Picturizing Sciencethe Science Documentary As Multimedia Spectacle

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Picturizing science: The science documentary as multimedia spectacle

Josè van Dijck
International Journal of Cultural Studies 2006; 9; 5
DOI: 10.1177/1367877906061162
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Volume 9(1): 5–24
DOI: 10.1177/1367877906061162
Picturizing science
The science documentary as multimedia spectacle
● José van Dijck

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A B S T R A C T ● At the turn of the millennium, science documentaries show a

particular penchant for the abundant use of animated visuals, obviously
facilitated by new digital television techniques such as videographic animation
and computer animatronics. Analyzing two recent science documentary series
(Walking with Dinosaurs and The Elegant Universe) this article discusses how
scientists and television producers deploy digital animation to convince viewers
of the plausibility of scientific theories in the fields of paleontology and physics.
The question guiding these analyses is how the use of digital animation is
grounded in ambiguous epistemological and ontological claims. Rather than
lamenting the advancing pictorial effect and the demise of realism in
‘postmodern’ science documentaries, it is argued that the multimedia mix of
words, sounds and images both reflects and transforms our claims to knowledge.
In fact, science documentaries do not illustrate but enable scientific claims; they
visualize knowledge while substantiating hypotheses. ●
KEYWORDS ● cultural analysis ● digital animation ● narrative modes
● science documentary, television documentary ● visual styles
Introduction
After its initial launch in 1999, the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs became
an immediate hit with television audiences around the world, even if this
reinvigorated genre of the natural history documentary drew profound

6 I N T E R N AT I O N A L journal of C U LT U R A L studies 9(1)
criticism from renowned science commentators. At the heart of this criti-

cism was the complaint that digital animation overwhelmed documentary
intentions and that the series, despite its technical novelty, failed to offer a
‘new and improved’ approach to disseminating scientific knowledge. Others
resented the BBC’s claim to present an accurate vision of paleontology,
while favouring spectacle and edutainment at the expense of factual repre-
sentation and realism. Walking with Dinosaurs gave rise to a number of
academic inquiries, some of which called the series a ‘turning point’ in the
history of science documentaries (Darley, 2003; Jeffries, 2003; Scott and
White, 2003). British media theorist Andrew Darley (2003) disparaged the
documentary’s postmodern style and techniques, rhetorical approach, and
overall aesthetic orientation. Its most noted feature – the use of special
effects and computer animation – allegedly drives science producers’ affinity
for spectacle and edutainment further towards contemporary filmmakers’
preference for simulation, pastiche, and hyper-realism. According to Darley
(2003: 229) Walking with Dinosaurs exemplifies the so-called postmodern
science documentary, which falls prey ‘to contemporary aesthetic strategies
that tend to negate representation and meaning (content), promoting
instead the fascinations of spectacle and form (style)’.
Indeed, recent science documentaries show a particular penchant for the
abundant use of animated visuals, obviously facilitated by new digital tele-
vision techniques such as videographic animation and computer animatron-
ics. Computer engineers can create moving pictures out of pixels without
the necessity of an analogue referent – a technique that lends itself well to
illustrating abstract theories or speculative scientific hypotheses. However,
I disagree with Darley’s and other’s critique that
a) there is a sharp division or turning point between the so-called
modernist or realist paradigm in science documentaries and the post-
modernist or ‘fictionalist’ paradigm, and
b) that visual spectacle (‘form’) in this series overrules scientific claims to
knowledge (‘content’).
For one thing, science documentaries have never been objective populariza-
tions of science, but have always relied on realist (e.g. visual and narrative)
effects to convey the suggestion of trustworthiness and validity. Series like
Walking with Dinosaurs do not negate realism; on the contrary, one of the
series’ most remarkable features is its adherence to the dominant realist
paradigm, despite its abundant use of visual spectacle. Besides, the consti-
tutive role of visualizing technologies in contemporary science is nothing
new or disturbing; media technologies have never just served as tools for
dissemination or popularization, but have always actively shaped scientific
knowledge.
The current tendency to embellish science documentary with digital
‘pictorial’ techniques neither signals a break with the conventional genre,

van Dijck ● Picturizing science 7
nor does it imply a victory of form over content or aesthetics over science.
To support my claim, this article proposes a framework for analysing
science documentaries and natural history documentaries in terms of visual
and narrative rhetoric.1 The model typifies the science documentary as a
mixture of narrative modes and (tele)visual styles, the various combinations
of which help construct and sustain a particular claim to knowledge –
propositions of how things are, were, or could be. After applying this model
to Walking with Dinosaurs, a series intended to present a reconstruction of
prehistory, we will turn to another recent documentary series, The Elegant
Universe, and extend the analytical model to the representation of an
abstract and speculative branch of science: theoretical physics. It will be
argued that these documentaries’ truly remarkable feature is less their heavy
use of visual aesthetics and animatronics than their prolonged reliance on
conventional realist effects. Moreover, these analyses aim at disclosing how
visual styles and narrative modes are constitutive, rather than illustrative,
elements in the production of scientific claims to knowledge.
Narrative modes and visual styles in science documentaries
Science documentaries made for television have a longstanding tradition of

