Arthropods in film

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Jiminy Cricket, a character in the 1940 Walt Disney animation Pinocchio, is a typical anthropomorphized insect in film.

Arthropods, mainly insects and arachnids, are used in film either to create fear and disgust in horror and thriller movies, or they are anthropomorphized and used as sympathetic characters in animated children's movies. There are over 1,000,000 species of arthropods, including such familiar animals as ants, spiders, shrimps, crabs and butterflies.

Horror movies involving arthropods include the pioneering 1954 Them!, featuring giant ants mutated by radiation, and the 1957 The Deadly Mantis.

Children's animations involving arthropods include the 1940 Pinocchio based on Carlo Collodi's story, and the 1996 James and the Giant Peach, based on Roald Dahl's novel of the same name.

Horror

The major part that arthropods play is in horror films and thriller movies. In these, human beings are basically conditioned to be disgusted and even frightened by arthropods, so arthropods are made enormous, given special abilities, or presented in huge numbers to alarm the audience.

The 1933 film King Kong was reworked in 2005, with a scene where the protagonists encounter giant insects and arachnids on an island of giant things. The original movie may have contained the first ever "big bug" scene. However, it was cut from the reel for unknown reasons. Peter Jackson's 2005 remake features a scene in which the group of heroes is set upon by a multitude of large arthropods after falling down a chasm.[1]

After the Second World War, perhaps the most famous "big bug" film, the 1954 Them!, told the story of a colony of ants that is mutated by radiation from atomic testing; the insects grow to horrific size. The ants rampage in the desert of New Mexico, a naval vessel off the Californian coast, and the sewers of Los Angeles, but are eventually destroyed by the United States Army.[2][3] Other horror films of the period involving arthropods include the 1955 Tarantula, starring Leo G. Carroll and John Agar,[4] and the 1957 The Deadly Mantis starring Craig Stevens and William Hopper,[5] while Beginning of the End, also in 1957, features giant locusts and "atrocious" special effects,[6] and in the same year The Black Scorpion starred Richard Denning.[7]

More recently, the 1990 Arachnophobia involves a South American spider mating with a California one, producing a race of superspiders.[8] Son of Godzilla included the monsters Kamacuras (a giant mantis) and Kumonga (a giant spider).[9] The 1997 Starship Troopers portrays soldiers in the fascist earth army fighting an alien race of "Arachnids", bug-like creatures.[10]

Arthropods are effective tools to instill horror, because fear of arthropods may be conditioned into people's minds. Indeed, Jamie Whitten quoted in his book That We May Live, (talking about insects): "The enemy is already here-in the skies, in the fields, and waterways. It is dug into every square foot of our earth; it has invaded homes, schoolhouses, public buildings; it has poisoned food and water; it brings sickness and death by germ warfare to countless millions of people every year.... The enemy within-these walking, crawling, jumping, flying pests-destroy more crops than drought and floods. They destroy more buildings than fire. They are responsible for many of the most dreaded diseases of man and his domestic animals.... Some of them eat or attack everything man owns or produces-including man himself ."[11] Thus, insects and other arthropods are dangerous to humans in both obvious and less obvious ways. Undoubtedly, arthropods are dangerous for their potential to carry disease. Somewhat less apparently, arthropods cause damage to buildings, crops, and animals. Since arthropods can be harmful in so many ways, using insects and other arthropods to frighten people in movies was a logical step.

Aside from a natural fear or aversion to arthropods, reasons for using such creatures in movies could be metaphorical. Many of the most famous "Big Bug Movies" were made in the 1950s in the aftermath of World War II, when the world was introduced to the cataclysmic destruction inflicted by nuclear bombs. The bomb was unapproachable, remote, and terrifying; spiders and ants mutated by nuclear radiation to become huge were terrifying, but thanks to the competent government officials, soldiers, policemen, and detectives, the bugs were stopped and safety was restored. Nuclear terror was conquered without expressly facing a nuclear bomb. In this way, big bug movies could be cathartic and liberating to the general public.[12]

Big bug films may symbolize sexual desire. Margaret Tarrat says in her article "Monsters of the id" that "[Big bug movies] arrive at social comment through a dramatization of the individual's anxiety about his or her own repressed sexual desires, which are incompatible with the morals of civilized life."[13] By this theory, gigantic swarming insects could represent the huge, torrential—but repressed due to the demands of society—sexual desires possessed by the creator and viewer of the Big Bug movie.

