Einstein On The Strip
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lyrics about light speed and warped space. Or else there’s a gamey performance
artist out there, doing physics shtick in a thick German accent, complete with
toy trains and a fuzzy wig. In fact, Michael Emil does just that, in Insignificance
(1985, dir. Nicholas Roeg), co-starring Theresa Russell, which features close
encounters between godlike Mind and heavenly Body, set in 1954, a year before
Einstein died, the year of Monroe’s marriage to (and divorce from) another idol,
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, the summer of discontent, of Army-McCarthy hearings,
when she made The Seven-Year Itch (dir. Billy Wilder, [1955]), driving New
York (and actor Tom Ewell) to Hollywood distraction, over a breezy subway
grating.
As a recent biographer (Dennis Brian) contends, “Despite the controversies
that still rage over Einstein’s legacy, the true measure of his impact on the world
today is that his name alone symbolizes Science. Another is his enduring
worldwide appeal. A pop icon on a par with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe,
he stares enigmatically from post-cards, magazine covers, T-shirts, and largerthan-life posters. A Beverly Hills agent markets his image for television
commercials. He would have hated it all.” (Einstein: A Life [1997]) Or in
Biblical terms, Madison Avenue created Einstein in its own image, and it begot
the big buck. Here’s proof of Einstein’s star power, and of the celebrity status he
still enjoys. His reward is that we care more about his sex life than we do about
his science. But that says far more about our collective unconscious than it does
about him.2 Hence it leaves us panting for a way to see Einstein, as well as see
through him. To quote Brian again, is there a unified theory of Einstein? Or only
a string of appearances, succession of images, the ultimate Rorschach, mirroring
mirrors? To be is to be conceived. Does Einstein stand for God, science, or
warped ids? Perhaps all three. He’s an unholy trinity of all our lusts, cravings,
and desires. Iconic Einstein surely is, but as an icon he is unique in representing
something unrepresentable. For all the images we have of him, both in our heads
and on films, newsreels, and still photos, he remains as elusive as his chief
discoveries. His very name resounds with something vast and mysterious, even
to experts: with formulas that are easy to write or repeat but nearly impossible to
fathom. Einstein realized this; hence his enigmatic aphorism dating from 1936,
“the eternally incomprehensible thing about the universe is its
comprehensibility.” He confessed, to everyone else’s amazement, “I am no
Einstein,” yet his humility only made it easier to worship him as an idol of the
savant tribe. After World War I, hero-worshippers ran afoul of it, and proved it
in a big way. For when the 1919 eclipse (expedition) made Einstein’s name a
household word, he became a celebrity—someone who (as Boorstin defines it)
is known for being known. Not just a celebrity, but THE celebrity, in an age that
hungered for heroes in the aftermath of World War I. Before Charles Lindbergh,
before Babe Ruth, before Amelia Earhart or Bobby Jones or Bill Tilden or Jack
Dempsey, or even the aesthetic seers of the lost generation (Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Stein, Cather, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, Picasso, Stravinsky,
Schoenberg), there was Einstein. (As late as 1930, he ran a close second to