realism, a tradition cemented in the narrative modes of explanation and
exposition, and displayed in the visual styles of realist footage, in some cases
complemented by symbolic images. They are historically characterized as
linear, expository, and didactic tales – features that were always regarded
as the benchmarks of quality science programs such as the British series
Horizon (BBC) and its American counterpart Nova (PBS) (Gardner and
Young, 1981: 177). Since the beginning of science programming, the big
challenge for television producers and scientists alike has been to reconcile
the inherent unruliness of science with the laws of visualization enforced by
a medium primarily valued for its ability to entertain a large audience with
moving images. Much of science seemed to be unsuitable for television: its
disciplinary content was either too abstract (physics) or too theoretical
(mathematics), its subject matter too remote in time (prehistory) or place
(cosmology), its research object too infinitesimal (molecular biology) or
inaccessible (genetic therapy) for cameras to convey ‘realistic’ images. In
past decades, technologies for scientific imaging and televisual recording
have yielded impressive new views, including, for instance, the endoscopic
camera that can film inside our bodies and the satellite transmission
enabling real time images from other planets (van Dijck, 2005). Yet despite
television’s grateful incorporation of every new imaging instrument for the
purpose of popularization, there will always remain scientific areas that
resist ‘realistic’ visualization. In order to show the imperceptible and to
render the invisible imaginable, television producers, from the very onset,

have wielded an array of visual and rhetorical strategies to visualize and

narrate what science can never show and tell.
Arguably still the dominant storytelling strategy in science documentaries
today is the coupling of expository and explanatory modes of narrative with
realistic and metaphorical visual styles.2 In this hierarchical constellation,
visual modes are subjugated to the authority of the narrative mode – words
reign over visuals. The expository mode in its most prototypical form
consists of a voice (or voice-over) explaining what a scientific idea,
paradigm, or discovery entails. Frequently, this voice is embodied by a scien-
tist, who may also serve as the host of the program. An invisible, anony-
mous voice-over can be alternated by on-camera expositions of scientists,
whose authority is an indispensable asset to this narrative mode. Viewers
are more likely to trust claims made by the very persons who researched
them and whose authority is institutionally legitimate. Closely related to the
expository mode is the method of explanation: someone clarifying how
science works. Not all brilliant scientists are also good teachers; it is there-
fore quite common for television producers to rely on voice-overs for this
specific task. Elucidation commonly involves the use of rhetorical strategies
to enhance public understanding of scientific processes. Metaphors or
analogies are universal tools for explanation, but they are also directive
instruments, attaching quotidian, ideological, or political meanings to scien-
tific subjects (Bucchi, 1998; Nash, 1990; van Dijck, 1998). The explanatory
mode encompasses many rhetorical strategies: from metaphors to personal
stories by scientists, from detailed instructions by technicians to historical
excursions. Obviously, the more ‘visualizable’ the explanation, the better.
Within the realist paradigm of science documentary, expository or
explanatory modes are often stitched onto video footage showing actual or
symbolic events to produce a realistic or metaphorical effect. Much of
science can be captured on film: if you want to show at what temperature
ice melts, or if you want to demonstrate what threat forest fires pose to the
animal population, you go film where the action is. Film or video footage
of ‘science in action’ or ‘scientists at work’ is often used in connection to
shots of scientists talking on-camera, enhancing the expository mode. When
the subject matter prohibits realistic filming, producers often resort to
metaphoric visualization; shots of common objects, processes, or events are
linked to scientific ideas by means of analogy. For instance, in order to visu-
alize geneticist David Suzuki’s explanation of genetic mutation in his eight-
part documentary series The Secret of Life (1993), directors used the
extended metaphor of the ‘language of life,’ filming Suzuki sitting amidst
stacks of printed pages, archives, and endless rows of books in libraries.
Visual metaphors, like textual ones, are never neutral conduits for science,
but are attempts to attach concrete, everyday meanings to theoretical ideas
or scientific assumptions. Symbolic images are quite compatible with video
footage of ‘real’ science and scientists and they hardly compromise the

reality effect; particularly if coupled onto an explanatory narrative mode,

the metaphorical effect enhances rather than interferes with the illusion of
reality.
The two narrative modes (expository and explanatory) and televisual
styles (realistic and metaphorical) together inform what I will call the ‘realist
paradigm’ in science documentary – the most important markers of quality
science programming produced by institutions like the BBC and PBS in the
past 50 years. Western media still celebrate science’s foundation in empiri-
cism and positivism – the notion that all knowledge derives from observa-
tional experience – and grounds this foundation in the conventions of
electronic-realistic representation. The scientific claim of film and video to
observational truth, according to Brian Winston (1995: 137), is built into
the media apparatus as well as inscribed in the documentary genre: ‘The
documentary becomes scientific inscription – evidence.’ Science documen-
tary’s reality effect is rooted in technology and cultural form – a contract
between makers and viewers pertaining to visual recording devices that
inscribe ‘what science is’ or ‘how it works’. Even though this contract is
knowingly compromised by scripts, post-production editing, camera angles,
and a host of technical-rhetorical devices, they do not infringe on the agree-
ment between image and viewer. As Roger Silverstone (1985: 178) sums up
cogently: ‘The plausibility of a documentary film lies in its naturalization,
in its internal coherence and in its matching of its own reality to a reality
which ‘everyone knows.’ Quite a few cultural theorists and social construc-
tivists have pointed to suggestive, symbolic images that help construct scien-
tific claims in documentaries as ‘truth’ rather than as hypotheses or claims
to knowledge (Gardner and Young, 1981; Hornig, 1990). These criticisms
particularly pertain to the natural history documentary, a (sub)genre which
set the standard for the presentation of science on television both in terms
of content and style (Jeffries, 2003). Detractors contend it is precisely the
misleading combination of narrative authority and symbolic or metaphoric
images that renders these documentaries’ claims to veracity and accuracy
controversial (Crowther, 1997; Haraway, 1989).
In the past 25 years, however, the realist paradigm in science documen-
tary has been compromised each time innovative (tele)visual styles and
expansive narrative modes were pushed to the fore, forcing documentary-
makers to adjust their means of storytelling if they wanted to appeal to an
audience increasingly acculturated by Hollywood productions. The per-
ennial unattractiveness of the documentary form was that it could not tell
past stories, and neither could it speculate about consequences or impli-
cations, due to a lack of ‘real’ footage that might serve as evidence to a
voice-over or interviewee. In science documentary, particularly, the need for
reconstruction and speculation was poignant because scientific discoveries
were never captured in real time, and the relevance of many scientific
discoveries and claims lay in the future – applications that had yet to