On gigantic arthropods, Charles Q. Choi stated that, if the atmosphere had a higher percentage of oxygen, arthropods would be able to grow quite a bit larger before their trachea became too large and could not grow any more. In fact, in the early years of the earth, when the atmosphere was more oxygen-rich, dragonflies the size of crows were not an uncommon sight.[14]

Animation

The other major use of arthropods in film is in animated children's films, where the insect is anthropomorphized and becomes a hero in the story, as in the 1940 Pinocchio based on Carlo Collodi's story, with the wise and helpful Jiminy Cricket, who barely resembles a cricket, and claims to be Pinocchio's conscience.[15] the 1998 A Bug's Life, which depicts the dramatic workings of a colony of 4-legged ants as they fight off some evil grasshoppers;[16] and James and the Giant Peach based on Roald Dahl's novel, in which James, the protagonist, becomes friends with insects and spiders that, like the peach, have grown to exceptional size.[17]

One reason insects are used successfully in such animations could be that an insect or other arthropod's small size makes it seem heroic and sympathetic when faced against the big, big world. Another reason is counterpoint to the reason for using arthropods in horror films: whereas horror movies play upon the instinctive negative reaction humans have towards insects and arachnids, these animation films make something that is different and strange seem real, approachable, and sympathetic, thus making it comforting.[18]

A vital characteristic of these films is the anthropomorphism[19] of the arthropod characters. Thus, Jiminy Cricket looks nothing like a cricket, and instead resembles a kind grandfather figure who happens to be green and very small, and the six legs of the ants in A Bug's Life are reduced to 2 pairs. Such arthropods are given humanoid features—eyes, a mouth, a nose, even hair—as opposed to realisic features such as compound eyes and mandibles. Further, animated arthropods are given the socialization and emotions of human beings, all with the intent of making them more approachable.

Incidental

A third use of arthropods in film is as incidental, non-essential elements. Dozens of movies follow this pattern, mentioning or displaying insects, arachnids, scorpions, or some other arthropod only in passing. Sometimes arthropods are used in this context to frighten and repulse, sometimes to entertain.

The arthropods used in these movies may be animated, sculpted, or otherwise synthesized; however, in many cases these movies use actual creatures. As these creatures are not easily tamed or directed, a specialist known as a "Bug Wrangler" may be hired to control and direct these creatures. Some bug wranglers have become famous as a result of their expertise, such as Norman Gary, a champion bee-wrangler who is also a college professor, and Steven R. Kutcher, who wrangles a multitude of different types of bugs and who is the subject of over 100 print articles.[20]

References

  1. ↑ IMDb, "[1]" and "[2]".
  2. ↑ IMDb, "[3]"
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Tarantula at the American Film Institute Catalog
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Warren, Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, 1997, p. 325–326.
  7. ↑ IMDB: The Black Scorpion
  8. ↑ Michael Walsh, "Less-than-terrific tension in this failed spider's web", The Province, Vancouver, British Columbia: July 22, 1990, pg. 85.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ IMDb, "Starship Troopers"
  11. ↑ Belveal, Dee, Today's Health, Feb. 1996. Quoted in Whitten, Jamie L. That We May Live," D. Van Norstrand Company 1996. Print.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Margaret Tarratt, "Monsters from the Id" (1970), in Film Genre Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 259.
  14. ↑ Choi, Charles Q., LiveScience, 11 Oct. 2006, "Giant Insects", 8 Dec. 2010.
  15. ↑ IMDb, "[4]"
  16. ↑ IMDb, "[5]".
  17. ↑ IMDb, "James and the Giant Peach"
  18. ↑ Leskosky, R.J. and M.R. Berenbaum. "Insects in Animated Films: Not All 'Bugs' are Bunnies." Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America. 1988. 34: pp.55-63.
  19. ↑ Mirriam-Webster, "[6]"
  20. ↑ The Crankshaft, "[7]", 8 Dec. 2010.

External links

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