Imagined Identities
January 19th, 2008 by Adrienne
What do you get when you combine a physics professor, a biology professor, and a comic book writer? As it turns out, a lot of laughter and a very new perspective on familiar superhero stories.
First Roger Stern, an author and comic book writer, described the history of superhero stories and comics over the 20th century, exploring the ideas of alternate identities. (Why do superheroes have a need to hide their face or maintain a “mild-mannered” secret identity?) It was interesting to hear an insider’s perspective on the production of superhero stories.
Next, University of Minnesota physics professor James Kakalios talked about real-life physics and how it is incorporated (sometimes presciently and sometimes a little belatedly) into superhero stories, using comic books and clips from the X-Men movie to demonstrate topics including quantum mechanics and string theory.
The third and final speaker was University of Chicago biology professor Michael LaBarbera, who discussed the biology of B-movie monsters. His scientifically rigorous explanations of atrocious 1950s horror flicks — for example, the giant octopus in “It Came from Beneath the Sea” clearly suffered from a stroke due to blood pressure changes while scaling the San Fransisco Bridge to eat people — were hilarious.
This presentation provided a new angle for examining this weekend’s theme of “Identity.” Most importantly, the three dynamic speakers also provided a light-hearted look at science and an interesting historical examination of a pop-culture phenomena.
