With
the 1971 Academy Award for Best Documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle
connects amazing micro-documentary footage with a horrific voice-over from fictional
character, Dr. Hellstrom (Lawrence Pressman). The film’s faux documentary
stance, however, is complicated by its confusing rhetorical message. It warns
of mass elimination due to environmentally disastrous practices performed by insects
at the micro-level. But it also suggests their survival will not be threatened.
Such a complex perspective may draw on the expertise of the documentary’s
filmmakers: Co-director and co-cinematographer Walon Green also co-wrote the
screenplay for Sam Peckinpah’s hyper-violent The Wild Bunch (1969). The
documentary’s screenwriter David Seltzer was also the author of The Omen
(1976) and Prophecy (1979), and the producer, David L. Wolper, also produced
Appointment with Destiny (1971), a pseudo-documentary television series.
The series used grainy film stock and chiaroscuro lighting to simulate the
appearance of actual documentary footage from pre-cinema eras to enhance
episodes such as one highlighting the shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Reviews of Hellstrom
were also mixed, primarily because the film combined a fictional narrator with
authentic documentary footage. Roger Ebert states for example that the film “has
hypnotically fascinating color photography of insects. The camera becomes so
intimate with insects, indeed, that at times we are actually in bed with
copulating spiders …. Precisely because the photography of insects is so
astonishingly good, the narration is annoying.” DVD reviewer Glenn Erickson
maintains that the film “has top-level docu credentials” and “uses excellent
footage of insect life” but also thinks the voiceover weakens the film.
Perhaps in an attempt to warn
humanity about the negative consequences of their own exploitation of the
natural world, the film constructs insects as monsters first by highlighting
characteristics that Stephen R. Kellert suggests promote fear in humans. But
those traits may also draw on the qualities shared by the most horrific
versions of ourselves. According to Kellert, insects have “vastly different
ecological strategies, spatially and temporally.” They rely on an “extraordinary
multiplicity” rather than “individual identity and selfhood,” and their “shapes
and forms appear ‘monstrous’” (quoted in Brown xi). But insects are also “often
associated with notions of mindlessness and an absence of feeling,” as with the
link between insects and madness, a link that explicitly connects the insect
and human worlds. And they also possess a radical “autonomy … from human will
and control” (Kellert quoted in Brown xi), a disposition also associated with
humans who resist subjugation. Their incredible fecundity seems to generate the
most fear in humans, according to Kellert, a stereotype associated with some
humans, as well.
By emphasizing these
fear-inducing characteristics, the film seems not only to warn humanity about
insects seeming invulnerability, but also to attribute their possible dominance
on Earth to humanity’s own mistreatment of the natural world. If we continue to
destroy our environment, the film suggests, our species will be usurped by the
insect world. Despite the film’s attempts to separate humans and insects,
however, its narrative and film footage suggest insects will inherit the earth
not because they are superior to humans but because they are just like us.
Ultimately, insects become
monstrous in The Hellstrom Chronicle because they resemble humans at
their worst, as, what Eric C. Brown calls “humanity’s Other” (xi). Drawing on
all levels of anthropomorphism proposed by Persson et al., the film constructs
insects as monsters by highlighting their primitive psychological qualities,
their connection to human folk-psychology, their traits and “dispositions,” the
social roles they play, and the emotions they both display and produce.
No comments:
Post a Comment