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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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You know, years ago, I used to really like Neil before he adopted this "Well, ackchually..." shtick over scientific inaccuracies in works of fiction. I find him absolutely insufferable now. It's the same kind of brainworms as CinemaSins.
I think that Neil doesn’t understand something very vital about being a science educator which if there is one thing people know about them, it’s that they are smart as hell and whether that is actually true or not the science educator must adopt a self-deprecating, disarming character to be relatable to the audience within the context they are in because of it.
You can’t play the character of a king and be relatable if people perceive you as actually being a king outside the context of the play….
Well-put. Compare Bill Nye, who comes across as highly intelligent, yet still relatable and likable, in large part because his Science Guy character tends to be a bit of a goof, and, more importantly, because he never talks down to his audience.
Right, Bill Nye isn't threatening or high status (in a theatrical sense) in his extreme advantage of knowledge over you and obvious superior intelligence that implies.
Bill Nye (at least his old stuff I haven’t watched him in a long time) just feels like your goofy neighbor or science teacher and your walls don’t go up because of it, you are so much more willing to consider that a preconception you had might have been wrong because Bill Nye isn’t correcting you out of a place of superiority (which again the audience will by default unfairly project onto someone like Bill Nye given the context), it’s from a place of “the universe is weirder and more fun than you thought and I am hyped in a mad scientist way to be the person that gets to show you that!!”. Same thing with Myth Busters, they were most effective when they were visibly thrilled by the privilege of getting to show people how much weirder and cooler science was then they thought, not just because it's morally good to spread science education but also because it's fun as hell to get to be the goofy character doing it while seeing the eyes of adults around you light up like kids. You are a magician, except you are way funnier than a magician because the result of your magic tricks is to make people permanently feel how weird the universe really is.
We hate being wrong except when an irreverent character shows us that we were wrong because we underestimated how cool, weird or goofy the universe actually is.
I suppose this an obvious case of why just valuing STEM in school is a huge mistake, someone with theater training could easily point this dynamic out and make sure they played the character that made them the best science educator possible if they were in the position Tyson is in. It wouldn't even take any more work than Tyson is already doing, it is simply a matter of genuinely understanding perspective (the theater part) and giving a shit.