emerge. Showing historical triumphs of science on television was inherently

difficult if one could not resort to the techniques of fiction: the only suitable
form in the realist mode was the talking head of a reminiscing scientist,
looking back on ‘what happened’ at this memorable moment. By the same
token, only legitimate spokespersons were authorized to speculate on the
future of particular developments in science. Yet none of these modes was
even remotely attractive without accompanying moving images. Whereas
photographic stills of historical events and symbolic shots of potential
implications could fill some of that void, the visual styles of fiction film
substantially increased the narrative potential of television documentary.
Documentary television producers, when first using reconstructive and
speculative modes, came under fire when they started to use these modes in
conjunction with a new visual style that allegedly breached the contract
between image and viewer. After the American evening news had included a
reenactment in one of its news features – a scene played out by actors in an
actual environment – critics and scholars lamented the beginning of a
downward spiral of trustworthiness.3 As more film-makers followed suit and
incorporated the ‘fiction effect’ into the documentary genre, science documen-
tary makers adopted this style to enhance the reconstructive mode (Winston,
1995: 254–5). BBC producers asked scientists to ‘re-enact’ or play out scenes
to show how important scientific discoveries had materialized. For instance,
a biologist agreed to restage her voyage through the Australian desert, where
she first got her brilliant insight in plant genetics when her car got stuck after
a sand storm messed up the fuselage. Scientists, initially weary that their being
drafted into professional acting would compromise their serious status, even
if playing former versions of themselves, were persuaded by the increased
dramatic appeal of science programming. After 1980, BBC and PBS science
documentaries increasingly included reenactments and staged scenes, visual
styles that greatly expanded the creative possibilities of producers and direc-
tors. Series like Horizon and Nova even embraced popular hybridizations like
docu-drama to enliven historical episodes of science, such as a reconstruction
of the double helix discovery by Watson and Crick (Franklin, 1988). Re-
enactments, however, were almost invariably paired off with the authorita-
tive expository mode, often voiced through a reminiscing scientist. As a result,
the fiction effect was made subordinate to the reality effect.
Besides reenactments becoming an accepted visual style in science docu-
mentaries, we can more recently witness an increasing use of digital anima-
tions to embellish this genre, causing what has also been called the ‘pictorial
effect’ (Mitchell, 1992). Naturally, pictures and animation have always been
used in science documentaries to visualize abstract projections, yet
drawings, diagrams, flow charts, or cartoon-like illustrations always explic-
itly signalled their artificiality and accentuated their animated quality. With
the emergence of digital video, we are witnessing a new type of ‘picturiz-
ing’: videographic animation and computer animatronics allow computer

engineers to create moving images out of pixels that look like analogue
video footage. In other words, digital videographics takes analogue video
footage as its benchmark for reality, whereas the truth-claim for video
footage was rooted in its verisimilitude. For producers of science documen-
taries, the use of digital video animations appears to be particularly fruitful
in areas that conventionally resist visualization, such as the very abstract,
remote, or inaccessible. In combination with the speculative mode, pictur-
ization allows visual substantiation of conditional, hypothetical, or even
speculative scientific claims stating ‘this could have happened in the past’
or ‘this is what could happen, if . . .’. This new visual style, in connection
to the speculative mode, again expands the potential of rhetorical strategies
for science documentary producers.
The pictorial effect, though, should be viewed in the context of its
ubiquitous implementation in visual culture; its smooth incorporation into
the science documentary cannot be seen apart from the abundant use of
videographics and digital animation in all sorts of audiovisual genres. The
immense quantity of digitally generated images in Hollywood productions,
from Batman to Jurassic Park, as well as in video games like Lara Croft,
have undoubtedly whetted the appetite and facilitated the acceptance of
videographic embalming in science documentaries. Images are becoming
more artefactual objects and pictures, not replications of the real, and their
accumulation in audio-visual productions has an overwhelming aesthetic
connotation, rather than a truthful or illusionist one (Cubitt, 2004). As digi-
tization enables near-perfect imitation of video footage, the pictorial effect’s
prominence is augmented in relation to the reality effect, the metaphorical
effect, or the fiction effect.
Let me reiterate in a schematic fashion the various styles and narrative
modes we have identified so far.
Visual styles Narrative modes

Film/video footage Reality effect Expository mode ‘this is what science is’
Symbolic visuals Metaphoric effect Explanatory mode ‘this is how science

works’
Reenactments Fiction effect Reconstructive mode ‘this is what happened’
Digital animations Pictorial effect Speculative mode ‘this is what could

