He who gets slapped: how can clowning in film interrogate technoscientific culture and help enact the ideals of responsible innovation?

Enacting reflexivity in techno-scientific research systems is an ongoing challenge for responsible innovation (RI) researchers and practitioners. Drawing on one of the most successful films of Hollywood's silent years -Victor Seastrom's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) - this paper argues that the study of popular culture can make a vital contribution to enacting reflexivity by illuminating the messy emotions involved in changing established techno-scientific norms and by providing cultural resources to foster innovative ways of approaching the transformational goals of RI. Enhancing reflexivity in research systems requires cultural work to challenge established identities associated with being a scientist and to illustrate alternatives that might enable RI aspirations. Our reading of the eponymous clown-scientist and the film's key dramatic moment of traumatic loss highlight how the cultural forces of personal identity and identification can draw attention to and challenge institutional power, and serve as a new resource for RI researchers and practitioners.