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Public Understanding of Science
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Young Tom Edison—Edison, the Man: Biopic of the Dynamic Entrepreneur

Michael Böhnke

Ruhr University, Bochum

Stefan Machura

Ruhr University, Bochum and Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich, stefan.machura{at}jura.ruhr-uni-bochum.de

This article examines two classical examples of biographical films, Young Tom Edison and Edison, the Man, exploring the ways in which popular motion pictures build an image of entrepreneurial inventorship. Both films reflect the time in which they were produced. In 1940, the Great Depression was not forgotten and the film makers venture to re-establish faith in the capitalist system. In pursuing this, they skillfully employ common myths and standards of story-telling. The films are saturated with period detail of nineteenth-century Americana and they re-enact the familiar patterns of the biopic genre. Edison manages to rise from humble beginnings to a world-famous inventor-hero. Around the inventor’s figure, several topics are constructed, such as courage and responsibility, Edison’s allegedly ambivalent relation to money and commercial success, supposed conflict with monopolistic capital, comradeship, leadership and genius. This celebration of the scientific hero is coupled with a sacralization of the act of inventing. In sum, Thomas Alva Edison is molded into an archetype of a Schumpetarian dynamic entrepreneur. As such, Edison destroys old technologies and industries and paves the way for the better.

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 12, No. 3, 319-333 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0963662503123010
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