A New Chemistry

There’s a scene in “Men in Black” in which Linda Fiorentino, as a forensic scientist, tries to explain to Will Smith about the various parts of a body, at least how a coroner views them. Her words grow increasingly jargon-like and Smith’s rather comic response probably mirrors ours.

As it happens, it mirrors Fiorentino’s as well. “I could hardly keep a straight face,” the sultry actress says. “But the key is to say that stuff like you are an authority, just like you’d talk about something you do know about.”

These days, a lot of actresses are facing the same problem. Helen Hunt (“Twister”), Anne Heche (“Volcano”), Annabella Sciorra (“Asteroid”), Julianne Moore (“The Lost World”), Elisabeth Shue (“The Saint”), Jodie Foster in the upcoming “Contact” and Nicole Kidman in the upcoming “The Peacemaker” all get to look great while espousing scientific data of some sort or another.

“I don’t know that it’s a trend, more coincidence,” says Lauren Shuler-Donner, executive producer of “Volcano.” OK, so why the, er, coincidence?

“First, it’s valid because movies are a reflection of our society, and more and more women are entering these fields,” she says. “Second, producers have finally realized that women in the audience enjoy watching other women excel. Finally, you won’t get a good actress if you don’t have a strong female role.”

Because more and more films, especially the summer variety, seem to be action-oriented, clearly something had to be done about the female roles. In the past, actresses were relegated to being the wives or girlfriends watching horrified from the sidelines. (Think Faye Dunaway in “Towering Inferno.”) Jamie Lee Curtis’ comic turn in “True Lies” may stand as one of the last of the inert damsel-in-distress variety.

Because so many of the films deal with natural otherworldly disasters, the pivotal parts usually involve things scientific. Women are getting them, and they are often depicted as the sanest voice in the crowd. No PMS in sight.

“My character is really the main authority in ‘The Lost World,’ ” says Moore, who plays a paleontologist who remains relatively unfazed amid all the hysteria. “She’s often the only one who understands what the dinosaurs want.”

Likewise, Heche was the voice of reason in “Volcano,” predicting that all that lava was coming when others said it couldn’t happen here. In “Contact,” Foster, as a radio astronomer, first undergoes a very recognizable period of depression as a man takes credit for all she’s done. But eventually, the men listen to her.

Heche, Moore and the others hardly fit the old stereotype of the “woman scientist,” somewhere between Madame Curie and Einstein in drag (exemplified in films by characters like the prim, uptight computer expert and assistant to Spencer Tracy played by Neva Patterson in 1957’s “Desk Set”). Maybe it’s that the medicine goes down easier when it’s being administered by a lovely presence. But the movie makers insist that there is truth behind what may seem to be calculated decisions.

“In doing research, we discovered that in science, you are a star when you are young,” Shuler-Donner says. “Young brains are highly valued, and all the technical entities these days are vying for the young, hot and scientific.”

The makers of “Asteroid,” NBC’s recent miniseries, do admit they cast Sciorra as the astronomer largely because of demographics (to get the female audience). But also, they say, because a female’s presence seemed to enhance the part.

“The part was spectacularly written,” executive producer John Davis says, “a woman at the top of her field yet feeling an emotional and intellectual responsibility. Unfortunately, the actress didn’t bring any of that to the role.” (Sciorra has done no publicity for the film and was not available for comment for this article.)

If actual female scientists have any problem with how they’re being portrayed on screen--and by and large, they’re happy to be up there--it’s that all the sweat and personal dilemmas they undergo are often skipped over.

“What the movies don’t show is how difficult it is to juggle all the study and research with trying to lead a personal life,” says Judith Wurtman, a scientist at MIT (where female enrollment has risen to 40%). “But I guess it would slow up the action if a woman is out chasing a twister and suddenly has to worry about her kid.”

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Hunt, while chasing twisters and looking fit as a fiddle, did provide some of the human element that prevents this mini-trend from being more than simply placing a woman in a man’s role. Her character, professional always, was acutely concerned about the safety of her family.

Kidman, as Julia Kelly in “The Peacemaker,” uses a lot of technical jargon as a nuclear weapons expert and, in the words of a DreamWorks spokesman, “plays a part that theoretically could have been played by a man.” Still, she remains very much a portrait of a (scientific) lady.

Kate Mulgrew plays what she calls “an ardent scientist” as Capt. Kathryn Janaway, the first female to be in command on UPN’s “Star Trek.” Yet she also points out that “Janaway is not without her reflective, even absurd, side. She is loving and she laughs.”

Moore says that even in such a movie as “The Lost World,” there was thought to “feminizing” her character, who, in fact, is sometimes rather “humanized” by making some bumbling, seemingly unscientific mistakes. “Steven [Spielberg] and I absolutely talked about making her well rounded,” she says, “even though the movie is much more than the sum of its parts. While we knew she had to be athletic and intrepid, she is also seen as somewhat of a mother figure to the little girl, and she’s trying to figure out her relationship with a man.”

Moore says she has received tremendous response from young girls and their mothers regarding the role, more than one might imagine for a film in which the real stars are named Saurus.

“Lots of little girls just love her,” Moore says, “and the mothers tell me they are so thrilled to have their daughters see roles where women are experts in a difficult field. It was great to play someone in charge and fearless and yet still a woman.”

The “role model” aspect is no small matter, say the actresses. Mulgrew receives a great deal of mail from daughters and grateful mothers. “I love all the possible byproducts of Janaway,” she says. “Here is a woman in command who is not about sex or gender. That’s the beauty of the 24th century.”

“I do think about the role model thing when I have the opportunity to think about it,” Fiorentino says wryly. “Because I knew this was a film lots of kids would be seeing, I particularly wanted to represent something little girls could aspire to and boys could respect.” (Not that the star of “The Last Seduction” had exactly played shrinking violets previously.)

Yet Fiorentino also makes no claims that such a noble motive was the main reason she took the role: “I liked the potential of my part in the sequel,” she states frankly.

Learning the techno-speak of scientific professions takes varying degrees of research. Most of the actresses at least talk with someone who usually does it for a living, even if it’s just because the expert is around the set. “The Lost World” had a paleontologist on call, and Moore said she learned what she needed to know but little else.

“First of all, that field is all guesswork to an extent,” she points out, “so who’d know if I were wrong?”

Fiorentino said she didn’t partake in any autopsies, partly because her handiwork would not really be visible on screen.

Mulgrew felt she couldn’t get a handle on Janaway until she mastered what she calls the “techno-babble. It’s like being given something in Japanese to read,” she says. “If you don’t understand it, no one else will believe you. I did my study, and now I can at least give the lines some nuance and edge.”

Basically it’s about acting. “Anne Heche had to say a lot of gobbledygook as a seismologist,” Shuler-Donner says, “and it takes real talent to explain tectonic plates like you know what you’re talking about.”

What audiences are seeing is the newest element of the event picture: strong women speaking with authority and responding with athletic vigor (and not worrying whether they get a man in the process). What girls are seeing is something they can aspire to. And what female scientists are seeing is a reflection of the joy and satisfaction they feel every day.

Ann Druyan, a co-producer of “Contact” and co-creator of the story with her late husband, Carl Sagan, says watching Foster fight the odds and come out ahead in the film version was a complete--and very accurate--high.

“Here is a woman who is so brave and audacious, who goes through a lot of misery in her scientific exploration and emerges so complete,” says Druyan, who’s considered something of a model for the character. “She is not punished for her brilliance or her success, and both her brain and heart are operating at the highest human level.”