Chemistry in the Movies

The authors’ common reaction to chemistry in the movies is encapsulated in the archetype movies. These are, first and foremost, great movies that present certain facets of chemistry especially well. They were selected from a much larger group of movies by ranking according to four criteria: (1) contemporary (meaning released after 1970), (2) available on VHS or DVD, (3) included women or other underrepresented groups in significant roles, or (4) was especially favored by one or both of the authors. It became clear from the ranking exercise that older films overcame the criterion of not being recent when they were favored by both authors. We felt they represented the archetype for that chapter and merited special attention. The oldest archetype movie is the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, making it the book’s de facto archetype and reiterating its importance as the book’s overarching theme. Considered as a whole, the five chapters on the “dark side” show chemists, sociopaths, chemical companies, and pleasure seekers making one-sided decisions that ultimately harm themselves and society. After Jekyll becomes addicted to his Hyde formula, he commits acts of personal terrorism and then murder. Griffin works alone to isolate his invisibility formula because he seeks fame, wealth, and power. Once he knows those things are within his grasp, it drives him mad to the point that he commits mass murder. Dr. Mabuse isn’t a chemist, but he is already insane when he commands his army of thugs to engage in acts of chemical sabotage. He wants to begin a “reign of terror.” Reporter Jason Brady learns that a president knows his chemical company produces a toxin that kills his workers and the children living near the plant. He won’t stop production because it would deprive the community of employment. Finally, television director Paul Groves takes his first LSD trip to get in touch with his feelings. While under the influence, he flees the apartment of a guide who was there to ensure he had a good experience. “Bright side” chemists usually work in teams and rely on other people for critical input—they are engaged with society.

Bad Company: The Business of Toxicity

In the movies, chemical companies maximize profits by poisoning their customers, workers, neighbors, and the environment, or they terrorize or outright kill the heroic insider who becomes a whistleblower. English professor Phillip Lopate argued in the New York Times that movies about business in general present a cartoon view of corporate structure (usually there isn’t one), making them the “fantasy villain,” a nearly faceless evil represented in the narrative by a “wall of Suits” (Lopate 2000). Business professor Ribstein goes further and asserts that the overwhelmingly negative view of business in American film narratives is fueled by filmmakers who feel their artistic vision is constrained by profit-making capitalists (Ribstein 2005). Ribstein begins his argument with a summary of nine movies about “Evil Corporations.” He doesn’t appear to realize that seven of them were companies that handle or produce chemicals: The China Syndrome (1979), Silkwood (1983), The Fugitive (1993), A Civil Action (1998), The Insider (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), and Mission: Impossible II (2000). All of these films, and many others, were considered for inclusion in this chapter but, as the fastest growing category of chemistry in the movies, only two from this evil seven made it into the present chapter: Silkwood (1983) and Erin Brockovich (2000). The evil chemical company theme plays out in several ways. In the deeply satiric comedy Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1998), the pharmaceutical company’s happiness drug provides a foundation upon which the comedy troupe bases their humor. This chemical gravitas also lends weight to a number of fictional dramas that explore the theme of toxicity, such as One Man (1977), I Love Trouble (1994), and The Constant Gardener (2005). The company presidents in these movies murder, or hire thugs to murder, the individuals who choose to expose the toxicity of their products. Evil chemical companies are found in “based on a true story” dramas such as in Silkwood (1983), Erin Brockovich (2000), and Bhopal Express (2001). Knowing that the story is based on true tales of toxic chemicals lends considerable weight to these story lines.

Inventors and Their Often Wacky Chemical Inventions

Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness in The Man in the White Suit) knows exactly what he wants to make. He just doesn’t know how to make it. So, he engages in a trial-and-error search for the right conditions to create his nonstaining fiber. Every time he makes a new trial, however, he sets off an explosion. As the Birnley Mills building crumbles around him, he tries, tries, and tries again. Like Stratton, most movie inventors create oxymoronic products such as rechargeable batteries, flexible glass, bulletproof tires, and water-repellent hairsprays. Movie inventors are very closely associated with the slapstick humor of the 1910s to 1930s, but ultimately they owe the strength of their fictional existence to Thomas Alva Edison. His inventions brought him worldwide fame in 1877, when he was 29 years old. After that, he regularly made front-page news until his death in 1931. His creation of the phonograph, commercialization of the light bulb, and 1,091 other inventions changed the way we live. Of all his inventions, the phonograph truly came out of nowhere, so much so that a journalist dubbed him the “Wizard of Menlo Park.” He followed that up with the electric light bulb and, more important, the electric power generation and delivery system. His most profound creation was the research laboratory, discussed in the next section, which he didn’t even patent. The iconic power of Edison is evident in the observation that inventors before The Absent-Minded Professor in 1961 create in the absence of theory, while those after 1961 rely on theory to make their products. Edison wanted to invent things that interested him. He didn’t care how they worked, just that they did. He hired men with advanced degrees for their theoretical expertise but relied on them more for their specialized technical abilities. In contrast, the industrial research laboratories that were founded on Edison’s example, such as General Electric Laboratories and Bell Laboratories, among many others, were and are staffed by large numbers of trained scientists, engineers, and technicians who rely on the free flow of ideas and expertise between theory and practicality to solve problems.

