Books Influencing Ecocinema Work, Continued

What was missing for us in our research for our monstrous nature book were explorations that address monstrous nature like the cockroach, parasite, cyborg, and cannibal. Four books helped us turn these “monsters” into part of the land ethic Aldo Leopold proposes: Cockroach, The Art of Being a Parasite, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, and Dinner with a Cannibal.

Marion Copeland's Cockroach (2004) provides a complex perspective on the cockroach and its strengths. Copeland notes multiple positive associations with cockroaches. Although their nocturnal nature has connected them with a Freudian unconscious and id, in Thailand, Australia, South America, and French Guiana, cockroaches serve as food, medicine, and folk tale source. Copeland also notes that cockroaches contribute to cancer research and emphasizes their physical and intellectual strengths by making explicit connections between cockroaches and humans. As with humans, female cockroaches have stronger immune responses than males. And cockroaches can learn new tricks, overcoming their aversion to light. They also can learn to run a maze, even without their heads! 

To illustrate the interdependent relationships hosts and parasites may share, Claude Combes’ The Art of Being a Parasite (2005) defines and illustrates the multiple levels of parasitism. Combes differentiates those parasites that feed off a host without benefiting it from two other types: commensals and mutualists. Commensals live on or within another organism without harming or benefiting the host. Mutualists, on the other hand, do help their hosts. According to Combes, orchids are an apt example of mutualism, because to extract pollen from orchids, moths must have a long probuscis. As with some parasites and their hosts, orchids and moths have evolved mutually, deriving benefits interdependently. Although he emphasizes the interdependent relationships shared by parasites and their partner hosts, Combes debunks notions of mutualism that romanticize nature. Instead, parasites are part of a biotic community in which producers and consumers interact interdependently, surviving in relation to a food web that includes both life and death, not in a Disneyfied harmony like that found in Bambi (1942).