Copyright ©
2007 Conrad
Bérubé, site design, concept and scripting. All
rights reserved worldwide.
The following is an excerpt from a handout prepared for
Entomology 111: Insects and Human Affairs at the
University of California/Davis.
Silence of the leps.
"Leps" is entomologists' slang for members
of the Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths, such as the
Death's-head Hawkmoth, Acherontia atropos or
Acherontia styx. In the movie "Silence of the Lambs" the
psychotic killer shoves pupae of this large moth down
the throats of his murdered victims. This serves as a symbol of
the maniac's attempt to, himself, metamorphose into a beautiful
woman. Another evil character in the movie, Hannibal Lector,
repeats this symbolism in a piece of "performance art": he
creates a large representation of a butterfly by using sheets
from the cell from which he has escaped-- and the body of a guard
he has disemboweled.
The process of metamorphosis has fascinated people throughout
history. It has been used in poetry and literature since ancient
times as a metaphor for change and renewal (usually much more
genteelly than in "Silence of the Lambs". The ancient Greeks
believed that this process was a terrestrial manifestation of the
transmigration of the soul. In fact, the Greek word for "soul"
was the same as that for "butterfly": psyche (which we
use today, of course, to describe the essential elements of the
mind-- and from which the word "psychotic" is also derived). Some
ancients went so far as to believe that the soul actually
took the form of a butterfly. Similarly, adherents of the
cults of Mithras (in Persia) and Orpheus (in Greece) held that
the human soul left the body at death in the form of a bee to
wing its way to the netherworld. Beetles, cicadas and other
insects were viewed in the same light in other
cultures.
Copyright ©
2007 Conrad
Bérubé, site design, concept and scripting. All
rights reserved worldwide.
