As someone who keeps reptiles and still occasionally searches for them in the wild, very few things annoy me more than the way genre films treat snakes.1 In fact, one of my biggest rants on Torture Cinema concerned the sea snake inaccuracies in Sphere (1998). To this day, I find it difficult to watch films which feature snakes of any kind because almost all of them get nearly everything wrong and most of them use snakes as plot devices for fear.2
There are a lot of problems with the way snakes are portrayed in SF/F/H, especially film. The biggest, however, can be summed up in these three points:
1. The Aggression Myth
You’ve seen it a lot.The snakes on Snakes on a Plane (2006) and the anaconda (Eunectes murinus) in Anaconda (1997) are all presented as monstrous hunters that will come for you wherever you are — or, in the case of those motherf***ing snakes on a plane, magic pheromones make them super aggressive. Heck, the anaconda breaks into a man’s boat to kill him at the start of the movie. Sure, an anaconda might break into a boat, but it would do that to take a nap, not to kill anyone.
Here’s the truth: snakes aren’t aggressive. In fact, almost all snakes will either stay still in hopes you’ll miss them, get in a defensive position and stay there until you go, or bolt for safer places. There are only a handful of snakes known to turn at you if you get into their space, and even then, it’s still a defensive move to get you to back off.3
Look, if you fall in front of a cobra or rattlesnake (I’m looking at you, Indy), you run the risk of getting bit. But if you just keep your distance, it’s pretty much impossible to get those fangs sunk into your flesh. It’s really that simple.
She’s a super vicious snake, y’all!
A bonus truth: snakes rarely eat humans. You’ll hear about it on the news like it’s something to worry about, but keep in mind that most snakes aren’t large enough to eat a human of any size, and those that are large enough usually want nothing to do with us. Look at how hard it is to hunt Burmese pythons in the Everglades. They’re not exactly small snakes, and yet there are probably hundreds of thousands of them. And we can’t find them.
2. The Painfully Obvious Problem
If you know anything about snakes and have seen Alexander (2004), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Live and Let Die (1973), or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), then you might have noticed a common problem in genre film: the presentation of obviously harmless snakes as super dangerous kill-you-in-a-second snakes.
Many of these films feature corn snakes, ball pythons, king snakes, boas, and other brightly colored and/or common-in-the-pet-trade snakes as stand-ins for any number of venomous snakes. A lot of the time, you’ve actually seen those snakes in your local pet store. Some genre films don’t even bother to tell us what they’re supposed to be; they just show us that they’re super dangerous. While suspension of disbelief is important for genre films, I cannot get over the fact that some films can’t be bothered to get creative with their snake choices. How am I to believe that magic exists if I don’t buy for a second that the innocent little corn snake you threw on someone is dangerous?
In almost all of these situations, I fall out of the story because I can’t take it seriously anymore. The whole point of genre movies is to give me enough visual trickery to convince me that what I am seeing is real or real enough. I can’t do that in these situations. All I can see is the trickery. It’s like watching a magic trick performed by someone who just started learning that trick 3 minutes ago. You can see the trick. You can see the mechanisms at work. And once you can see that, you can’t let the trick carry you through the story.
There’s a snake hiding in this picture. See if you can find it.
To be fair, there are great examples of harmless snakes used in film to give the impression of more dangerous snakes. Octopussy (1983), for example, uses real cobras in some scenes (presumably filmed with great care or featuring cobras without venom) and later uses a colubrid to stand in for a similarly dangerous species (presumably a Ptyas of some kind). For me, the issue isn’t that I know that these snakes are harmless. The issue is laziness and a lack of research. If you need direct interaction with a snake, use something that at least looks a little like the thing you’re mimicking OR find a better way to do it with visual trickery. A corn snake or ball python doesn’t cut it.
3. The Anatomy and Identification Problem
Woe unto the filmmaker who misidentifies a snake species or inserts anatomy into a snake that normally doesn’t have it. Setting aside weird hybrids or mutants and fantastical beast snakes, there are far too many instances of genre films changing the anatomy of snakes to make them more frightening. Films might feature pythons or boas with enlarged front fangs, normally large snakes as double their known size for reasons, snakes identified as one thing while being presented with characteristics of other snakes (i.e., saying a venomous snake primarily uses a neurtoxin when it actually primarily uses a cytotoxin), etc.
