Lame Imaginings

The Irony of Scientistic Hubris

In the 2010 film rendition of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver (Jack Black) arrives in Lilliput from a mysterious unknown land. The Lilliputians are suspicious of him—until he rescues the princess and saves the king. They then hail him as “our savior,” and he uses this newfound status to portray himself as someone fantastically superior to the shipwrecked mailroom clerk he really is. He is the noble and victorious President, and the Awesome from the Island of Manhattan whose father was Darth Vader. He also died in the sinking of the Titanic but was later revived. The Lilliputians’ imaginations are shaped by his completely fabricated lore, so they accept his audacious claims without question and...