(have) happen(ed)’
Figure 1 Visual styles and narrative modes

The upper and lower blocks in the diagram may seemingly ground the
televisual mediation of science in a realist vis-à-vis a fictionalist paradigm
(or, for that matter, the assumed modernist versus postmodernist scheme).
However, none of the visual styles or narrative modes distinguished in this
diagram is intrinsic to one specific type of documentary. Within the realist
paradigm, re-enactments and digital animations are commonly used to back
up specific explanations. Even before the implementation of digital tech-
nologies in science documentaries, producers regularly deployed pictorial
effects and speculative modes to embellish scientific claims. Now that the
speculative mode is taking prominence, science programs effectively incor-
porate elements of the realist paradigm to affirm their documentary status.
In other words, the two halves of this diagram are mutually dependent: it
is the actual combination of styles and modes that helps build powerful
rhetorical claims to knowledge in television documentaries.
The following will illustrate the intricate interweaving of visual styles and
narrative modes when analyzing two examples of recent science documen-
taries. Walking with Dinosaurs takes the reconstructive mode as a point of
departure as it re-animates extinct species from prehistory; The Elegant
Universe assumes the speculative mode to explore the highly abstract and
hypothetical subject matter of ‘string theory’. This layered model is not
aimed at identifying distinctive technical and aesthetic features of these
documentaries as if they intrinsically defined the genre; instead, it offers a
framework for analyzing how these documentaries’ respective claims to
knowledge are constructed through various combinations of narrative
modes and visual styles, thereby using innovative fictional techniques while
heavily relying upon realist conventions.
The reconstructive mode: Walking with Dinosaurs
There are scenes that really are very good science and there are those which
are more speculative, like mating. How on earth will we ever know how
dinosaurs mated? We’re not always showing people stuff that we know is
right, we’re showing people our best guess. (Tim Haines, producer of
Walking with Dinosaurs)
When Walking with Dinosaurs was first aired in 1999, the six-part series
was advertised by the BBC as ‘a window on the lost world’ allowing viewers
to ‘believe they were watching living creatures in their natural habitat’.
Digital animations of the Tyrannosaurus rex, the Optalmosaurus,
Stegosaurus and a number of other prehistoric animals populating planet
earth 65 million years ago, vivified paleontologists’ research by visualizing
their claims on our television screens. Like its sequel Walking with Beasts
(2001), this series popularized a somewhat dusty academic discipline to an
audience substantially younger than the average science documentary

viewer (Scott and White, 2003). The success of Walking with Dinosaurs
was primarily due to its technological production mode – the use of digital
animations and animatronics – cleverly hooking into a new cinematic
tradition established by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and The
Lost World (1997). While the BBC adopted some of the visual styles
wielded in these Hollywood blockbusters, it strategically framed the series
as a natural history documentary. The ‘reality effect’ of Walking with
Dinosaurs lies in its ability to make a hypothetical reconstruction from the
past, produced entirely in fictional and pictorial styles, subservient to the
explanatory and expository narrative modes, anchoring animated fiction in
the realist paradigm of science documentary.
Walking with Dinosaurs utilizes three different types of visuals. First,
there is the footage of landscapes, filmed in Chile, California, and New
Caledonia – not because the prehistoric animals presumably lived there, but
because these sceneries resemble the biotope of dinosaurs at the time:
sparsely vegetated steppe without grass. Secondly, there are scenes in which
specially constructed clay models of creatures serve as props in close-up
shots.4 These models are like puppets set in motion by people and machines;
in the editing stage, these props were digitally manipulated to make them
walk, eat, or move ‘correctly’, that is, according to scientific conjectures.
Finally, there are scenes that are generated entirely by digital animatronics.
Animated creatures and filmed models all seamlessly merge with their
‘natural habitat’, blending into a single visual style: the realist style of a
natural history documentary. Enhancing the realist effect are shots marking
the unobtrusive presence of an ‘actual’ camera crew: the camera lens gets
accidentally clouded by a mating dinosaur’s saliva, or gets speckled by water
drops when two animals are fighting.
Undoubtedly the most notable feature confirming Walking with
Dinosaurs’ genre label is its narrative mode of explanation. A neutral, invis-
ible voice-over comments on every scene as if it is taking place in real time,
explaining in the present tense how dinosaurs go about daily acts like
eating, mating, surviving: ‘A young male tries to attract the attention of a
female by walking next to her, but mating can be a dangerous act for the
female Diplodocus.’ As Scott and White (2003: 321) have noticed, the
voice-over impersonates ‘an authoritative commentary by an omniscient
narrator, combining the “objective” discourse of scientific knowledge (facts
and figures) with touches of anthropomorphism’. The voice-over firmly
anchors the series in the narrative mode of explanation, but more than that,
it articulates the reconstructive mode (‘this is what assumedly happened’)
in the typical linguistic features of real-time exposition (‘this is what
happens’). Reconstruction and speculation hide behind an expository sheen
of realistic visuals authenticated by a mixture of voice-over, ‘real-time’
(fabricated) sounds of animals, and background music to accentuate tense
or romantic moments. It is exactly this mixture of scientific reconstruction

and speculative imagination that turns Walking with Dinosaurs into attrac-
tive television, but this very blend also subverts the contract between maker
and viewer as to what the images actually show.
Part of the series’ claim to authentication (or scientific reconstruction) is
made not in the documentary itself, but in the accompanying The Making
of Walking with Dinosaurs series. The meta-documentary recounts how
100 scientists were involved in this monster production. Indeed, the involve-
ment of scientists in television documentaries is nothing new, as scientists’
participation in Hollywood (science) fiction is now the rule rather than the
exception (Frank, 2003). In line with the conventions of the natural history
documentary, no scientist appears on camera in the documentary proper;
yet in The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs, they have ample opportunity
to show off their authority and validate the program’s claim to scientific
truth. Paleontologists explain head-on what evidence they found to substan-
tiate their claims, before properly instructing computer engineers how to go
about ‘animating’ the models. Sometimes the skeletal structures of living
animals, such as elephants, were used to teach engineers and scientists about
the most likely locomotion of prehistoric beasts. But The Making of
Walking with Dinosaurs also reveals that not just paleontologists served to
guarantee the accuracy and veracity of the series’ scientific claims; media
technicians and animation experts were actively engaged in scientific work.
Technicians sometimes refuted accepted knowledge in paleontology because
their models showed a specific locomotion to be impossible. As one scien-
tist comments in the programme, paleontologists actually learned from
animation programmers because they helped them ‘prove’ how the
Diplodocus walked, how it moved its legs and arms, how the animals grazed
and fought. The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs, in addition to illus-
trating how the series was made, also shows how science is made: tech-
nicians help scientists establish their claims by using the very tools that turn
them into attractive spectacle.
What makes this meta-documentary so important, in my view, is the
observation that its prominent visual style (animation) is no longer used as
an illustration, but that computer graphics are an integral part of construct-
ing science – an observation made earlier by social constructivists and
philosophers of science (Latour, 1990; Lynch and Woolgar, 1990). Models
and representations visually melting into a seamless whole demonstrate how
scientific claims are intrinsically dependent upon their visualizations.
Computer animations are concurrently instruments of mediating and
constructing science. The pictorial effect, serving to ‘authenticate’ the real-
istic effect, is part of the scientific process, which is at the same time and
by the same means a creative process to turn science into television. Visu-
alization and scientific argumentation are mutually contingent. As this series
seems to sustain, digital ‘picturization’ is not just an effect but a constitu-
tive tool of science. Meanwhile, the series Walking with Dinosaurs derives

