A few days after reading Stephenson's "Leiningen Versus The Ants', I'm still struggling to find the horror in it, especially art-horror. Even if I place myself into Leiningen's shoes (with his thick skull as well), I still don't find that I am art-horrified by their actions. Ants are intelligent and strong beings. In fact, I looked into the facts on ants just to see the natural truth behind the story.
Did you know that an ant has the largest brain amongst insects? One 'ant site' even said that their brains have a similar processing power to a Macintosh computer. That certainly may be amazing, and maybe a bit terrifying, but nevertheless, natural at the same time.
Beyond that, there are colonies in South America which have over 700,000 members; now that's a supercolony! That may not be 20 square miles of ants, but they could still take up a large area of space.
Given these facts, I'm beginning to think Leiningen himself is closer to a monster than the hoard of ants that attacked his plantation. The ants never gave me a sense of impurity or out-of-placeness. They certainly can, and do, exist in large numbers, and some are more malevolent than others, but without the intent of being harmful to any of particular person. To me, the occurrence of the ants is no different than a tsunami tidal wave or a hurricane coming straight for me. It is not out to get me personally, but certainly will take me down if I am in its path.
One could argue that the ants may have shown super intelligence by building rafts from greenery, yet I still do not buy it. Some ants are know for their leaf cutting and if their brains truly are of such high processing power, I don't think that building a bridge across the moat is particularly out of natural context.
Maybe we can just add large and harmful colonies of ants to the list of natural things people are afraid of. In the remake of Wizard of Oz, a colony of ants could be the new personified animal Dorthy is afraid of and travels with along the Yellow Brick Road. I'm not entirely sure what they would need to go see the Great Oz about though.
5 comments:
I have to agree with you that the ants failed to seem terrifying largely because they weren't the ones that were out of their element. Had a giant hoard of ants been attacking New York City, or something, that might be different-but as I see it, our planter was the one who encroached upon their territory. Also, as was mentioned in class, our "brave hero's" failure to accept any uncommon intelligence in the animals keeps the audience from perceiving them as such -rather, I personally don't feel that the idea of a super-smart ant stampede was used to its full potential.
And the fact that ants really do amass in such a grand scale seems to work against the event being something to be afraid of. Perhaps if hoards of insects that were accustomed to seeing on their own were congregating outside the plantation... like inchworms, or dung beetles, or maggots... But insects that are colonial by nature are less threatening when they appear in groups, I think.
Can we force "Leiningen Versus The Ants" into the Art-Horror genre then? Literally speaking, this horde of ants doesn't exist, so we can say we have our monster. It's egoistic drive to fulfill hunger is disgusting, and it's presence is threatening.
But, what if they're not the monsters? Take Leiningen: he doesn't exist inside Brazil naturally, science wouldn't have him exist there in the sense that he doesn't belong there (not native, foreign, outside of this society); he is threatening to the ants in that he seeks to destroy them; he is disgusting when he is covered with Petrol and is running amok stomping ants left and right merely so that he could drown them with a giant flood. He utilizes technologies that are far beyond that of the ants. From the perspective of the ants, Lenny is outright monstrous. He shouldn't be there, he threatens their life, and he is disgustingly human (look at the awkward, pinkish skin!).
Maybe the ants are supposed to be the victims and Leiningen's inhumanity allows us to be further disjointed from him and relate more to those poor, innocent ants.
Ooh, an ant rebellion against the arrogant tyrannical planter! I like it!
Okay, I'm loving the idea of Leningen being the monster in this story. Maybe I just can't help my English-major-instincts, but I couldn't help but think of this story from a postcolonial perspective the entire time. An arrogant-I'll-use-my-brain-when-you-silly-natives-were-too-scared white man against a drove of ants? He goes into another country and decides that he's going to convince a bunch of his "peons" to die for him in order that he can prove that his brain can beat anything. Like Dan (that was you, right leinadxbx?) said--he is the unnatural thing in Brazil. Not the ants. Symbolically, it's very interesting to me that one white, foreign man is pitted against a great mass of darkly pigmented, native adversaries. Leningen never stops to think about how many of his "peons" will have to die for him to win against the ants. I can't help but see this as more of a story of psychological retaliation against colonists. From a moral standpoint, I think we can make a strong case for Leningen the monster.
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