Nighttime Bugs
“Bite Me: The Bed Bug Invasion.” 2013. Doc Zone. Jay Dahl
I watched a documentary made to inform the general public on the hazard of bed bugs. Jay Dahl and Doc Zone dedicate a whole hour to preventing the epidemic in people’s houses. People do not realize the full spectrum of effects these critters can have financially, psychologically and socially. Prior to WWII, they ran rampant and were hard to deal with. The invention of DDT in the 1940s halted their advancement, but its use was discontinued in the 1970s because of the resulting implications (environmental waste, crop damage, etc.)
Bed bugs, as their name suggests, typically reside inside the beds of their victims and often feast on them during the night time. They are scientifically known as Cimex lectularius and are small, ranging from about 4-5 millimeters in size akin to apple seeds. They have a distinct shade of rusty-brown, but newly hatched ones are white which is quite sadistic given on how they sustain themselves; there is dark humor in the fact that they appear angelic, but have demonic tendencies (blood-sucking). Which brings me to another topic the documentary discusses about their feeding methods. Bed bugs have a long narrow tube hidden underneath their mouths known as the proboscis which they use to draw blood. The documentary does a good job of highlighting the individual parts by providing a close-up on the 3D diagram of the bugs’ body. What I found especially interesting was the often unknown fact that they also have wings, but they are vestigial organs. In the past, bed bugs had use for them but they eventually evolved out of that need; in the future, they may have use for those wings again.
Jay Dahl does an excellent job on highlighting the multiple effects having the bed bugs can have on victims. Physically, the bed bugs constant biting result in victims getting covered in bumps. Victims have to live with their marked up body and as a result, other people see them which causes social deprivation. Others will fear that by hanging around victims, they will get infected and as a result, they avoid the individual as much as possible. Psychologically, victim begin to feel unwanted and get mentally scarred by the experience. Even if the problem is eventually solved, the wound of the experience does not fully heal as getting rid of them requires strenuous time and effort. The financial cost is also great; as much as thousands of dollars can be spent to purge households.
The multiple effects highlighted within the documentary resonated deeply with me as I have firsthand experience with bed bugs. The first semester of my freshman year (September 2013-January 2014) were gruesome. I had to deal with adjusting to the college workload and not having a proper bed to sleep on; I slept on an air mattress until it would not retain air anymore. My school work suffered as a result because I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had to first empty out my room of all my personal belongings and then submerge my clothing in boiling water to kill potential eggs that may have been laid. I then had to buy highly concentrated rubbing alcohol (about 85%) and subsequently doused my room in it. The process of dousing took about two weeks to complete and inconvenienced me from my school work. The documentary resonates with me because of my experience. Over the course of the documentary, other victims interject with their stories and give a real life interpretation of those events. These firsthand accounts give more weight to the documentary; the trauma of the situation is better conveyed and it breathes life into the program. By bringing in real life examples, Jay Dahl and his team avoid the potential logical fallacy of appealing to non-evidence. They avoid appealing to Ignorance by first informing their audience as well.
In all, the documentary does an effective job of conveying the danger bed bugs present and also do it in a unique and memoritive way. The shortcomings result from the program only being limited to an hour long presentation. An additional 30 minutes would suit the program better as Dahl could use it to flesh out the information some more. The team would then be able to include more extreme cases in which bed bugs ravaged the lives of certain victims. The included variety on experience would make the documentary even more realistic as people have unique experiences to share.