Isomorphs of Paranoia: Chemical Arsenals

In the United States after the September 2001 attacks, citizens were advised to protect themselves from toxic dusts by covering their windows with plastic sheeting and duct tape that could be purchased from any hardware store. One hundred years ago, terrorists would not have had ready access to today’s common chemicals to create makeshift explosives, and citizens would not have had access to plastic sheeting or duct tape to protect themselves from aerosols or gases. Chemical weapons have engendered a cloud of fear since their introduction into warfare during World War I. Recently, the large-scale use of chemicals as lethal weapons has drifted from warfare to terrorism. Chemical weapons are often equated with poison gases (either asphyxiation or nerve agents), but as can be seen in the list of movies for this chapter, they are actually the most diverse type of weapon. Some of these weapons are discussed elsewhere in the book (psychedelic agents, chapter 5; explosives, chapter 9). The chemistry in nuclear weapons movies is discussed in the commentary sections for those movies that use them. The movies in this chapter are closely linked to spy movies, which lie at the nexus of the action and thriller genres. Spy movies are appealing in part because these charming, good-looking government employees live by their wits and gut reactions to make split-second decisions that are best for the spy and the government. But a spy is only as good as the villain; otherwise, it wouldn’t be challenging or fun. So, the final ingredient for the movie choices in this chapter is that many of them refer to actual chemical weapons, which grounds them in the real world. The audience knows these weapons are dangerous and can be misused by the wrong person. Only about 70 chemical compounds have been put to use during military conflicts over the past century, and they are classified based on their effects. Asphyxiating and blistering agents were created for WWI (1914–1918); nerve agents were developed for WWII (1940–1945) but never used in that war; napalm was also created for WWII but it generated public comment only when used in the Vietnam War; nonlethal psychedelics were tested extensively during the 1950s but haven’t been documented as having been used yet; herbicides and tear gas were used tactically during the Vietnam War.

Chem 101: Learning by Doing

This chapter stands at the midpoint of the “bright side” of this book. Its oppositional partner on the “dark side” is chapter 3 on chemical arsenals. Thus, education and war making present a core contrast in the uses of chemical knowledge in the movies. We have only to think of the closed world of Dr. Mabuse, symbolized so well by the writings in his notebook, as described in chapter 3. His inward, secret scribblings speak of outward, villainous purposes. In juxtaposition, the writing on the blackboards of this chapter’s movies is exposed; it is to be seen. This writing represents the open, cool, dispassionate transmission of facts in symbolic chemical language. But a little something more has slipped through in this section’s movie example. When we read its blackboard, we see the explosive nature of knowledge itself. “You have to see and read a movie at the same time,” says Harvard professor Tom Conley, whose creative film analyses leave readers with an appreciation of just how rich cinematic art can be (Savisky 2006). In his book Film Hieroglyphs, Conley considers writing as it appears in movies. He shows it is often an incidental and uncontrollable element that inserts itself into our movie-watching experience, leaving us to ponder nonnarrative written material observed on the movie sets. Conley calls the points where story, image, and writing are at odds with one another “ruptures.” Graphically interrupting the flow of the moving image, these points provide “slide areas” for analysis and new insights (Conley 1991). This section examines chemical notations appearing in our movie examples, and how they provide opportunities for an enhanced reading of these movies. The blackboard in The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), a musical campus comedy, ruptures the movie like no other blackboard in movie history. But first, let us set the scene. Pansy Hammer (Debbie Reynolds) attends Grainbelt University to “work, work, work.” As she and her lab mates begin their first laboratory exercise, she gleefully tells them she really likes chemistry. After a few moments, the professor announces, “Don’t let the bubbles come too fast” and then Hammer’s experiment explodes.

