ROM Bloodsuckers exhibition - Nov 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Regardless, yesterday I went to ROM to see their new bloodsuckers’ exhibit and to see as to why it is presented now, mid-November, rather than in October, (because of Halloween). Ergo, what is the conclusion?

In the past, I have been to another two special exhibits: one was centered on the blue whale – biology, anatomy, ecology; the second showed the Hindu culture and treasures of Jodhpur, and both were much more homogenous than this one, especially the second, which just showed the various cultural treasures of Jodhpur. Yes, ROM showed them from various angles and aspects, but the bottom line was still the same. The first, the blue whale exhibit, was more varied, it included depictions of whale evolution and of whaling industry, off the top of my head, but regardless, the bulk of the exhibit was still centered on the blue whale per se. And the bloodsuckers?

For a start, there was no possibility of it being homogenous – the bloodsuckers themselves, (we are talking about real life animals here) are a very mixed bunch. There are mosquitoes and their relatives, (such insects as the black flies), there are leeches, there are ticks (and chiggers), there are vampire bats – and there are more exotic creatures such as the vampire finch, (and the African oxpecker) and the vampire snail, just to name two. Aside from their diet, all of those animals have evolved in different environments and ecosystems, along different ecological lines and their behaviors are different, their shared diet regardless. Mosquitoes and bed bugs may be both blood-sucking insects, yet they are no more similar to each other than apes and monkeys are with squirrels, for comparison. Combining them all together is a great way to show the biodiversity of bloodsuckers, but… little else. This particular ROM exhibit is about entertainment, not education, though it tries to combine both. What next?

Firstly, to follow with its’ heterogeneous nature, the biodiversity portion of the exhibit itself was quite varied: there were models, (for example, giant-sized heads of leech and mosquito), there were preserved specimens (of kissing bugs, black flies, oxpeckers, fleas and so on), and there were the live animals: the mosquitoes, the leeches, (European and American), the ticks, the lampreys – and there were supposed to be the candirus, the vampiric catfishes from South America. However, because they were blood-sucking catfish from the South American tropics, they were clearly having problems in dealing with an early Canadian winter, so no candirus available to public just yet. And-?

And as Bill Schutt, the author of the ‘Dark Banquet’ book pointed out, the blood-sucking animals tend to be a shy, unobtrusive group, keeping out of sight in dark places, especially during the day, even underwater, as in case of candirus and leeches. After observing the live bloodsucking animals in ROM’s exhibit, I feel that he is quite correct: leeches, ticks, lampreys and mosquitoes are a very diverse bunch, but their behavior was quite similar: they were content to just stay in one place and not go anywhere. At least the mosquitoes are attracted to artificial light…what a surprise, really!

So far so good, but ROM’s exhibit was more than just about biodiversity of bloodsuckers. There was the anatomical breakdown of blood itself…, which brings us back to Bill Schutt and his ‘Dark Banquet’ book. As far as non-fiction books go, ‘Dark Banquet’ itself is a very heterogeneous piece – judge for yourself. The first part ‘No Country for Old Chickens’ (chapters 1-3) covers the author’s personal experiences with the vampire bats, showing how the three species are different from each other. (There were no live vampire bats in the exhibit – they are just as tropical as the candirus are, and much harder to handle, sadly, so we had to do just with models & preserved specimens). The second part, ‘Let it Bleed’ abruptly shifts in its’ narrative: chapter 4 talks about medical bleeding, ditto for chapter 5, but is also talks about blood itself, while chapter 6 turns into a tale about humanity’s interactions with the medical leech, and the chapter’s structure turns from a more-or-less straightforward narrative, into the author’s interview with a leech expert – and the same format continues into the third part, ‘Bed Bug & Beyond’. More precisely, chapter 7 talks about the bed bug, chapter 8 – about the tick, and chapter 9 – about the candiru catfish. (There is also chapter 10, ‘A Tough Way to Make a Living’, but it feels more like an epilogue to the entire book instead). The result is a very interesting, but also somewhat confusing book that may be “Jaunty, instructive, and charmingly graphic” (Natalie Angier, New York Times), but sometimes leaves the reader exasperated: just what exactly are they reading? (These days Bill Schutt seems to be writing sci-fi novels instead). So how does that relate to the ROM exhibit?

