U Ideas of General Interest — February 2001University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor (217) 333-5802; [email protected]
ENTOMOLOMOVIESProfessor’s ‘insect fear film fest’ to focus on beetles, real and imagined
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Around the world, beetles are eaten as food, fashioned into jewelry, widely collected and culturally honored. On film, they are evil flesh-eating tormentors and human enemies.
Visitors at the 18th annual Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois on Feb. 24 can learn the truth about beetles and see some cinematically inept renditions of them, too.
"There are more than 250,000 beetle species on the planet," says May Berenbaum, the head of the UI entomology department. "They make up one-fourth of all insects, and they are really integral to our existence. They can make a living just about any way that insects can. But moviemakers insist on having them do things that they normally don’t do, such as consume human flesh and move at speeds faster than the human eye can follow."
The Insect Fear Film Festival – Berenbaum’s creation – began in 1984 as an educational public outreach event. It is held in the Foellinger Auditorium, 709 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana (south end of the Quad).
Beetle-related cartoons and short films will be shown throughout the evening. This year’s beetle films are "The Magic Voyage" (1993), "The Mummy" (1999) and "The Relic" (1997). Before each feature presentation, Berenbaum tells the audience what to expect – the mistakes of insect anatomy and dumb dialogue, for example.
Suitable for children, the 82-minute, animated "Magic Voyage" features the voices of Cory Feldman and Irene Cara as beetles involved in the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Feldman’s character, a woodworm, falls in love and tries to rescue Cara’s character, a firefly in distress.
Fireflies, Berenbaum notes, produce light through a chemical conversion process that is more efficient than an electric light bulb’s light-generating mechanism. Scientists who have harnessed the process have produced advanced genetic markers and assays to detect drug-resistant bacteria.
"The Mummy" has a minor role for beetles – specifically scarabs. They are called forth in flesh-eating plagues. Their use is fitting, however, because many ancient Egyptians considered Scarabaeus sacer (a species of scarab) sacred. The scarab habit of rolling dungballs along the ground was likened to the movement of the sun across the sky. Scarabs also were so important in Egyptian culture that some scholars even claim that the pyramids are symbolic representations of dungpats, Berenbaum said.
In "The Relic," an anthropologist ships specimens from South America to a Chicago museum. The specimens carry a virus that mixes with, among other things, the DNA of beetles used in the museum for preparing skeletons for exhibits. Dermestid beetles really are used for such a purpose. Although real dermestids eat only dead flesh, the mutant hybrid creature is a homicidal, brain-sucking monster.
Doors open at 6 p.m. with demonstrations and exhibits of various beetles. The program begins at7 p.m. Admission is free.
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