Hard Science = Hard Evidence: Forensic Chemistry and Chemical Detectives

Someone killed the mayor of Chatsberg using a makeshift pipe bomb in Kid Glove Killer (1942). It was connected with a wire to the electrical system of the mayor’s automobile and exploded when he turned the ignition key. The two members of the Chatsberg police forensic team, supervisor Gordon McKay (Van Heflin) and his assistant Jane “Mitchell” Mitchell (Marsha Hunt), visit the crime scene to collect clues such as a coat fiber caught in the garage door, the exploded bomb fragments with attached wire, and the burlap bag beneath the automobile. Their hypothesis is never stated, but it is clear from their actions they are using Locard’s exchange principle: “Every contact leaves a trace.” McKay and Mitchell focus their subsequent efforts on finding physical evidence on suspects that connects them with the material collected at the crime scene. In forensic science, crime scene reconstruction is the “thought experiment,” the documented crime scene is the “effect,” and the evidence is used to establish “cause.” In the case of murder, “cause” equates to who did what to whom. An examination of the chemistry in detective and spy movies shows they fall into the two main categories of elemental analysis or qualitative analysis. Most qualitative analyses fall under the category of forensic toxicology, the identification and quantification of drugs and poisons. Toxicology also happens to be one of the oldest branches of forensic chemistry. None of the movies shows the creation or even improvement of a chemical procedure. Instead, chemistry plays an infallible supporting role in solving a crime or mystery. For instance, in Kid Glove Killer, elemental analysis determines that vanadium was present as a tracer in the gunpowder but is not under the fingernails of the prime suspect, thereby decisively eliminating him as a suspect in the eyes of the forensic experts. The actual proof linking the killer to the crime scene does not involve chemistry but, rather, repetitive routine testing coupled with good guesswork. Even though the ability to detect arsenic in body tissues in 1815 gave chemical forensics its start (see “Limits of Detection,” below), the next advances in forensics were philosophical.

Dr. Jekyll’s Mysterious Transformative Formula

“Jekyll and Hyde” is a phrase known to many, though few have read the short novella published in 1886. It is far more likely that people have encountered the phrase during conversation or in one of its numerous adaptations. In fact, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the most adapted story of all time, even exceeding such texts as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Rose 1996). The idiom “Jekyll and Hyde” usually refers to someone or something that manifests its opposite tendency in different contexts. Colloquially, it does not always carry an explicit chemical connotation. But, in the more than 100 stage, movie, television, and cartoon adaptations (for a continually updated list, see Dury 2006), Jekyll is nearly always transformed into Hyde after ingesting or injecting a chemical formula of his own manufacture. For this reason, it is the single most important example of chemical self-experimentation in the movies. Nearly all of the dramatic Jekyll and Hyde adaptations have important scenes in which the mirror is used as a research tool. After Jekyll transforms into Hyde for the first time, he determines that the experiment was a success by looking into a mirror. He sees the monstrous Hyde in the reflection and knows that he, Jekyll, no longer looks like himself. It is very likely he no longer even feels viscerally like himself. The transformation scene, preceding the mirror scene, often shows Jekyll painfully grimacing, shaking, or groaning. The mirror scene is the point of full realization. We can conclude that Jekyll’s mind, though now contained in the persona of Hyde for the first time, is still able to internalize this realization with a scientist’s thinking process. As the story progresses, however, Hyde becomes increasingly more powerful and uses the mirror for self-satisfied confirmation that he has trumped Jekyll yet again. The mirror is the axis on which the status of the Jekyll and Hyde character flips. The mirror scene initiates an understanding that Jekyll and Hyde function as a paired unit.

