GhettoPhysics

San Diego Comic-Con International is a four-day convention about science fiction and fantasy as depicted in books, magazines, movies, video games, and other media. Animators are increasingly applying physics to make their movies and games look more realistic. With that justification, I applied for and obtained a press pass for this year’s event, which took place in July.

It turned out I couldn’t go, but as a result of registering I’ve been receiving a modest stream of e-mailed press releases about future movies and TV shows. Thanks to its title, the most recent e-mail stood out above all the rest: “GhettoPhysics Announces Release.”

GhettoPhysics is a 94-minute docudrama that, in the words of the press release,

Through the use of documentary footage, animation, satire and dramatization, this film features notable thought leaders including Dr. Cornel West, Ice-T, KRS-One, Too Short, John Perkins, Cynthia McKinney, William H. Arntz (co-director), and Norman Lear.

From the streets to the classroom to the boardroom, GhettoPhysics details the worlds where the game is being played by the rules of the oldest profession known to man. The power interactions in politics and economics are not typically referred to as a game, but this is exactly what is taking place, and using the language of the street is a simplified way of describing such power dynamics.

GhettoPhysics (see video ) helps you become more aware of these dynamics and play them from a position of personal power. Themes of empowerment and hope emerge creating awareness of “the game” and empowering individuals to choose the role they play in every situation they encounter.

If you want a better idea of what the movie is like, check out the trailer. But be warned: Despite the bleeping out of swear words, you might find the trailer offensive.

Although the trailer includes a scene from what looks like a physics class, I doubt the movie contains much physics. Why, then, did the movie’s makers put “physics” in the title?

I suspect the answer has something to do with what physics is: the quest to understand nature at its most fundamental and therefore most general. GhettoPhysics looks at how men wield power over women in various arenas, including business, politics, and the home. If, as the movie’s makers presumably contend, masculine power is universal, then calling an investigation into it “physics” is metaphorically apt and rhetorically strong.

Whatever you think of the trailer—or even the movie if you watch it—I find it oddly encouraging that “physics” appears in the title. During the cold war, scientists in movies tended to be mad geniuses, as if to emphasize the awful destructive power of nuclear weapons that scientists had helped create.

Now, movie scientists—especially physicists—are still eccentric, but, like The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon and Leonard, are engaged in pursuits that are both challenging and benign.