Scientific Discovery

“There are certain risks that one may not take: the destruction of humanity is one…Our researches are perilous, our discoveries are lethal.” These statements made by Mobius in act two of The Physicists are two that I find to be true today as well as back in the 1960s when this play was written. For centuries, man has used science to solve the laws of nature. However, since World War II, man has used science as a means to develop the biggest guns, medicines to cure every disease, and nuclear bombs and missiles. At what point, though, does man see that their continued discoveries are harming the world as much as helping it?

In The Physicists, Mobius stumbled upon his Principle of Universal Discovery like Louis Pasteur stumbled upon Penicillin. Instead of selling his discovery to the highest bidding nation, Mobius saw that this discovery had the potential to destroy mankind and thus chose to hide it. Now I am not saying that the discovery of Penicillin was a bad discovery, however, the researches that its discovery spawned led to derivatives of Penicillin being discovered, which led to the discovery of more derivatives of those drugs, which led to the overuse of antibiotics, which led to the development of drug resistant bacteria and newer and deadlier diseases.

Before reading The Physicists, my opinion was that if I made a major discovery such as a cure for AIDS, I would withhold the discovery just like Mobius did with his, minus checking myself into a sanitarium. Why does man not use the knowledge it already has to help the world more by producing enough drugs to help third world countries combat diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis? My answer is that the scientists choose not to witness the consequences of their discoveries. If they did, they may react like Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, when he witnessed the testing of his creation, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Tropic Thunder--for an out-of-box comedy experience!

My suggestion for a film to watch is Tropic Thunder.


The plot centers around a group of spoiled actors who are lost in the jungle while making a war movie. Ben Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, an almost washed up hero who earlier failed in his bid to win an Oscar while portraying Simple Jack, a character with an intellectual disability. Speedman’s portrayal of Simple Jack is featured as a movie within a movie. There were even fake websites and a “mockumentary”--Rain of Madness (which parodied the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) for this movie, which was loosely based on the filming of Apocalypse Now, and how difficult the filming was for Francis Ford Coppola in 1979. 

The word “retard” is used 16 times in this movie. 

Also in the movie: 

• Mocking references to gay and fat people. 

• One character portrayed as a white man who has darkened his skin to play a black man. A black character criticizes him several times for impersonating a black man. 

• Extensive use of vulgar humor and profanity. 

• Many jokes about the shallowness, self-involvement and ignorance of actors and Hollywood executives in general.

I thought the film was hilarious, but I am sure many, many people might not like the film.

I was inspired to choose this movie after I saw an article on the news this week about people being outraged over Nick Cannon wearing white-face.

Nick Cannon on CBS

Seriously?!?!?

In the 1800s, play authors were ridiculing the government and the justice system, making fun of women and children being assaulted and potentially raped, and laughing at people dying, but there are still people in society today who make a big deal out of comedy and theater. Shakespeare performed plays dressed as women because females were not allowed on stage, and yet many people still criticize and alienate cross-dressers. How does that happen, when a society seems too go backward instead of progressing forward?

I think the lines are blurred as far as comedy and what is real for people. In today’s society, we mock people for everything. Our motto in comedy is pretty much ‘anything goes’, but there are always those 'political correctness' nazis who say, “The nerve of you people!” Needless to say, hypocrisy runs rampant in modern culture, and is widely acceptable, but a good comedy, created just to make people laugh is horrible! (insert sarcasm here).

Tropic Thunder breaks every ‘politically correct’ rule known in our culture, and I think this is an interesting movie to analyze for our class, because it gives us a hint of how viewing audiences may have felt during the eras many of our class plays were written.

I enjoy stepping out of my box, and I feel we have done that several times in this class. Keeping with the spirit of out-of-box experiences, I think this movie has all the awkwardness and uncomfortableness in the name of comedy that we can stand, and that many plays we have studied exemplified at the time they were performed.

My only concern is, this movie is quite vulgar. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.

Critical Thinking Connection - Carnival Plays

Red Guards — high school and university students — wave copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's Little Red Book during a parade in June 1966 in Beijing's streets at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. More than 1 million people are believed to have died during the decade-long upheaval. (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)

While listening to the radio yesterday, I heard a report on China coming to terms with a bloody period in its history called the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which was initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong and enforced by his Red Guards.

One image from the report struck me as particularly cogent to our discussion of the inverted hierarchies in Sachs' Carnival plays: students attacking teachers. What sets this image of inversion apart from the content of the Carnival plays? Why does this action come across as particularly violent and revolutionary when much of the action in Sachs' texts seems so light-hearted and humorous? How does a comedy have to present an inverted hierarchy for it to "work" within the text?

Lysistrata-History

Since I have a liking for history, I wondered whether there was an actual war being fought or recently concluded between Athens and Sparta at the time this play was written and performed. It turns out between 431 and 404 BC Athens and Sparta were engaged in the Peloponnesian War against each other. So when Kleonike said on page 358, "My husband's been gone for the last five months! Way up to Thrace." and Myrrhine said on page 359, "Mine's been posted to Pylos", these characters were talking about actual nations involved in a war that was currently being fought.

When this play was first performed in 411 BC, Athens was losing the war and the general public probably had the same desire for peace as Lysistrata and the women in the play did. However, it is believed that in 411 BC peace may have been unachievable and the end of the war was going to have major consequences for Athens. By using abstinence from sex to achieve peace in Lysistrata, Aristophanes creates a simple and comedic solution to the Peloponnesian War. This solution would have made the audience laugh at a dark time in their nation’s history, but also reflect their desires for something that simple to end the war so they would not suffer when their nation was defeated.

Because of the simple and comedic way in which a war is ended, Lysistrata is very similar to Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds. The film is set during World War II in 1944 and portrays events that eventually lead to Hitler and the Nazi high command being killed in a burning movie theater. Tarantino, like Aristophanes, ends a war in a simple and comedic fashion. The thoughts of our modern society are very simliar to the Athenians 2400 years ago because we wish, as they did, that something as simple as burning down a building or abstinence from sex could have ended a terrible war in the hopes that not just one nation but the world could have avoided suffering the consequences the war brought.