CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Whether pursuing eternal youth or manipulating insects in the lab, female entomologists are themselves a source of horror in many science fiction movies and TV shows. Their roles have shifted over the decades, however, making them a worthy focus of the 2015 Insect Fear Film Festival at the University of Illinois.
“In 1991, I did an informal survey of female entomologists in the movies and it was not pretty – they may have been, but the characters were not,” said U. of I. entomology professor and department head May Berenbaum, who founded the Insect Fear Film Festival in 1984.
Unlike their male counterparts, who nobly labored to save humanity from hunger or plague, female entomologists tended to use their bug knowledge “to prolong their own personal youth and beauty for as long as possible,” Berenbaum said.
The character Janice Starlin in the 1959 movie “The Wasp Woman,” for example, was led to believe that royal jelly from wasps would give her eternal youth.
“Instead, it turned her into a large, furry, bloodthirsty creature,” Berenbaum said.
In the 1970 movie “Flesh Feast,” Dr. Elaine Frederick (played by Veronica Lake) “conducted rejuvenation treatments that involved unleashing flesh-consuming maggots to eat the dead skin from people’s faces,” Berenbaum said.
But TV and movie depictions of female entomologists have evolved, Berenbaum said. Their work may still yield disastrous results, but at least their intentions are pure.
In the 1997 movie “Mimic,” for example, Dr. Susan Tyler genetically engineers an insect amalgam of a termite, a cockroach and a praying mantis to help kill cockroaches that spread a deadly disease.
“Unfortunately, her creatures also developed the ability to look human and began to prey on people in the New York City subway system,” Berenbaum said.
In “Mansquito” (2005), a female entomologist fighting a mosquito-borne viral disease “has a laboratory accident that ends up transforming an escaped convict into a half-man, half-mosquito – and bad things happen,” Berenbaum said.
“Now, female entomologists can be just as self-absorbed, irresponsible and careless as their male antecedents in the movies,” she said. “So I guess we’ve achieved some sort of parity, something to be proud of now that well-meaning women entomologists are equally capable of unleashing arthropod disasters on humanity.”
The 2015 Insect Fear Film Festival opens its doors at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28 at Foellinger Auditorium on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The evening will begin with activities for children, including face painting, the Beckman Institute’s Bugscope, and an insect petting zoo. Opening remarks will begin at 7 p.m., followed by two family-friendly animated shorts from the (2006-08) Disney Kids TV series “Growing Up Creepie,” which follows the adventures of a human girl who was raised by insects.
A full-length thriller-horror feature will follow: the 2005 Syfy feature “Mansquito.”
“A 2014 feature film, ‘The Duke of Burgundy,’ would have been a good fit for the festival in that it features two female entomologists, but it’s R-rating ruled it out, as did the fact that it’s been favorably reviewed by critics,” Berenbaum said. “Very few art house favorites make it onto the screen at our festival.”
The event is free and open to the public.
To reach May Berenbaum, email maybe@illinois.edu.