Most audiences likely aren’t bothered by this, but a snake enthusiast such as myself spends a lot of time rolling my eyes. Sphere is a weirdly mild example, though you wouldn’t be able to know it if you listened to me rant about it. They misidentified the type of sea snake in the film by citing an inaccurate fact that is fairly well known in the snake world (ahem, the Belcher’s sea snake (Hydrophis belcheri) is not the most venomous snake on Earth). Yet, so much of the plot of Sphere hinges on us believing this seemingly simple fact. The same can be said of Anaconda and literally any film in which snakes roar, scream, or make any sound other than loud breathing and hissing. Most snakes don’t have anything approaching a vocal cord, so how are they supposed to roar, etc.?4
This is a bull snake. She is not nearly as grumpy as she should be.
That pretty well sums up the major issues I have with the representation of snakes in SF/F/H (especially H).
Keep in mind that drumming up fear about snakes contributes to their continued destruction. When people fear snakes, they lash out at them in the wild. That fear contributes to subcultures in which locals hunt and destroy rattlesnakes or everyday people refuse to learn about the reptiles in their local area so they can easily ID the dangerous ones and avoid them. Basically, continuing to make snakes the easy enemy helps give people the fear motivator to kill snakes. Not just one or two here or there. Thousands.
So, you can understand my frustration and sadness about all of this. I am, after all, a snake lover. I have *7* snakes in my house, and I’ve kept reptiles as pets most of my life. Even with my enthusiasm and love for these creatures, it’s incredibly hard to break through the barrier most people put up when it comes to snakes.
I do have a recommendation, though. Many reptile expos, zoos, and organizations exist to educate the public on snakes. Go to one of their events. Give a snake a chance. You don’t have to touch it or hold it, but learn about them and come to understand what makes them the fascinating and strange creatures that they are. Maybe go to more than one event to build up your confidence so you can try holding one. And if you’re not sure you can do that, start with lizards and work your way up.
I’m not asking you to remove all of your fear of snakes. You should always be cautious about them in the wild because some snakes can be dangerous. I’m just asking you to temper that with knowledge. So, give a snake a chance!
In actuality, I really hate the treatment of most reptiles in genre, but snakes get it worse than most. They used bearded dragons (the inland or central subspecies, Pogona vitticeps) in Holes (2003) even though they’re not from the United States and don’t fan out their heads like some kind of Jurassic Park monster, and there was a recent film called Crawl (2019) set in Florida that was wildly confused about both the way alligators behave and the relationship Floridians have to the creatures. It’s really frustrating, y’all.
All of my examples will be from films. However, I’m sure some of the problems I discuss in this post apply to literature, though probably to a lesser degree because a lot of novel writers are weirdly obsessed about research. :P
I know of two: the black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) and the fierce snake / inland taipan (Oxyuranus microlepidotus). Both react defensively, though. You’re in their space, and they want you out of it. I have never heard of a black mamba or fierce snake intentionally seeking humans out to bite them. Why? Because that’s not how it works. Snakes aren’t mosquitoes.
The Pituophus species of snakes, which includes pine, gopher, and bull snakes, is one weird “sorta” exception. It has a laryngeal septum that allows it to make some unique sounds. Still, it doesn’t make the kind of noise you hear in horror movies!
Reading Time
Snakes in SF/F/H (Or, Drumming Up Fear from Ignorance)
As someone who keeps reptiles and still occasionally searches for them in the wild, very few things annoy me more than the way genre films treat snakes.1 In fact, one of my biggest rants on Torture Cinema concerned the sea snake inaccuracies in Sphere (1998). To this day, I find it difficult to watch films which feature snakes of any kind because almost all of them get nearly everything wrong and most of them use snakes as plot devices for fear.2
There are a lot of problems with the way snakes are portrayed in SF/F/H, especially film. The biggest, however, can be summed up in these three points:
1. The Aggression Myth
You’ve seen it a lot. The snakes on Snakes on a Plane (2006) and the anaconda (Eunectes murinus) in Anaconda (1997) are all presented as monstrous hunters that will come for you wherever you are — or, in the case of those motherf***ing snakes on a plane, magic pheromones make them super aggressive. Heck, the anaconda breaks into a man’s boat to kill him at the start of the movie. Sure, an anaconda might break into a boat, but it would do that to take a nap, not to kill anyone.
