The Big Bang TheoryJennifer Ouellette missed one major unfortunate connection to reality provided by the TV show The Big Bang Theory: the main female character Penny not only is treated primarily as an object of sexual fantasy by the physicists, but is also the main representation of all womankind in the show. When Penny's intelligence is questioned, so is that of all women. When Penny, the non-physicist, is excluded from the conversation, so are all women. The identification is nearly set in concrete (modulo a few glimpses of Leslie): woman equals non-physicist equals dumb sex object. The physics community (maybe especially high-energy theory) has plenty of clones of Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Rajesh. Having struggled for acceptance in this community all my career life, I must admit this represents the reality I experienced. Yeah, I get the physics humor, but—as so often happens in real life—as a woman, I'm also the butt of the rest of the jokes. CBS projects a second season for The Big Bang Theory—a "very smart, savvy series" with evolving characters and humor, says essayist Jennifer Ouellette (January/February 08). Could a sitcom that began by shallowly caricaturing physicists end up branding physics? Given that comedy at its best instructs as well as delights, could physicists somehow suggest story ideas leading not only to laughing but to learning? What about Sheldon in conflict with a global-warming denier? Sheldon would condescend sarcastically, lecturing accurately but highly technically. Sensible non-scientist Penny might turn his jargon into plain English—making fools of Sheldon for snide pomposity and of the denier for denial. Or what if Leonard, seeking to continue dating a young woman, had to calibrate how much scientific truth to tell her dad—a bit of a nut who loves to talk science, especially concerning his lawsuit alleging that a new collider's startup could destroy the planet? Last fall this sitcom seemed a science-outreach disaster, with only slapstick resemblances to the physics world that it might nevertheless have begun branding. But Ouellette is right: it's evolving now. Maybe physicists should speak up. Click here to download the pdf version of this article. |