Last night, along with a colleague from the Knight Program, I went to hear fellow science journalist Brad Matsen talk about his new book, Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King. I honestly didn’t go in knowing much at all about Cousteau; I’m 32, so I’m part of a generation that largely missed his heyday.
But by the end of the talk, not only did I want to read Matsen’s book, but I felt strongly that there were a lot of analogies between the careers of Cousteau and Carl Sagan–especially with respect to 1) the way changing media realities in the 1970s and 1980s made it more difficult for high-profile science communicators like these men to thrive, and 2) the way such communicators often experienced backlash from scientists themselves for being too pop, and for focusing on storytelling and even entertainment rather than technical detail.
Unlike Sagan, however, Cousteau was not a scientist at all–rather, he was an amateur, a tinkerer, an inventor. He didn’t pioneer a deep understanding of marine biology, but rather, built the devices and gadgets–undersea filming and photography, various kinds of diving gear, etc–that helped make a deeper understanding possible. Meanwhile, once he became a mass media celebrity through his ABC program The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, he also raised the environmental consciousness of millions of people and probably inspired many to turn towards scientific careers–just as Sagan did.
(As Matsen joked in his talk, Cousteau and his team also had a somewhat more pernicious influence in the following respect–they pioneered the wearing of Spedos.)
But whether Cousteau was a true researcher or not, he clearly did massive things for the public profile and public understanding of marine science and the environment. In the 1970s, though, things were changing for science popularizers. As Matsen puts it:
Cousteau was stunned when, in 1974, ABC didn’t pick up its option to broadcast The Undersea World beyond the spring of 1976. He had won Emmys every season and his audience still numbered in the millions for each episode. The network told him its programming philosophy had changed. The enormous success of after-dinner evenings of Happy Days, Starsky and Hutch, Laverne and Shirley, and the rest of the half-hour situation comedies had made ABC number one in the battle for ratings and advertising dollars. Its executives weren’t willing to preempt their hit shows to air documentaries about the ocean. The ratings for The Undersea World, they pointed out, had dropped steadily as the networks attracted younger people who were more interested in spending a mindless half hour with two amusing girlfriends in Milwaukee than in watching a parrot fish fight to control its territory on a coral reef.
Sad, but of course, something similar happened with Sagan. Cosmos was the peak of his fame, and ultimately reached 500 million people worldwide (even more than Cousteau did). But before long, the media situation changed irrevocably, making another work like that unlikely to succeed at the same level. It wasn’t just that networks wanted sit-coms; cable came along and fractioned the audience. Suddenly science wasn’t for everyone, but more for the NOVA and Discovery Channel crowd, which is how it stands today.
And also as with Sagan, even as media realities were beginning to shift to make mass market science popularization more difficult, Cousteau himself experienced a scientific backlash for being too much of a popularizer. While I am not sure of its magnitude, Matsen documents at least some aspects of this phenomenon:
A few critics, including Shark Lady Eugenie Clark, who had been aboard Calypso for some of the filming in the Indian Ocean, accused Cousteau of misrepresenting himself as a scientist and sacrificing accuracy in favor of theatrical impact.
“Cousteau’s films are misleading in a way because they portray him as a scientist,” Clark said. “I can’t think of any particular scientific contribution he’s made, because he just doesn’t have the time. He’s trapped. He needs to keep up that big image, to make it look like he’s moving forward. When you get up there, when you have all that power, sometimes you lose track of what you started out to do.”
“Our films have only one ambition,” Cousteau wrote in an article in the New York Times Magazine rebutting such criticism. “To show the truth about nature and give people the wish to know more. I do not stand as a scientist giving dry explanations. I am an honest witness.”
Anyone who has read Unscientific America will know whose side I am on in a dispute like this.
But enough of looking at Cousteau through my own lens; I urge you to dig into Matsen’s book for more on the great ocean explorer and popularizer. You can order it here. While I’ve been pulling the threads that immediately resonated for me, the book is so much more than that: It’s the story of how Matsen discovered Cousteau’s famous boat the Calypso in the docking equivalent of a junkyard, and wanted to tell the sad but revealing story of how a man who rose so high could, by 2005, have a legacy that seemed about to sink, just like Calypso.
It promises to be a heck of a tale, and an important one, too–not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also for what it captures about the rise and fall of a great popularizer of science.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Chris,
I think Cousteau did much more to promote wildlife conservation and, in general, environmental protection of the oceans than Sagan did in his own substantial efforts at public scientific outreach. But Cousteau wasn’t alone, since he was working alongside – later in his career – the likes of oceanographer Sylvia Earle and photographer Norbert Wu, among others.
Technically Cousteau wasn’t a scientist, but he was a great explorer of the oceans and invented scuba diving back in World War II.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
It was always a big deal in my family when Cousteau was on. I don’t think I ever missed any. He was kind of a phenomenon and even inspired a schlocky 70’s pop song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35x_rwyBh-8
November 10th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
He reminded us in various poetic ways of our primal connection to the oceans, much like Sagan reminded us we are all made of “star stuff”. I’m 26 and I’m glad things like youtube exist so I can get up to speed on these men and what they meant to a generation of thinking people.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Chris,
How can you, at 32 be part of “a generation that largely misse dhis heyday” while I at 38 am and have always been deeply affected by his programs?
That minor detail aside, Cousteau did bring an awareness of the sea to the world that had been missing, and I would argue he was just as much a scientist as any of his day. Yes, some scientific work always had to be sacrificed to make good movies, anmd yes, he never published in the peer reviewed literature. But the staff of his institute did – and still do I think – and he still sought to learn and understand. That seeking is what science is all about – not your academic pedigree.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Cousteau let the general public explore the oceans in their living room and personally inspired me to take up diving.
Not a scientist in the strictest sense, he did not follow the scientific method nor was he educated to a high degree. I would argue that he contributed more to the preservation of the oceans more then any other. He is sorrily missed.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I’m 32, so I’m part of a generation that largely missed his heyday.
If you were born in France, you couldn’t pretend this, you’d have seen his movies hundred of times (even a decade ago, it was still programmed on a weekly basis on state channels).
That said, I didn’t realise he was known at an international level. It’s fairly rare for a French… scientist.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I remember Cousteau as being primo TV, the kind of thing I would miss or reschedule other activities to see. My interests were in the scientific realm and I was just a child but Cousteau was good stuff.
I’d argue that he helped build political support for things like the first marine parks, curbing pollution and ocean dumping, and the like. He showed the oceans as being beautiful and interesting and having intrinsic value. This breaks through the walls of Who Cares?
Too bad about the loss of network support. I always wondered what happened to his shows.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:36 am
When, as a kid, I was asked what I wanted to “be when I grew up,” I answered “an underwater scientist.” I meant Cousteau.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Help a Nobel Laureate carry on the noble work of Cousteau and Sagan.
Please, give President Barack Obama a reason for going to Copenhagen next month so that he has a chance to make the difference that makes a difference. Action is needed now. Support the objectives of the Copenhagen Climate Conference before it is too late for even these great, leading-edge human beings with feet of clay to guide the children away from the patently unsustainable lifestyles of the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us and toward sustainable ways of living in the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit as stewards, I suppose.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
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