In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look. So we want attractive pictures of our heroes and repulsive images of our enemies.
Virginia PostrelRead
'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that science fiction reflects existing societal fears rather than creating them.
Virginia Postrel's quote suggests that the anxieties surrounding science depicted in works like 'Frankenstein' are not innovations of the narrative itself but rather reflections of the societal fears and fascinations that already exist. Popular entertainment serves to amplify and dramatize these preexisting sentiments, illustrating how culture interacts with collective consciousness and how stories resonate because they align with the public's hopes and fears.
Themes
ScienceFearSocietyAnxietyCulture
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the influence of literature on public perception of science.
More from Virginia Postrel
All quotes →Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.
Virginia PostrelRead
With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art.
Virginia PostrelRead
A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you'll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you'll write screeds against philistine mass culture.
Virginia PostrelRead
Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.
Virginia PostrelRead
Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well.
Virginia PostrelRead
Similar quotes
I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.
Jim LovellRead
We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.
Charles DarwinRead
In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle is that it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel, create whirlpools and fork into two rivers, then time travel cannot be ruled out.
Michio KakuRead
Any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he is doing is a charlatan.
Kurt VonnegutRead
I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.
Peter MedawarRead