much, if not all, of its scientific trustworthiness from its unarticulated

framing as a realist documentary, in which voice is supposed to reign over
visual. The reconstructive mode seems merely ‘illustrated’ by digital effects
and animation, assuming its subordination to the conventional narrative
modes of exposition and explanation. However, my interpretative analysis
reveals this to be an effective rhetorical tactic aimed at anchoring the docu-
mentary’s truth-claims in accepted realist conventions.
The speculative mode: The Elegant Universe
The decision to use animation, to use a lot of it, was completely essential to
the process, because when you’re doing that project about string theory, when
you’re talking about things that really cannot be seen, that can only be
imagined, I don’t know any other way to do it than through metaphor and
animation. (Paula S. Apseil, senior executive producer of The Elegant
Universe)
A similar blend of realist claims to scientific truth and animated visual
aesthetics can be traced in a science programme that is primarily informed
by the speculative mode. The Elegant Universe, a three-part documentary
series aired by PBS in 2003, manages to make a very difficult, highly
abstract and hypothetical subject from the field of theoretical physics imag-
inable to laypersons. The world of string theory – ‘a world stranger than
science fiction’ according to the PBS announcement – conjectures a
reconciliation of Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity, Albert Einstein’s discover-
ies on relativity, Niels Bohr’s findings in quantum mechanics, and James
Maxwell’s mathematical equations describing electro-magnetism into a
unified ‘theory of everything’. String physicists assume the existence of a
subatomic level where ‘strings’, entities smaller than particles or quarks,
generate a variety of shapes, from black holes to membranes. An import-
ant tenet of string theory is the existence of not 4, but 11 dimensions –
dimensions that we cannot see or even make visible – and a possible infinite
number of parallel universes. It claims to bring together the divergent sets
of laws formulated by famous physicists, and also prophesies a coherent
explanation for all manifestations of matter now and in the future. As Brian
Greene, physicist at Columbia University and host of The Elegant Universe
suggests, questions of philosophy or religion may soon become questions of
physics. String theorists’ hypotheses are, not surprisingly, fiercely disputed
amongst scientists, but how does this television documentary render their
claims plausible and even likely?
The overwhelming use of digital animation and videographics in this
series is partly responsible for a persuasive presentation of a contentious
theory, but its scientific claims are ultimately validated by the explanatory

mode. In contrast to Walking with Dinosaurs, The Elegant Universe relies

on the conventional narrative strategy of an expert commentator. Host Brian
Greene is an authority in the field and an engaging storyteller who lucidly
explains the most difficult concepts by means of metaphors and analogies.
He uses a cello to explain string vibrations, an analogy between a cup of
coffee and a donut to illustrate the significance of shapes, and sliced bread to
exemplify the existence of parallel universes. But Greene’s explanatory narra-
tive is never simply illustrated by pictures of everyday objects; all images, even
those of the host himself, are choreographed into fast-paced animated
sequences, to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish video footage
from morphing animations, or material objects from pictorial metaphors.
For instance, Brian Greene’s talking head appears on a slice of bread that he
himself is cutting; in the same visual style, a cup of coffee digitally morphs
into a donut. Even textual inserts, such as mathematical formulas or letters
(G for gravity, EM for electromagnetism) smoothly change into visuals, just
as the sound of strings transforms into images. To enhance the explanatory
mode, Greene’s words are frequently alternated by single quotes from an
impressive parade of top-notch physicists. Initially, their talking heads appear
in straightforward on-camera interviews, their authority signalled by name,
title, and institutional affiliation.5 But in subsequent scenes, their images are
retouched to appear for example on large screens over Broadway or, when a
scientist explains the existence of more dimensions, the screen shows his
multiple faces. Animations ‘hijack’ the explanatory mode, subjecting all
video footage to the elasticity of digital graphics; the hypothesized universe
of string theory seems already real in the world of multimedia, where text,
sound, video footage, and animation all merge into a unified visual style.
For the large part, The Elegant Universe relies on the speculative mode,
yet it also includes reconstructive parts in which historical events are re-
enacted, suggestively lacing history onto the future. Standing in the
doorway of what used to be Einstein’s house in Princeton, New Jersey, Brian
Greene recounts the legend of how this famed scientist chased the holy grail
of physics until he ran out of time. Various milestones in the history of
physics are re-enacted, suggestively pairing off historical geniuses with the
brilliant minds of string theorists today. The story jumps back and forth
between Niels Bohr working in his office and John Schwarz, one of the early
advocates of string theory in 1973, anxiously pacing in front of a black-
board filled with formulas; between an impersonated Caluzzo in debate
with Einstein, and Ed Witten, whose 1995 paper reconciling various strands
of string theory secured him the epithet of ‘Einstein’s successor.’ Reenacted
scenes can hardly be distinguished from black-and-white photographs,
retouched and animated to make them look like historical footage, and
actual video footage projected in slow motion is frequently interrupted by
visual tricks, like formulas leaping off a blackboard. In several instances,
the viewer is catapulted from the history of physics straight into the future.