The latter seems to be heavily inspired by ‘Dark Banquet’. The book contains information on blood-sucking animals – check for ROM. Information about human blood from an anatomical, rather than a biological viewpoint – check. Discussion about bloodletting – check. Vampires in myth and legend – check. And dealing with real-life bloodsuckers – ditto.

Let’s take a pause and point out the obvious – yes, the exhibit is much more derived than Bill Schutt’s book is, duh, but the people at ROM clearly used ‘Dark Banquet’ as some sort of a guideline in setting up their exhibition.

The next note of worth is the vampires-in-myth-and-legend part of the exhibition. ROM’s stores are vast, and so it is not surprising that they were to produce authentic vampire-hunting kit as well as the various medicinal bloodletting kits, but when they talked about the fictional vampires per se… they might have hit an unexpected snag. Yes, unlike the 19^th century, people know that fictional vampires and real-life vampire bats are two different entities, and they also know, and accept, that there are other cultural traditions regarding blood-sucking monsters of the night than the one established by such European novels as ‘Dracula’ and ‘Carmilla’, (who might be the first true European female vampire as well as the first true European novel about a female vampire). In a Hindu novel ‘Vikram and vetala’, the latter is a Hindu vampire, which is a different entity from Dracula and his kin, for example, which brings us to the chupacabra and the yara-ma-yha-who.

Both are fictional vampires, both are bloodsuckers, and they got about as much in common as the real-life mosquito and the bed bug do. Question: why were they chosen to be depicted as models and made examples of in regarding fact and fiction? Not to mention that the debunking of a vampire myth – of any modern myth, really, is a thankless and unrewarding job. The yara-ma-yha-who is some sort of a fictional bogeyman, with little to no grounding in reality, (a typical case with Australian Aboriginal folklore), while the chupacabra is more complex. There are, really, two Chupacabra depictions. One is of a four-legged animal, which may, or may not be feral dogs, mongooses, coyotes, and similar creatures with mange and/or similar sicknesses. The second is a biped that looks far less realistic, and is probably mostly imaginary instead. Sadly, people who supposedly ‘study’ the chupacabra don’t usually acknowledge this divide, which makes the entire approach to the chupacabra issue prejudiced or suspect – take your pick, really. These days, (21^st century) when people are disproving fictional vampires, they tend to come across as pompous instead of educated.

…And on the other hand, ROM is also featuring an exhibition regarding posters from horror movies and the like, so the bloodsuckers’ exhibition also had a subsection that depicted posters from horror movies starring both the more contemporary vampires and their more grotesque variants, such as mutant leeches and giant mosquitoes. The result is a dichotomy – on one hand, people still fear death and loss of life that accompanies spillage of blood and bloodsuckers, but on the other, they glamorize it: modern vampires are really augmented and improved humans, a far call from animated corpses of the 18^th century and earlier time periods. They also have nothing in common with real-life bloodsuckers – mosquitoes, leeches, lampreys, (back in 2014 there was a crummy horror movie that showed a town invaded by mutant lampreys), and so on. The result – an even more heterogeneous exhibition of blood sucking. Modern fictional vampires and their more ancient counterparts, real-life blood-sucking animals (and the problems that they cause), plus real life bloodletting as a health treatment, not to mention blood itself per se are connected to each other, but only loosely, and combining them together is ‘a stretch’. Bill Schutt’s book attempted to do just that, but he mentioned the fictional vampires (and other blood-sucking revenants) only in passing, and his transition from part 1 of ‘Dark Banquet’ (the vampire bats per se) to part 2 (human blood, medicinal bloodletting, and leeches) is kind of jarring. It is a good book, but not a flawless one; then again, it was written back in 2008, so maybe it is somewhat outdated too.

Back to the bloodsuckers’ exhibit. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Heterogeneous or not, it has something for everyone, children and grown-ups, fans of animals, fiction, folklore, and even history. Not unlike the blue whale and the Jodhpur treasures’ exhibitions, this one was somewhat interactive, (though this works better for children than for grown-ups). If you are in Toronto, Canada, come on to ROM and look at it. Real life might suck, but sometimes it still works.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!