many scientists in media are portrayed as these maniacal makers of disaster? In a world where technology rules our lives and science is seen as the path to the future, the mad scientist stereotype has survived for an unusually long time.
A “mad scientist” is a character who is obsessed with scientific discovery to the point of lunacy or mania, very similar to the “obsessed artist” trope many are familiar with. He is always treading the thin line between genius and insanity, locked away in his laboratory day and night trying to perfect his inventions. He does not care for ethics and purposefully goes against the “natural order” of things to achieve his obscure goals.
The first mad scientist can be traced back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the titular “Doctor” Victor Frankenstein–he isn’t a doctor yet in the novel–tries to play God by creating life for himself. He locks himself away in his lab, overly consumed by the completion of his experiment. Note that Shelley’s novel never paints him as the crazed, wide-eyed scientist that Hollywood did. Only when Hollywood got involved in the 1931 film Frankenstein did the doctor become the madman we know him to be.
The stereotype also became infamous during World War II with the reality of Nazi human experiments and the creation of atomic bombs. Around this time, the Mad Scientist began to morph into an Einstein-like figure with frazzled, lightning-struck hair. In addition, many characters took on German and German-sounding names/accents. These patterns could also point to Germany’s history of leading the natural and physical sciences, like being the birthplace of the research-based doctoral degree model as we know it or awarding the most scientific Nobel laureates than any other country prior to WWII.
Religion was normally the way people justified marvels in nature that couldn’t otherwise be easily explained. Think of world creation and weather myths throughout cultures. So, growing scientific understanding was thought to threaten these faith-based beliefs that were seen as fact for thousands of years. The fear of scientists most likely originated as a fear of the unknown, or rather, fear of explaining the unknown.
But even secularly, science was seen as something unreachable for the average person. The amount of education needed to understand certain topics only deepened the divide between science and everyday life, leading people to make up their own ideas about how scientists lived and conducted themselves.
The mad scientist trope prevails on our screens through characters such as Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, recent adaptations of Victor Frankenstein, and even Dr. Fusion from Teen Beach Movie. Today, these characters might just seem like exaggerated archetypes made for some laughs or to create suspense. But throughout history, these depictions were a notable reflection of their time and the standards that came along with it.
By Alexandra Leinberger and Camila Garcia
