On 'The Smell of Burning Ants'

Watching Jay Rosenblatt’s 1994 short film The Smell of Burning Ants was an arresting and introspective experience. This avant-garde film combines the direct, testimony-like narration of its author, who recounts the brutality of growing up as a male in a strongly patriarchal American society with mundane but initially startling, black and white footage.

What is initially startling about the footage is the imagery of a scorpion’s seeming suicide when encircled by flames and the repeated shot of an officer pulling forcefully on the hair of a captive prisoner in what seems like some remote Asian labor camp. The rest of the footage, which makes up the majority of the film, appears to be 8mm home video footage from the 1950s.

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The voiceover, which accompanies most of the film, is vengeful and subtly mocking. It feels as if it is being spoken by someone who has suffered through the plight visualized.

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The combination of the opening imagery of the scorpion's apparent suicide and the Asian officer's brutality juxtaposed with the harsh account of childhood and adolescence raises a variety of questions: Are male children in this situation being placed under the same stress as a scorpion surrounded by flames? Can the narrator’s account be considered a historical atrocity, on part with the brutality of, say, Japan’s invasion of China during WWII?