Lesson
#9
Beware of Unproven Technologies
Sound revolutionized motion pictures, but the tortured
effort to bring smell to the silver screen proved that some things
are best left to the imagination.
In satiric director John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester, Divine, a 300-pound
transvestite, portrays a love-starved suburban housewife married to
a porno theater proprietor, and aging former teen idol Tab Hunter
plays her malevolent paramour. But despite the perversity of
the casting, and a script filled with jokes about subjects ranging
from macramé to foot fetishism, the film became best known for an
even more bizarre gag. Polyester was the facetious debut of “Odorama,”
in which moviegoers were handed scratch-and-sniff cards, and numbers
were flashed on the screen to signal them when to smell appropriate
odors ranging from roses to flatulence. The film’s prologue takes
place in the laboratory of the technology’s purported inventor, “Dr.
Arnold Quackenshaw,” who explains in a thick Teutonic accent that
“through this nose come some of life’s most rewarding sensations…however,
you may experience some odors that will shock you. This film’s producers
believe that today’s audiences are mature enough to know that some
things just plain stink!”
It’s a safe bet, however, that relatively few of the people who rent
the DVD reissue of Polyester today even realize that Waters’ fragrant
humor parodied an actual cinematic phenomenon. In 1960, a romantic
whodunit entitled Scent of Mystery featured a dubious innovation billed
as “Glorious Smell-O-Vision,” in which a “smell brain” device pumped
30 different scents — wine, freshly-baked bread, pipe tobacco, a salty
ocean breeze ? through a network of tiny tubes to movie viewers’ seats.
The gadgetry was the masterwork of Hans Laube, touted in publicity
accounts as a “world famed osmologist,” or smell expert, from Switzerland,
who collaborated with flamboyant, gimmick-loving Hollywood producer
Michael Todd Jr., on one of the most outlandish projects in movie
history. “First they moved (1895)! Then they talked (1927)! Now they
smell !” the ads proclaimed.
While Scent of Mystery wasn’t the first attempt to employ aromas in filmmaking, it was by far the most technologically intricate. Beyond that, it was the first — and apparently the only — motion picture that relied upon smells as integral devices in the plot. The history-making nature of “Smell-O-Vision” aside, audiences and movie critics were unimpressed, and Scent of Mystery quickly evaporated at the box office. Today, it’s remembered, if at all, as a bit of trivia on movie-buff web sites. Yet Laube’s and Todd’s attempt to lead moviegoers by their noses presaged a postmodern culture in which the manipulation of scents would become a powerful tool in shaping consumer behavior, in which synthetic aromas would become so ubiquitous that some would begin to fear them as environmental hazards.
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So Real It Made Audiences Queasy
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lmost since the invention of the motion picture, filmmakers have
sought to exploit other senses in addition to sight, in an effort
to create a more compelling experience for audiences. Some tricks,
such the THX system that provides high-quality sound in theaters,
have been successful. Others, such as “Sensurround” — a violent motion-simulating
technology featured in the 1975 film Earthquake — ended up joining
the list of cinematic gimmicks that fell flat.
The sense of smell, in particular, has tempted filmmakers for a long
time, and with good reason. The olfactory neurons in the nasal cavity,
which detect chemical components of aromas, and the brain’s olfactory
bulb — a clump of cells that somehow identifies nerve impulses as
being caused by jasmine rather than rose petals — are capable of sensing
and distinguishing about 10,000 different scents. Research has shown
that scents are capable of stimulating physiological responses before
people even realize what they’re smelling, and as a result they often
have powerful, primitive emotional associations. It was no accident
that that ancient Greek festivals such as the Eleusinian mysteries
were replete with potent smells, such as burning incense and flowers.
In the 19th century, stage dramatists sometimes used aromas as special
effects in plays. They scattered pine needles to suggest the odor
of a forest, or cooked food in the theater to simulate the aroma of
a restaurant onstage.
The use of smells in the movie industry, in fact, actually preceded
the introduction of sound. In 1906, proprietors of the Family Theater
in
In the early 1940s,
There were two obvious shortcomings to
early attempts at olfactory filmmaking. Since they were added to existing
movies, they were an offense against film aesthetics, a distraction
from what the director had intended audiences to focus upon. Beyond
that, the clouds of perfume that accumulated in theaters created a
problem. The human nose, which has only so many smell receptors, has
difficulty transitioning to a new smell until it is cleared of the
molecules that triggered a previous scent. The result was a phenomenon
called “olfactory fatigue,” in which the sense of smell gradually
stops working, like a smoker who no longer notices the acrid stink
of his cigarette. (Films with smells would work a lot better if audiences
were rabbits, which depend upon smell to avoid predators and possess
nostrils equipped with skin flaps, which restrict the volume of molecules
they can take in with a sniff.)
