Quote:
Originally Posted by Xellos-_^
yes, this goes back to hollywood studio which made movies that make funny of people who read books and seen as intellectual.
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It may even go deeper than that.
Remember world war two had many brilliant Japanese/German scientists producing impressive weapons (A6M Zero and BF109/V1/V2)
So the enemy always had the "smartest scientist".
America had good old muscle, Europe had evil genius.
Home grown scientists were always seen as "folksy" so they were safe and only inventing things that made life easy... like the polio vaccine... but foreign scientists (like those in the CCCP) were always making SCARRRRYYY things.
Look at the whole James Bond story lines ?
It seems the only way to deal with people who may be "smarter than you are", and WORSE foreign, is to mock them.
Hence pop culture feeds this trope.
Lex Luthor of the Superman stories was originally a mad scientists before he became a modern day politician. Then we have Doc OC from spider man, The whole Captain America saga.
So popular culture seems to associate smart people with quirks, accents and being born outside the USA.
Dexter from Dexters lab is a boy genius... but why does he have an accent ?
Even Jimmy Neutron sports an accent !
So it seems that smart people, dangerous smart people who mean Americnas harm are always "funny talking" or coming from Europe and Aisa ?
Let us not forget the scourge of the cold war that really fed this fear seed.
Sputnik put the word F E A R in big capital letters that fuel ridiculous anti communist campaigns that to this day is a shit stain on the US history pages.
But what I don't get is why, even at the end of the cold war, are home grown smart people looked upon with fear and suspicion... especially in the political light of being "commies/leffties/socialists etc" ?