After recapturing Einstein’s discovery of how space can stretch and warp,
host Brian Greene explains how string theory can also account for space
being ‘ripped apart’ so that an extra dimension becomes feasible. A proven
theory is thus equated with a current hypothesis, and subsequently stitched
onto a prediction of future implications. ‘Can you walk on the Mount
Everest, eat a baguette in Paris, and still be back in New York on time for
your morning meeting?’ Greene ponders, while his movements are smoothly
sealed onto morphing backdrops. Past, present, and future – proven
theories, hypothetical claims, and speculation – all blend into the visual style
of an animated universe, where the differences between realism, fiction, and
science fiction appear virtually obsolete.
The Elegant Universe presents a multimedia spectacle which magically
turns hypothesis into feasibility, and speculation into proven claim. But does
the science represented in this documentary still pertain to questions of truth
and falsehood or, perhaps more relevant here, to representational criteria of
fact or fiction? Several detractors interviewed for the programme point out
the weakness of string theory: even if this theory will prove to be mathe-
matically sound, it can never be put to a test. Indeed, the programme’s host
Brian Greene admits that ‘testing’ string theory is impossible; even the giant
atom smashers, currently being built by Fermilab in Texas and by CERN
in Switzerland, will at best deliver circumstantial evidence for the existence
of strings, sparticles, or gravitons. And yet, throughout the program, Greene
subjects the laws of physics, along with the assumptions of string theory, to
‘experiments’ in virtual reality, executed in digital architecture. For instance,
when he wants to show how the laws of electromagnetism interfere with
the laws of gravity, Greene is filmed jumping from a tall building but magi-
cally landing on his two feet. This animated scene is, of course, an imita-
tion of a made-in-Hollywood Batman leap, constructed in such a style that
even if you don’t believe in the existence of flying human bats, you have to
admire the reality-effect caused by its visual artifice.
In the two-dimensional world of film and multimedia, the 11 dimensions
of string theory can at least be turned into a visual reality – a universe that
is governed by the rules of animation but subjected to the laws of verisimili-
tude and realism. Ultimately, the answer to the million-dollar question,
posed at the end of the series – ‘Can string theory be wrong?’ – is as simple
as it is revealing. Brian Greene philosophizes that so much of string theory
makes sense, ‘it has got to be right’, and his judgement is supported by
Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, saying: ‘I find it hard to
believe that that much elegance and mathematical beauty would simply be
wasted.’ Ordinary viewers, overwhelmed by three hours of digital videog-
raphy, may find it hard to believe that the sophistication and elegance of
this multimedia spectacle would be wasted. Qualifications of verification
and trustworthiness are subtly replaced by qualifications of aesthetics and
persuasiveness.

And yet, despite its visual fireworks and aesthetic overload, the documen-
tary astonishingly relies on the authority of voice(-over) and words to
establish the trustworthiness of its claims. Like Walking with Dinosaurs, The
Elegant Universe includes reenactments and animations to ‘picturize’
scientific theory that is otherwise too abstract to be understood by non-
physicists. In addition, the speculative mode accounts for playful visual tricks
borrowed directly from fiction to enhance the documentary’s metaphorical
and pictorial effects. But it is the distinguished commentary and appearance
of physicist Brian Greene (supported by a large number of authorities in the
field) who, at all times, subjects the artificiality of images to the ‘authenticity’
of his words, much like the neutral voice-over in Walking with Dinosaurs
takes command of the animated pictures of conjectured prehistoric beasts.
Even if visual spectacle seems at times to overwhelm the rational content of
the science presented, it is in fact the rhetorical choreography of carefully
intertwined narrative modes and visual styles that ultimately grounds both
documentaries in a conventional realist paradigm. The authority and trust-
worthiness of its proposed scientific claims are ultimately contingent upon
the reality effect created by the documentary’s producers.
In the previous section, I explained how Walking with Dinosaurs, rather
than being a popularized version of paleontology, actually helped construct
its scientific claims – an observation that becomes particularly manifest in
The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs episode. Along similar lines, the
makers of The Elegant Universe, in the bonus material added to the DVD
version, comment on the crucial function of animatronics to the construc-
tion of string theory. Without the possibilities of computer animation there
would have been no documentary, but there also would have been no
theory: computer graphics enable scientists to imagine the possible shapes
the ‘materialist world’ can assume. In The Making of Walking with
Dinosaurs, producer Paula Apseil explains how the scientific claims of
string theory are contingent on new modes of visualization: ‘We could not
have told the story of string theory and we could not have visualized all the
aspects of the universe which string theory says could be true, if we would
not have used animation.’ For instance, the contention of string theorists
that the ‘big bang’ was not the beginning of evolution, and therefore that
history or space has no beginning or ending, is perfectly in tune with the
notion that visual images in this series lack an original in the real world.
Computers and multimedia environments have turned the world of science
into a large database of digital images, a database in which the footage does
not bespeak an original in the empirical world. Past, present, and future
claims are all ‘pictorial input’ ready for morphing: Einstein’s historical life
and ideas evolve into Brian Greene’s projected existence into parallel
universes. In fact, the multimedia representation of string theory does not
illustrate but enables its claims; it not only helps visualize, but to some
extent substantiates its hypotheses.