A Master/Slave Narrative: Drug Addiction and Psychoactives

All addictive chemicals are psychoactive, but not all psychoactive compounds are addictive although they can be abused. Notable non-addictive psychoactive compounds are hallucinogens and the many mood-altering drugs marketed for depression, anxiety, epilepsy, and so forth. This chapter’s movies were chosen for the variety of psychoactive substances used by characters. They all show either drug abuse or addiction. The first few times that someone chooses to take a potentially addictive drug, they experience a rapid-onset pleasurable response followed by a slower onset, longer lasting dark side called withdrawal (Koob and Le Moal 2006; Grens 2007). Chronic use and bingeing lead to “tolerance” such that the euphoric effects are diminished even as the dose is increased. A person is said to be addicted to a drug when he or she seeks out the drug to avoid the dark side more than to induce its bright side. The bright and dark emotional and biochemical responses of euphoria, tolerance, and withdrawal are associated with a set of nerves called the “reward system” that lie at the top of the brainstem, buried deep within the human brain. We inherited these neurons from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. They are normally stimulated when we quench our thirst, stave off hunger, engage in sexual behavior, or participate in a host or other pleasurable activities. Repeated use of addictive drugs triggers the synthesis of proteins in the brain that cause anxiety or depression. Therefore, one promising line of research is to lessen the effects of withdrawal by finding other small molecules (therapeutic drugs) that bind to the receptors for the anxiety-producing or depression-inducing compounds. The “big three” legally addictive substances are nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine. About three-quarters (76%) of Americans over the age of 12 have smoked at least one cigarette in their lifetime, and 19% of Americans over the age of 12 smoke every day. From this we can calculate that 25% of users are addicted (=19%/76%), the highest addiction rate for any substance. With regard to alcohol, 51% of Americans are regular, moderate drinkers, 23% are binge drinkers, and 7% are heavy drinkers.

The Dark and Bright Sides of Chemistry in the Movies

Almost a decade ago we sat down to watch some pure home video entertainment: Clambake, starring Elvis Presley. Halfway through the movie, to our complete surprise, Elvis turned into a chemist! You might say this book began at that moment. In the following pages, we examine the presence of chemistry in one of the most accessible of all cultural products: movies. It has been noted repeatedly in recent years that chemistry is one of the least popularized areas of the hard sciences. When the term “science” is used in popular culture and the media, it often refers to medicine, physics, and biology. Monsters and superheroes, mad scientists and geniuses, aliens and mutants—all spring with ease from these realms. The discipline of chemistry seems by comparison to be underrepresented in cultural depictions, with an appearance harder to trace and an impact less openly acknowledged. Is this perception truly accurate? One need only name names—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—to see that this can hardly be the case. From the silent era through today, it is clear that chemistry has always been in the movies. In fact, chemical themes and characters have been capturing the imaginations of audiences for more than a century. They appear in surprising and significant ways and have generated some of the most enduring fictions and motifs in movie history, and thus in the culture at large. In its starring role, chemistry, the transformative science, has been moving us as it changes with the times. More than 1,200 motion pictures were compiled, analyzed, and categorized for this project. The sheer quantity of movies containing some aspect of chemistry was eye-opening. What started out as an exercise in curiosity, casually noting the appearance of chemistry themes through random movie viewing, quickly turned into serious study as the numbers kept rising. Inspired by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “Science in Cinema” film series, we started making a list. Every summer since 1998 (Zurer 1998), the NIH has screened six films, each dealing with a different medical theme, followed by a short scientific analysis from an NIH researcher working in a relevant field.

First, Do No Harm: (but Before That, Self-Experiment)

“The physician must . . . have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.” Hippocrates (Of the Epidemics, 400 B.C.E.) (Adams 1891). This phrase from Hippocrates is more often quoted in its shortened version: “First, do no harm.” In the movies, this sentiment lies at the heart of the bioethical dilemmas in the drug discovery and development process. In horror movies, any step in the drug discovery process can go terribly wrong. This reveals public fears about human fallibility, or even malice, subverting even the best protocols. In the dramatic movies, each new drug or medical protocol is one more step into the bright light of a better future. The goal for these noble scientists is to reduce human suffering. The most common first phase of drug discovery for compounds in this book has been the result of happy accidents and ethnobiological ventures. In chapter 5, the properties of LSD and Thorazine were both discovered while searching for other effects, although the discovery of these drugs has not been dramatized cinematically. Ethnobiology entered the picture in chapter 9 in the form of two movies from about 1990. Dr. Dennis Alan in The Serpent and the Rainbow searches for the zombie powder and discovers that it requires both puffer fish toxin and a cultural belief in zombies. Dr. Robert Campbell in Medicine Man searches for botanical pharmaceuticals and finds a cure for lymphoma. An ethical dilemma is presented in that movie with regard to who should benefit from the compound he discovers. Within the movie, we have to believe that no chemist would be able to synthesize the compound called “Mother Nature’s kitchen” and that Campbell is unable to replicate its isolation from the Amazonian flower. When one vial of the compound remains, a local boy gets cancer and Dr. Crane asks who is more important: one boy, or the rest of the world. Later, she chooses the boy. The movie does not give voice to the interesting question of the pharmaceutical company’s compensation to the locals’ discovery of the anticancer extract.