451621 event 1443092334 1492118289 <![CDATA[Indecent Science: Religion, Science and Movie Censorship, 1930-1968]]> David A. Kirby was a practicing evolutionary geneticist before leaving bench science to become Senior Lecturer in Science Communication Studies at the University of Manchester. Several of his publications address the relationship between cinema, genetics, biotechnology and cultural meanings. He has also studied how media professionals utilize, negotiate and transform science in order to tell stories about science in movies and on television. His book Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema examines collaborations between scientists and the entertainment industry in the production of movies and demonstrates how these fictional texts affect real world science and technology. He recently received an Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust to analyse the interactions among the biosciences, religion and entertainment media. He is currently writing a book titled Indecent Science: Religion, Science and Movie Censorship, 1930-1968 which will explorehow movies served as a battleground over science’s role in influencing morality. [His website: http://www.davidakirby.com/]

]]> David Kirby will present a lecture about censorship and cinema. From 1930 to 1968 movie studios sent their screenplays to be approved by censorship groups in the U.S. and U.K. including Hollywood’s official censorship body the “Hays Office”, the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency and the British Board of Film Censors. This talk uses material from the archives of these organizations to explore how censorship groups modified cinematic narratives in order to tell what they consideredto bemore appropriate stories about science as a social, political and cultural force. Using films including The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Possessed (1947), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), and Last Man on Earth (1964). Kirby will demonstrate how film censors considered the potential moral consequences of science and scientific ways of thinking including the theological implications of scientific research, the blasphemy of scientism, and the horror of scientific realism.

Co-sponsors of the event: Center for the Study of Women, Science, and Technology; Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program; the School of History and Sociology; the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Graduate Studies.

]]> Carol Colatrella, carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu

]]> About David Kirby's Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema (MIT Press, 2011): Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968, is perhaps the most scientifically accurate film ever produced. The film presented such a plausible, realistic vision of space flight that many moon hoax proponents believe that Kubrick staged the 1969 moon landing using the same studios and techniques. Kubrick’s scientific verisimilitude in 2001 came courtesy of his science consultants—including two former NASA scientists—and the more than sixty-five companies, research organizations, and government agencies that offered technical advice. Although most filmmakers don’t consult experts as extensively as Kubrick did, films ranging from A Beautiful Mind and Contact to Finding Nemo and The Hulk have achieved some degree of scientific credibility because of science consultants. In Lab Coats in Hollywood, David Kirby examines the interaction of science and cinema: how science consultants make movie science plausible, how filmmakers negotiate scientific accuracy within production constraints, and how movies affect popular perceptions of science. Drawing on interviews and archival material, Kirby examines such science consulting tasks as fact checking and shaping visual iconography. Kirby finds that cinema can influence science as well: Depictions of science in popular films can promote research agendas, stimulate technological development, and even stir citizens into political action.

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