In the past, documentaries based in the realist paradigm seemingly

displayed science within the logical order of empiricism, affirming the
Platonic hierarchy between reality and representation, thus constituting the
mastery of words over visual illustration, of explanation over speculation,
and of reality over fiction. The linear order of history, the empiricist order
of science, and the representational order of science documentary were all
grounded in the same ontological claims: what likely happened in the past
or potentially happens in the future cannot be ‘authentically’ filmed, it can
only be illustrated by artificial means. Recent documentaries like Walking
with Dinosaurs and The Elegant Universe apparently subvert the
proclaimed ontological order between science and reality vis-à-vis represen-
tation and fiction. And yet, more than ever, the science documentary relies
on the presence of realist features, such as an authoritative voice-over, a
well-respected host, or the appearance of an impressive number of experts
in the field, to anchor its claims to trustworthiness in the realist paradigm.
The science documentary, while subverting its own ontological claims, para-
doxically affirms the hierarchy of ‘science’ over ‘fiction’, of ‘content’ over
‘spectacle’, and of ‘popularization’ over ‘construction’.
Conclusion
Many academics and commentators, like Andrew Darley (2003: 229)

conclude that documentaries like Walking with Dinosaurs, and by exten-
sion The Elegant Universe, emanate from a cultural context that favours
simulation and hyper-realism, and therefore negates realism. Darley and
others observe a sharp turning point between the evidently modernist (or
realist) and postmodernist (or fictionalist) documentary genre, the latter of
which is resented because its aesthetic strategies and high-tech visual spec-
tacle tend to overwhelm scientific content. Indeed, the technological is a
significant part of a larger cultural transformation that some have labelled
the ‘postmodern condition’ (Harvey, 1990; Lyotard, 1984). However, as I
have argued in this article, assuming an intrinsic divide between modernist
and postmodernist documentary genres may be ahistorical and insufficient
as a mode of criticism. Applying a model that distinguishes visual styles and
narrative modes, it becomes clear that the realist paradigm of science docu-
mentary, even in its earlier stages, incorporated fictional and pictorial styles
as well as speculative and reconstructive narrative modes. And vice versa,
while the multimedia spectacles produced by the BBC and PBS thrive on the
dominant modes of speculation and reconstruction, their status and author-
ity as science documentaries is ultimately contingent upon their use of
explanation and exposition. Every a priori distinction between modern and
postmodern, as Bruno Latour (1993) has convincingly argued, is epistemo-
logically flawed because it hinges on fallacious dichotomies between science

and representation, between scientific object and active agent, and between
science and culture. Latour’s argument that ‘we have never been modern’
also applies to the science documentary: there has never been a purely
‘realist’ paradigm in science programming.
Arguing from a somewhat different angle, John Corner (2002: 266) has
launched the term ‘postdocumentary’, not to proclaim the end of documen-
tary as a truthful cultural form, but to signal ‘its relocation as a set of prac-
tices, forms, and functions.’ He argues that the legacy of documentary is
still at work in current styles of televisuality, reaffirming the realist contract
between viewers and makers but concurrently subverting it in favour of
innovative claims to knowledge. Since digital technologies are changing our
ontological relationship with the image (Manovich, 2001), we need a more
refined analytical armamentarium to discuss the intrinsically mediated
construction of scientific knowledge. The model proposed in this article
provides such analytical tool, allowing viewers to recognize the construct-
edness of documentary texts. And yet, it is not enough to identify the
construction of documentaries; it is even more important to understand
how science and documentary are mutually contingent and interdependent
constructions of scientific claims.
Science documentaries never served as mere illustrations of what ‘science
is’ or ‘how it works’. The documentary’s status as a ‘popularization’ or an
‘illustration’ was taken for granted, but like any imaging tool used by
scientists, television is equally instrumental to the construction, dissemi-
nation, and (dis)approval of its often hypothetical claims. The popularity
of scientific claims is inevitably defined by the available technology and
preferred aesthetics of contemporary media – media that enabled the
construction of these claims in the first place. From Galileo’s telescope to
Etienne-Jules Marey’s stereoscope, tools of visualization have moved easily
between scientific investigation and entertainment (Hankins and Silverman,
1995; Topper, 1996). Therefore, I propose to consider science documen-
taries as a form of ‘visual thinking’ or of ‘picturizing science’. We do not
illustrate science with images, we construct images and deploy media tech-
nologies to ‘think’ science (Burnett, 2004). Computer graphics and anima-
tronics are to 21st century physicists and paleontologists what the
microscope was to 19th century biologists: new instruments allowing for
new claims, but also for a retooling of the imagination. Animated dinosaurs
and virtual parallel universes are not illustrations of science – they are part
of science in action.
Rather than lament the current effacement of science documentary’s
realism, we need to develop analytic models and tools that help clarify how
science and science documentaries shape our world in tandem. Computers
and digitization are certainly not a radical break with previous scientific
practices which were always also mediated practices: the success of scien-
tific claims often depended on the success of their visualizations. Analysis

of two recent science documentaries reveals how the constructions of

science and media are closely aligned and intricately intertwined. As argued
in this article, the pictorial effect and speculative narrative mode may infil-
trate and even dominate a television programme, and yet producers choose
to pay careful tribute to the realist features of the documentary genre. Even
the most radical deployment of the pictorial effect in The Elegant Universe
still results in a typical representationalist view of the world, as it anchors
its speculative claims in explanatory and expository modes to account for
the documentary’s evidentiary status. Its mixture of visual styles and narra-
tive modes signals the paradoxical yet imperative cohabitation of diverging
ontological paradigms. More concretely, it demonstrates how a set of scien-
tific hypotheses (‘this is a possible theory to account for the existence of
parallel universes’ or ‘this is our best guess of how dinosaurs walked’) is
articulated in a set of televisual claims to truth (‘this is what string theory
is’ or ‘this is how dinosaurs walked’). Perhaps more interesting than iden-
tifying or lamenting the postmodern genre of science documentary is to
examine how the multimedia mix of words, sounds, and images transforms
our claims to knowledge.
Science documentaries offer a unique opportunity to bare scientists’ and
media producers’ struggles with old and new epistemological and ontologi-
cal paradigms. Replacing attenuated realist claims of what science is, how
it works, how it happened, or what could happen, we should foreground
the question of how science (documentary) shapes our world. Towards that
end, The Making Of episodes accompanying these documentaries form an
integral part of the viewing experience: they teach viewers how technology
shapes both science and media, and demonstrate how programme makers
and scientists decide what to show, how to show it, and why to show it that
way. The science documentary is a meeting place for the didactic and the
scientific, the truthful and the elegant; yet it is precisely the awe-inspiring
presence of accredited scientists or the overwhelming elegance of multi-
media spectacles that obligate viewers to acknowledge its contents’ strati-
fied texture.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the anonymous referees of the International Journal of

