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Arthropods, mainly
insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...
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 Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
children's movies. There are over 1,000,000 species of arthropods, including such familiar animals as
ants Ants are Eusociality, eusocial insects of the Family (biology), family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the Taxonomy (biology), order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from Vespoidea, vespoid wasp ancestors in the Creta ...
,
spiders Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species di ...
, shrimps,
crabs Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the ...
and butterflies. Early 20th century films had difficulty featuring small insects due to technical difficulties in film-stock exposure and the quality of lenses available. Horror movies involving arthropods include the pioneering 1954 ''
Them! ''Them!'' is a 1954 American black-and-white science fiction film, science fiction monster film from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by David Weisbart, directed by Gordon Douglas (director), Gordon Douglas, and starring James Whitmore, Edmund ...
'', featuring giant ants mutated by radiation, and the 1957 '' The Deadly Mantis''. Films based on oversized arthropods are sometimes described as big bug movies. Arthropods used in films may be animated, sculpted, or otherwise synthesized; however, in many cases these films 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 Steven R. Kutcher (born January 9, 1944) is an American entomologist who has worked for decades as a "Wrangler (film), wrangler" of insects and other arthropods in some of the highest-grossing productions and with some of the most famous people ...
, who wrangles a multitude of different types of bugs and who is the subject of over 100 print articles.


Horror

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.
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 A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...
. 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.


Giant insects or "Big Bugs"

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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, 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. By another view, big bug movies could be less metaphorical, and more literally reflect concerns about the health effects of actual insect infestations as well as pesticides such as
DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...
. Big bug films may symbolize sexual desire. Margaret Tarrat says in her article "Monsters of the id" that " ig bug moviesarrive 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." 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. According to biologist Michael C. LaBarbera in "The Biology of B-Movie Monsters", there may be additional limitations on gigantic insects. Square-cube law would require allometric scaling for any scaled up or scaled down creature, contrary to most movie monsters. For giant bugs as in ''
Them! ''Them!'' is a 1954 American black-and-white science fiction film, science fiction monster film from Warner Bros. Pictures, produced by David Weisbart, directed by Gordon Douglas (director), Gordon Douglas, and starring James Whitmore, Edmund ...
'', their exoskeleton would consist of essentially hollow tubes -- thin-walled tubes are very efficient structures, however any slight damage would make them vulnerable to buckling. Additionally he argues, giant insects would face greater stresses on their joints due to a very small contact area (pin joints) compared to vertebrate joints.


Animation

Winsor McCay Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip '' Little Nemo'' (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film '' Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he w ...
, one of the founders of animation, made the first animated film about insects in 1912, titled ''
How a Mosquito Operates ''How a Mosquito Operates'' is a 1912 silent animated film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. The six-minute short depicts a giant mosquito tormenting a sleeping man. The film is one of the earliest works of animation, and its technical qu ...
''. In the early 20th century, it was technically easier to include insects in animated films, which are drawn, over live-action films which would require more advanced techniques to film insects, due to their small size, necessitating better lenses and exposure techniques than those available at the time. One filmmaker, Władysław Starewicz, found that when filming live stag beetles, they tended to stop moving under the hot lights. To solve this problem, he killed his film subjects and attached wires to their bodies in order to puppeteer them. His films were successful, and he eventually abandoned real insects in favor of puppets of his own creation. One of the best-known animated insects is
Jiminy Cricket Jiminy Cricket is the Disney version of the " Talking Cricket" (Italian: ''Il Grillo Parlante''), a fictional character created by Italian writer Carlo Collodi for his 1883 children's book ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'', which Walt Disney adap ...
, whose initial design was more realistic and insect-like, but eventually evolved into an elf-like creature. Computer-animated films have proven particularly suited for depicting insects, beginning with
Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californ ...
's 1984 short film '' The Adventures of André and Wally B.'' Early computer animation was successful at depicting rod-like appendages and shiny metallic surfaces, lending itself to the depiction of insects. By 1996, films like '' Joe’s Apartment'' achieved rendering hundreds of photorealistic insects. Other animated films continued to depict more anthropomorphized characters, such as ''
A Bug's Life ''A Bug's Life'' is a 1998 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was the second feature-length film produced by Pixar. Directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Andrew Stant ...
'' and ''
Antz ''Antz'' is a 1998 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation (in its debut film) and Pacific Data Images and released by DreamWorks Pictures. It was directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson (in their fe ...
'', both of which came out in 1998, and the 2007
Bee Movie ''Bee Movie'' is a 2007 American computer-animated comedy film co-produced by DreamWorks Animation SKG and Columbus 81 Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner (in the fo ...
. 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.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.


References


Further reading

* * {{Insects in culture Insects in culture