A pretty blonde walks into the lab. Some geeky scientists collect a specimen of her hair. Next week, hundreds of cloned pretty blondes show up at the lab.<\/p>\n
This is the plot of \u2018The Power to Create,\u2019 a video that over 1 million people across the globe have seen on YouTube, and that was created to promote the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Natural Sciences.<\/p>\n
The Faculty is now trying to create the same effect this year with a second international film competition.<\/p>\n
According to the faculty, the film has helped to double the number of international master\u2019s students coming to the faculty from abroad from 37 to 75. This means \u2018more money in the bank to the University of Copenhagen\u2019, the faculty writes in a press release.<\/p>\n
The film medium is good to \u00ab\u2018de-nerd\u2019 and to humanise the natural sciences, which are actually exciting and meaningful\u00ab, says Joakim Groth, Director of communications at the Faculty.<\/p>\n
The University Post asked the Faculty of Natural Sciences whether the cloned blonde film reinforces a stereotype of women, thereby attracting more male students to a Faculty that has a lot of men already.<\/p>\n
Not so, says Svend Thaning, a journalist at the faculty\u2019s communications office. 30 of the 75 new international students are women, he explains.<\/p>\n
No-one has asked the 30 new female international students about whether they were attracted by the film: But the fact is that 30\/75 is a higher women\/men ratio than the faculty as a whole, which consists of several traditionally male-dominated subjects.<\/p>\n
The film, which actually was only number two in the official competition, is not actually a clich\u00e9, he says:
\n\u00bbYou take the clich\u00e9 and you twirl it around in the air. It is not a problem that the film shows female beauty in connection with the Natural Sciences. The film is actually good because it takes the clich\u00e9 and pushes it. It relates to the viewers prior conception and moves it to a new place,\u00ab he says.<\/p>\n
Marie Bruvik Heinskou is a gender studies researcher at the Department of Sociology in the University of Copenhagen. She does not find that the video somehow \u2018undermines\u2019 or moves a current gender stereotype.<\/p>\n
\u00bbI actually find it quite funny,\u00ab she says, \u00bbbut it is not particularly provocative. Look at the conception of the male that is presented. It is a stereotype of a socially handicapped man living out his erotic fantasies, and this makes it very predictable,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n
\u00bbNote that when the men disappear from the laboratory and only women are left, the women are all back in their short dresses, in a form that satisfies the masculine gaze. To be quite honest, I don’t think it ‘pushes’ any stereotype anywhere,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n
If the video is in anyway controversial it is the implied approval of cloning humans, something that may or may not put it into bio-ethical deep water, she explains.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIf anything the automatic fixation onto the gender-political aspect of the video, obscures people\u2019s awareness of this wider issue,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n