Cultural Studies for their comments; they have helped to substantially improve
a previous version of this article.
Notes
1 This article will refer to the natural history documentary as a special subgenre
of the science documentary. Even though many relevant comments can be

made about the distinctions between these two, these differences are beyond
the scope of the main argument here.
2 I use the term ‘narrative mode’ to indicate that every science documentary –
or every television programme for that matter – tells a story about science
using a particular strategy, both in terms of rhetoric and in terms of aesthet-
ics. By ‘(tele)visual styles’ I mean the effects created by using a specific type
of image or image processing in relation to the truth-claim implied by that
choice. For instance, a realist effect is an effect that is implicitly ascribed to
unedited, unaltered video footage. Naturally, moving images of whatever
technological basis are always intrinsically contrived, but visual styles have
gradually come to connote particular effects.
3 In 1988, the ABC Evening News, for instance, used a re-enactment to recon-
struct how an American spy had probably managed to steal secret infor-
mation from a government building. For a detailed analysis of news
documentary, see Beattie (2004), chapter 9.
4 Construction of animated dinosaurs is a painstaking process, as we can read
on the website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/tv_series/making_of.shtml):
‘Not every dinosaur image was computer-generated; many of the close-up
shots used animated models. This is because whilst computer graphics are
good, they are better for long distance shots. Animatronics are more realis-
tic in close up work, such as when a dinosaur is eating or drinking. Initial
models are made in clay, then a series of inverse moulds are made from which
the final product is produced. Textured skins are stuck on top and painted,
using a “plasticised” paint to allow for movement. Mounts are added for
handholds plus motors to operate the nostrils, eyes or other body parts.’
5 A large number of highly esteemed physicists appear in this programme. First,
there are the ‘grand old men’ of string theory: John Schwarz, Michael Greene,
and Ed Witten. Secondly, a number of authorities in various subdisciplines of
physics comment in this program, including Walter G. Lewin (MIT), Steven
Weinberg (Universty of Texas), Peter Galison (Harvard University), Alan
Guth (MIT), Joseph Polchinski (UC Santa Barbara), S. James Gates
(University of Maryland), and Michael Dugg (University of Chicago).
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van Dijck, J. (1998) ImagEnation: Popular Images of Genetics. New York: New
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Audio visual references
Jurassic Park (1993) Director: Steven Spielberg. Based on a novel by Michael

Crichton.
The Lost World (1997) Director: Steven Spielberg. Based on a novel by Michael
Crichton.
The Elegant Universe (2003) Producers: David Hickman, Joseph McMaster and
Julia Cort. Host: Brian Greene. Part of the PBS series NOVA (WGBH
Educational Foundation). Premiered in the US on December 27, 2003.
The Secret of Life (1993) Host: David Suzuki. Eight-part documentary PBS
series (WGBH Educational Foundation).
Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) Producer: Tim Haines. BBC/Discovery/TV
Asahi co-production in association with Pro Sieben and France 3. Premiered
in Great Britain on 4 October, 1999.
The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) Producer: Tim Haines.
BBC/Discovery/TV Asahi. Aired October 11, 1999.
Walking with Beasts (2001) Producer: Tim Haines. Narrator: Kenneth Branagh.
BBC/Discovery. Aired October, 2001.
● JOSÉ VAN DIJCK is Professor of Media and Culture at the

University of Amsterdam and chair of the Department of Media Studies.
She is the author of Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating
the New Reproductive Technologies (New York University Press, 1995)
and ImagEnation: Popular Images of Genetics (New York: New York
University Press, 1998). Her latest book is titled The Transparent Body: A
Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2005). Her research areas include media and science, (digital)
media technologies, and television and culture. Address: Department of
Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT
Amsterdam,The Netherlands. [email: j.van.dijck@uva.nl] ●

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Article in International Journal of Cultural Studies · March 2006

José Van Dijck

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Picturizing science: The science documentary as multimedia spectacle

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Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications

● José van Dijck

A B S T R A C T ● At the turn of the millennium, science documentaries show a

KEYWORDS ● cultural analysis ● digital animation ● narrative modes

● science documentary, television documentary ● visual styles

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criticism from renowned science commentators. At the heart of this criti-

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 7

Narrative modes and visual styles in science documentaries

Science documentaries made for television have a longstanding tradition of

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8 I N T E R N AT I O N A L journal of C U LT U R A L studies 9(1)

have wielded an array of visual and rhetorical strategies to visualize and

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 9

reality effect; particularly if coupled onto an explanatory narrative mode,

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emerge. Showing historical triumphs of science on television was inherently

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 11

Visual styles Narrative modes

Symbolic visuals Metaphoric effect Explanatory mode ‘this is how science

Reenactments Fiction effect Reconstructive mode ‘this is what happened’

Digital animations Pictorial effect Speculative mode ‘this is what could

Figure 1 Visual styles and narrative modes

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The reconstructive mode: Walking with Dinosaurs

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 13

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 15

much, if not all, of its scientific trustworthiness from its unarticulated

The speculative mode: The Elegant Universe

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mode. In contrast to Walking with Dinosaurs, The Elegant Universe relies

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 17

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van Dijck ● Picturizing science 19

In the past, documentaries based in the realist paradigm seemingly

Many academics and commentators, like Andrew Darley (2003: 229)

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