Microbial Pathogens in the Movies

Microbial Pathogens in the Movies
Manuel Sánchez-Angulo
FEMS Microbiology Letters, Volume 370, 2023, fnad129, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnad129

Introduction
Maybe one day the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honor an Oscar award for microbes. There are numerous films in which they have participated [according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), as of 12 June 2023, there are 22 502 titles related to the keyword “virus,” 184 related to “bacteria,” and 760 to “infection”). To give an example: without “viruses” we would not have such cinematic characters as the zombies that try to eat Brad Pitt and his family in World War Z, or the cool vampires from the Blade saga. Probably microbes will never have their well-deserved prize because of their dreadful reputation. In entertainment movies, microbes usually play the “bad bugs” role, like the ones that cause plague, cholera, Ebola, AIDS, or zombie outbreaks (Pappas et al. 2003, Burns and Bhella 2017). Most of the time their task is reduced to being the cause of a terrible disease that puts the protagonists in trouble or even kills them.

Although in nature, microbes do much more good than harm, this aspect is rarely represented on the screen. Something logical if we think that cinema is an art and as such appeals to the emotions, so the depiction of the suffering of an infectious disease arouses many more feelings than the operation of a bioreactor for penicillin production. We must not forget that a movie is an artistic recreation of reality, not the real world. With the exception of documentary cinema, commercial movies do not need to be scientifically precise. Nevertheless, some film productions, specially the most recent ones, take great care in enrolling scientific advisors in order to have the most plausible and realistic scripts (Chambers 2017). However, the movies fix in the public’s imagination a certain cliché of the concepts and events that are recreated on film. If we consider that our students are part of that public, it is not rare to use some famous movie sequences as an educational tool (Rose 2003, Sánchez 2011a, Baños and Bosch 2015, Berlin 2016, Schneider 2016). Of course, any educator likes to see that the subject he teaches is reflected with a certain accuracy on the big screen and that there are few “artistic licenses.” However in most occasions that situation does not occur, so making a virtue out of necessity, movie goofs such as the scene from Mission: Impossible II where a flu virus infects a red blood cell, can be seen as an opportunity to explain the concept and conditions of viral host recognition to the students.

The aim of this work is to give an overview of the fascinating facets of the pathogenic microorganisms depicted in entertainment movies and its use as an educational tool for the explanation of several concepts—scientific, social, and historical—at different educational levels, from undergraduate to grade students or even general public. Nowadays, the internet, video sharing platforms, and the different streaming services provide easy access to a wide range of movies and TV series, no matter whether they are old silent black-and-white films, timeless classics, modern blockbusters, or even forgotten flops. So, educators are not limited to relying solely on the most well known or current movies to illustrate specific concepts related to infectious diseases. However, we must not forget that, when a movie is made, it typically reflects the issues and concerns of the period when it was made, not the period that is reenacted on the screen (e.g. Bergman’s masterpiece, The Seventh Seal, is more about the experiences of life, such as love, death, and family, rather than painting a faithful representation of the Middle Ages in Scandinavia). Movies can be used in the classroom in two ways depending on the time available. The students can watch the whole film as an external activity and then discuss its content in the class (Baños and Bosch 2015). Another option is to use clips of selected scenes related to the subject to be discussed in a manner similar to the “microbe minute” strategy (Feldman 2013). Let us see a couple of examples that have been used in educational activities. At minute 19 of Dallas Buyers Club, a medical doctor (Jennifer Garner) explains to her AIDS patient (Matthew McConaughey) what is a doubled-blind clinical trial, which can be used as introduction to a class about bioethics and/or drug development. Another example is the sequence at minute 74 from the movie Panic in the streets, which can be used to explain the “One Health” concept (Sanchez 2022), thanks to the following dialogue:

Community? What community? Do you think you’re living in the Middle Ages? Anybody that leaves here can be in any city in the country within 10 hours. I could leave here today and be in Africa tomorrow. And whatever disease I had would go with me… Then think of it when you're talking about communities! We're all in a community…the same one!

It is important that the educator must watch the film beforehand and prepare the session to reach the educational objectives, for example making a questionnaire about the pathogen or the treatment portrayed on the screen, or the errors and misconceptions found. In the first example mentioned above, the character played by McConaughey believes in the effectiveness of quackery treatments for AIDS, so a good exercise would be to ask the students what the appropriate treatments would be. These clips can also be used in popular science activities aimed at the general public. One of the best clips for that purpose is from the animated short film Your Friend the Rat. In <3 min, it describes how the bacteria Yersinia pestis caused the 1347 bubonic plague pandemic known as “The Black Death” thanks to the role as a vector of the flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) that transmitted the bacteria to the black rat (Rattus rattus) causing its death, so the flea must search for another host, the humans.

This review has been organized in three major sections. The first one is dedicated to the real infectious diseases that have been represented on the screen. Commercial movies are better known to the general public than documentaries, so they could be used to explain the symptoms of the illness but also other humanistic aspects such as the care of the sick or the impact of the disease in a particular historical moment or in the actual society. The second section is dedicated to the movies where the protagonists are the scientists and medical doctors who fight against those diseases. In this case, the main concepts to be explained are the scientific methods and the biocontainment measures, but also the evolution of the stereotype of the scientist, from the solitary, dedicated hero of the 1930s to today’s interdependent groups of highly technical researchers. Finally, the last part deals with the films in which microbes manage to defeat humanity, creating a dystopian world. Those movies are well known by the general public and can be used to explain key concepts in epidemiology and disease transmission but also how to deal with extreme stressful situations (Kendal 2021).

https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnad129

Microbial Pathogens in the Movies

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