I was six when my babysitter Bonnie, the same one who smoked in front of me using one of my parents' wine glasses as an ashtray, allowed me to watch Weird Science on HBO. It was an event that changed me profoundly. Now, I know that watching Weird Science for the first time is a benchmark in everyone's life — right up there with the first time you kiss someone or the first time you dissect a frog — but for a six-year-old, whose mind isn't so much a vital organ as an impressionable blob of Silly Putty, it can drastically alter the way they see things forever. In my case, after watching Anthony Michael Hall and the other one create Kelly LeBrock in a shower of light, smoke and giant hair, I learned three important lessons: 1. Nerds are always trying to prove they're not nerds, 2. Science can be fun, and 3. Guys, especially nerdy guys, are afraid of women. (I also learned that Bill Paxton plays
annoying very well, but I digress.) Like most theories thought up by a six-year-old in the absence of good role models (thanks, Bonnie), these lessons haven't always rung true in real life situations. But there is one place where they all still apply: the Discovery Channel, a network that is far more Weird Science than science.
Watching an episode of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters the other day left me with the same impressions as watching Weird Science did almost twenty years ago. In case it's not clear from the title, MythBusters is the show where two scientists bust the shit out of common myths like "really loud bass can destroy a car'' and "a hurricane can blow a piece of straw through a tree" by examining the scientific basis, or lack thereof, for the myth and then trying it out. Adam and his beret-wearing co-host Jamie are as close to grown-up versions of the characters in Weird Science as television has to offer, and though they're far more confident in their nerdiness than Gary and Wyatt, the risks they take, and the things they try to blow up in each episode, reveal that they're trying to be seen as more than just scientists. Like the Discovery Channel itself, they want to be cool, and, for lack of a better term, macho.
Now, there are, at last count, two million different cable TV channels, so it's only logical that a fair number of them would try to court an exclusively male audience: ESPN does it with cheerleaders and, occasionally, sports. Spike TV does it by pretending to be the TV equivalent of Maxim, meaning lots of Blind Date re-runs, pro wrestling, and something called "The Dudesons." Playboy TV does it the old fashioned way, i.e., with boobs. And the Discovery Channel does it by creating steam guns (MythBusters), making big motorcycles bigger (Biker Build-Off) and then having some guy shove his hand in a horse's vagina (Dirty Jobs). Watching yet, guys?
Of course, the Discovery Channel isn't trying to attract men only: There's still that show about tribal life (Going Tribal), and most of the channel's programs, like the amazing and somewhat ridiculous I Shouldn't Be Alive, probably appeal to both men and women equally. But when it comes to being macho, at least, few networks are trying as hard as the Discovery Channel. Forget about content for the time being and just look at some of the titles of their pseudosciencey fare:
It's not just that the Discovery Channel is trying to make science fun and entertaining; it's trying, desperately, to make science seem manly.
Most Evil (about the mostest evilest criminal minds), American Chopper (motorcycles and father-son relationships), Monster Garage (more motorcycles), Stunt Junkies (extreme sports taken to the extreme!), and my personal favorite, Oil, Sweat, And Rigs (you can almost smell the testosterone). What was once the home of nature documentaries, Egyptian tomb excavations and reserved voiceovers now can be summed up with two one-syllable words: either "Wooooooo!!!" or "Ewwwww!"
Still, those guttural utterances are usually hung on scientific hooks: the two mustachioed hosts of MythBusters will talk about the physics of making wings for thirty minutes before jumping off a roof, and I Shouldn't Be Alive isn't just about graphic reenactments of, say, a hiker being pinned under a boulder, it's also about graphic representations of what's going on inside the hiker's crushed leg. But the science is just an underpinning, it's the explosion or the adventure that's the main attraction, and the Discovery Channel won't let you forget it.
But it's not just that the Discovery Channel is trying to make science fun and entertaining; it's trying, desperately, to make science seem manly. That's why the channel will often follow a program about the science of making plastic bottles and jars (How It's Made), with, say, Motorcycle Mania 2 (not to be confused with the original crazy-about-bikes show, Motorcycle Mania). It's as if they're overcompensating for being nerds. Also, aside from a few survivors here and there on I Shouldn't Be Alive, the wives on Deadliest Catch, and the secondary helpers Kari and Scottie on MythBusters, there are very few women on the Discovery Channel. (By contrast, Discovery Health Channel seems to be designed with only women in mind, from Dr. G Medical Examiner to The Woman With Half A Body.)
Red-headed Kari from MythBusters, arguably the most visible woman on the Discovery Channel, has also become the closest thing the channel has to a sex symbol — which is fitting because she was literally hired for her ass: Jamie and Adam were working on busting the myth that a woman got her butt stuck in an airplane toilet, and needed an actual woman to provide the butt. Kari was hanging around, so they used her to create a model and test the myth. Since then, Kari has mainly functioned as a MythBusters Girl Friday: she's been put in a bikini and painted silver (to test the "Tin Man myth"), helped to build levitation machines, posed for FHM, and caused Adam and Jamie to get giggly on more than one occasion. In short, she's equal parts handywoman and sex object, though it's hard to imagine her getting so much camera time if the latter didn't apply.
Of course all this hasn't stopped me from watching. On the contrary, my DVR is clogged with episodes of Deadliest Catch, MythBusters and anything having to do with murder and/or sharks. My eyes are glued to the Discovery Channel much in the same way they were to Weird Science. After all, science is always more palatable when it creates something unexpected, like, say, a motorcycle. And I never get tired of watching nerds reinvent themselves, whether it's by going to a party with a model they've somehow made, or constructing giant wings and leaping off a building.
Then again, maybe I'm just waiting for the MythBusters episode that proves two nerds really can create Kelly LeBrock.
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