One way to explore the transmission of complex, interdisciplinary information to the public is to study how science has been represented in popular culture. I will examine how filmic female mad scientists reflect the tension between anthropomorphism and empathy in behavioral ecology, and how this representation demonstrates the complexity of discussions about how gender and feminism may have impacted the field. In part from a sustained focus on ‘female perspectives’ instigated by real-life scientists such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Patricia Adair Gowaty, and Marlene Zuk, recent models emphasize competition and strategizing in females as well as males. Hrdy (1986) noted how androcentric bias led to lack of attention to female sexual behavior, and argued that a gender analysis is crucial to understanding this shift because of “[…] the possibility that the empathy for other females subjectively felt by women researchers may have been instrumental in expanding the scope of sexual selection theory” (120). Gowaty (2003) linked the feminist movement with the generation of these new hypotheses (916-917). However, empathy is a problematic tool for the scientist. Zuk (2002) argues that “[…] if we claim our kinship too insistently we will not see what the animals actually do, because we will see only behaviors that reflect our own preconceived ideas” (23).

Results/Conclusions

In addition to the danger of anthropomorphism, empathy raises problematic linkages between woman and nature. In this paper, I analyze female scientists in ‘ecodoom’ films such as “Humanoids from the Deep”, “Carnosaur”, “Kingdom of the Spiders,” and “Piranhas”. I argue that an empathic link with nature provides these fictional women scientists with great insight. However, it also presents the fictional woman scientist with a double bind: she is dangerous when she is too connected with nature but she is an inadequate scientist if she does not retain her empathy for nature.

Gowaty, Patricia Adair. “Sexual Natures: How Feminism Changed Evolutionary Biology.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 28(3) (2003): 901-21.

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. "Empathy, Polyandry and the Myth of the Coy Female." Feminist Approaches to Science. Ed. Ruth Bleier. Elmsford: Pergamon Press, Inc., 1986. 119-46.

Zuk, Marlene. Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can’t Learn about Sex from Animals. Berkeley: University of California P, 2002.