Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

I *finally* got to see this movie, after waiting almost a year–it is now available on Netflix.  It was delightful, but not at all what I expected.

The Japanese have a profoundly different relationship with insects than Westerners.  This film examines why that is, and how insects are part of Japanese culture and history. We meet characters that range from a Ferrari-driving beetle dealer to little children caring for their 6-legged pets.

The LA Times described this movie as “a meditative piece that is by turns hypnotically beautiful and painfully slow.”  The director describes the movie as “about attention to detail, patience, and ultimately harmony – all of which are so rarely present in our modern lives.”   This film does not have a linear narrative or tell a story in the way we are used to Western movies conveying information. It’s not so much a documentary as a visual poem.

The contrast of busy Tokyo with the natural world; the J-pop sound track that alternates with insect songs; all of it contributes to a sense of paradox.  This movie feels like it’s dragging at points because we are too fast and impatient.

The film begins with this quote from a Westerner living in Japan in 1890:

“The people that could find delight, century after century, in watching the ways of insects, and in making verses about them, must have comprehended, better than we, the simple pleasures of existence.”  ~Lafcadio Hearn

Cross pollination of Zen Buddism and the native Shinto religion of Japan manifested as an aesthetic appreciation of insects in centuries of poems and music.   These spiritual roots created the philosophy of Kokugaku and “mono no aware“, sometimes translated as “the pathos of things.”    This philosophy emphasizes awareness and attention to the transience of all things, and appreciation of their beauty because of their fleeting nature.  What could be more transient than an insect, or the cycles of nature?

The film is narrated in Japanese, and the narrator has an amazing voice–you can listen to her reciting some poetry from the film here.  I especially liked this one:

Always more clear and shrill,
as the hush of the night grows deeper,
the Waiting-Insect’s voice;
- and I that wait in the garden,
feel enter into my heart
the voice and the moon together.

The only staged talking-head piece is an interview with author and anatomy professor Takeshi Yoro, who talks about his love for insects:

 ”If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, they will tell you something.”

Yes. Yes they will.

Shut off your computer and go outside.
Don’t come back until tomorrow.

A bee documentary that looks fishy

Hmm. There is apparently a documentary in the works called “Vanishing of the Bees.” (It’s a rather annoyingly flash-based site, so I can’t link you to individual pages. Even their blog is flash, which is just aggravating as heck to load.)

In general, I’m glad to see people promoting bees, and general knowledge of how intertwined our food supply and lives are with these little animals. But…some things about this documentary make me suspicious.

First, the lead person on this describes herself thusly:
” following a near death experience several years ago, Maryam delved into the science of nutrition and alternative healing….She has worked developing numerous documentaries on topics ranging from Creationism and Family Annihilators.”
Oh dear.

She definitely writes articles that are conspicuously long on spiritualism and short on science. I wasn’t able to find any information on the documentaries mentioned in the bios, although “family annihilators” are apparently fathers who snap and kill their families.

Here is some footage of her communing with “ghost bees” in the Lotus Position:

You can see the trailer for the film here–some of the people that are interviewed are scientists I recognize. The trailer starts, though, with someone suggesting humans have a “genetic memory” of our association with bees. The text describing the film on their site mentions the “mythic spirit of the honeybee.” Oh dear, again.

The site itself is very much anti-pesticide, pro-organic and biodynamic farming. That’s ok–organic isn’t a bad thing at all–but the tone of some of the blog posts is kind of….over the top. From a blog entry about the eradication of Varroa mite:

“Last April, the island of Oahu was stricken with mites for the very first time and they need to keep the problem contained. I didn’t believe him the first time when he told me they were going to eradicate every bee on the island, domesticated and feral…..
I don’t know their current state of affairs but to accomplish this feat they intended on depopulating all registered hives and poisoning all feral bee colonies. Kill Kill Kill. With Chemicals, chemicals, chemicals.”

I don’t think she realizes the seriousness of Varroa establishment, or understands the fragile biology of the Hawaiian Islands. Islands are the one place you actually can be confident of an eradication, and feral colonies are a serious threat. Additionally, the concern in Hawaii is always protecting the natural fauna–so many species are endemic and threatened, adding a new parasite into the mix is never a good idea. Honeybees are an introduced, domesticated species in both those areas.

I will also add that in December, one of the papers I listened to in the CCD symposium suggested Varroa mites could play a role in transmitting IAPV virus, since both mites and bees from CCD hives were found to have viral inclusions from IAPV in their DNA. It was preliminary data and isn’t proof by any stretch, but certainly another reason in favor of mite eradication–especially if native, endemic insect species could be put at risk.

In summary, it sounds like this will be a very well-intentioned movie, with some good information, and it should help people understand the life and work of beekeepers.

It will also contain lots of mystical shit.* That’s too bad.

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*apologies to King Missile.