Bug (the movie): Infestation, Interdependence, and Affect

• In Event: Enticing Infestations: Animal Encounters and Contested Belonging in American Literature and Visual Media

Abstract

Bug (2006), directed by William Friedkin and based on a play by Tracey Letts, follows two figures (Peter, played by Michael Shannon, and Agnes, played by Ashley Judd) as they descend into a chimerical space where reality, imagination, and hallucination are inseparable. The infestation begins when, after a night of passion, Peter discovers an aphid in the bed of Agnes’s run down motel room-turned-apartment. While this movie traces this alleged bug infestation, the reality of which is never confirmed, the viewer never actually sees any of these bugs. In a strange twist at the end of the movie, Peter ends up murdering someone who claims to be a doctor trying to help in order to protect the infestation. Because of this, the film has much to say about American popular perceptions of mental illness and addiction as well as the negatively charged class-based associations of bug infestations. In this paper, I argue that the film Bug highlights the intersectional oppressions of infestations, real and imagined, as mutually constitutive. Additionally, by drawing from affect theory, queer theory, and critical animal studies, I open up a field of inquiry as to whether it is possible to develop a theory for the moral consideration of bugs and other pest animals without reifying these oppressive forces.

Author

• Lindsay Garcia, College of William and Mary