FROM KAIJU TO KILLER BUGS: USING POPULAR CULTURE AS A SPRINGBOARD FOR CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT SCIENCE & SOCIETY

Film audiences can interpret fictional information from films as real, and films centered around scientific subjects can influence the attitudes of their viewers. In the fall of 2023, we taught a 100-level Honors colloquium that focused on how movies express public fears and misunderstandings of scientific advances. Honors students at Missouri Western State University are required to take multiple Honors colloquium courses, which are created by faculty and often focus on special topics which instructors are unable to cover in their normal course load. The Honors colloquium provided us with an opportunity to cover several scientific subjects that still fascinate and frighten the public, as well as to teach students critical analysis of film and other visual media while maintaining their engagement throughout the semester.

The class covered three different eras in American science fiction and horror cinema – the Atomic Age, which focused on the dangers of nuclear radiation (represented by Godzilla: King of All Monsters, Them! and The Beginning of the End); Ecological Revenge, more commonly known as Nature Fights Back, an era in which animals (and sometimes plants) attacked people in response to human disruption of the environment (represented by Frogs, Kingdom of the Spiders, Prophecy and Alligator); and Made in the Lab, in which genetic engineering goes horribly wrong (represented by Jurassic Park, Mimic, and Deep Blue Sea).

Each week the class viewed one film, followed by an immediate discussion covering the movie’s scientific accuracies, inaccuracies, and portrayals of different groups of people (scientists, the military, government agencies, etc.). Each student was required to lead one of the post-movie discussions. After all of the films from each era were viewed and discussed separately, the class spent a full session on a stand-alone discussion of the era as a whole. These larger discussions examined overall themes, the different choices made by filmmakers, and how the films fit into science and history. Students also had to write papers exploring the scientific accuracy and sociological themes from each era, ending with a final paper comparing and contrasting the three cinematic eras.