14 DAY TRIAL // As cinema goers and movie junkies probably already know, the month of June 2012 brought us a modern version of a worldwide known story by the Brothers Grimm – the fairy tale ordinarily known as “Snow White” –, which now goes by the name of “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
Now, why should environmentalists also take an interest in this movie? The answer is quite simple: because Charlize Theron, who plays the role of the wicked queen in this movie, was made to wear a beetle-wings dress for her part in this motion picture.
According to ecouterre.com, the choice of material for this dress was based on the attempt to clothe the character in something that would suggest her inner depravity. Well, mission accomplished, we dare say.
In order to create this dress, costume designer Colleen Atwood had to use thousands jewel-beetle wings, shipped in all the way from Thailand, where the insect seems to be considered not only edible, but also a delicacy.
Apparently, making the dress proved to be rather complicated procedure, not because of the fact that so many beetle wings had to be stitched together, but because, as Atwood explains, “[the wings are] incredibly sharp, so I had to be careful about how I used them. If you hit them, you can hurt yourself.”
Hopefully, besides making quite an impression on the audience, the afore-mentioned dress can also be used to bring awareness to environmental issues.
Thus, scientists argue that, besides being an innovative dress material, the jewel beetle is an impressive insect because of its ability to detect forest fires from up to 80 kilometers (roughly 262,000 feet) away, reports weirdimals.wordpress.com.
Given the fact that “Snow White and the Huntsman” has successfully managed in bringing the jewel beetle under the spotlight, maybe it is just a matter of time before humanity will also start looking into ways of appreciating this odd insect not just for its shinny and colorful wings, or for its “tasty” (?) flavor, but also for its natural gift of pin-pointing the exact areas of land where forests are burning.
To stress the matter even more, and to conclude, let us emphasize the fact that, due to climate change – global warming, in particular – more and more regions of the globe are faced with devastating fires on a regular basis, so we could probably use all the help we can get, even if it's coming from a bug.