Here’s the truth: snakes aren’t aggressive. In fact, almost all snakes will either stay still in hopes you’ll miss them, get in a defensive position and stay there until you go, or bolt for safer places. There are only a handful of snakes known to turn at you if you get into their space, and even then, it’s still a defensive move to get you to back off.3
Look, if you fall in front of a cobra or rattlesnake (I’m looking at you, Indy), you run the risk of getting bit. But if you just keep your distance, it’s pretty much impossible to get those fangs sunk into your flesh. It’s really that simple.
A bonus truth: snakes rarely eat humans. You’ll hear about it on the news like it’s something to worry about, but keep in mind that most snakes aren’t large enough to eat a human of any size, and those that are large enough usually want nothing to do with us. Look at how hard it is to hunt Burmese pythons in the Everglades. They’re not exactly small snakes, and yet there are probably hundreds of thousands of them. And we can’t find them.
2. The Painfully Obvious Problem
If you know anything about snakes and have seen Alexander (2004), Snakes on a Plane (2006), Live and Let Die (1973), or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), then you might have noticed a common problem in genre film: the presentation of obviously harmless snakes as super dangerous kill-you-in-a-second snakes.
Many of these films feature corn snakes, ball pythons, king snakes, boas, and other brightly colored and/or common-in-the-pet-trade snakes as stand-ins for any number of venomous snakes. A lot of the time, you’ve actually seen those snakes in your local pet store. Some genre films don’t even bother to tell us what they’re supposed to be; they just show us that they’re super dangerous. While suspension of disbelief is important for genre films, I cannot get over the fact that some films can’t be bothered to get creative with their snake choices. How am I to believe that magic exists if I don’t buy for a second that the innocent little corn snake you threw on someone is dangerous?
In almost all of these situations, I fall out of the story because I can’t take it seriously anymore. The whole point of genre movies is to give me enough visual trickery to convince me that what I am seeing is real or real enough. I can’t do that in these situations. All I can see is the trickery. It’s like watching a magic trick performed by someone who just started learning that trick 3 minutes ago. You can see the trick. You can see the mechanisms at work. And once you can see that, you can’t let the trick carry you through the story.
To be fair, there are great examples of harmless snakes used in film to give the impression of more dangerous snakes. Octopussy (1983), for example, uses real cobras in some scenes (presumably filmed with great care or featuring cobras without venom) and later uses a colubrid to stand in for a similarly dangerous species (presumably a Ptyas of some kind). For me, the issue isn’t that I know that these snakes are harmless. The issue is laziness and a lack of research. If you need direct interaction with a snake, use something that at least looks a little like the thing you’re mimicking OR find a better way to do it with visual trickery. A corn snake or ball python doesn’t cut it.
3. The Anatomy and Identification Problem
Woe unto the filmmaker who misidentifies a snake species or inserts anatomy into a snake that normally doesn’t have it. Setting aside weird hybrids or mutants and fantastical beast snakes, there are far too many instances of genre films changing the anatomy of snakes to make them more frightening. Films might feature pythons or boas with enlarged front fangs, normally large snakes as double their known size for reasons, snakes identified as one thing while being presented with characteristics of other snakes (i.e., saying a venomous snake primarily uses a neurtoxin when it actually primarily uses a cytotoxin), etc.
Most audiences likely aren’t bothered by this, but a snake enthusiast such as myself spends a lot of time rolling my eyes. Sphere is a weirdly mild example, though you wouldn’t be able to know it if you listened to me rant about it. They misidentified the type of sea snake in the film by citing an inaccurate fact that is fairly well known in the snake world (ahem, the Belcher’s sea snake (Hydrophis belcheri) is not the most venomous snake on Earth). Yet, so much of the plot of Sphere hinges on us believing this seemingly simple fact. The same can be said of Anaconda and literally any film in which snakes roar, scream, or make any sound other than loud breathing and hissing. Most snakes don’t have anything approaching a vocal cord, so how are they supposed to roar, etc.?4
That pretty well sums up the major issues I have with the representation of snakes in SF/F/H (especially H).
Keep in mind that drumming up fear about snakes contributes to their continued destruction. When people fear snakes, they lash out at them in the wild. That fear contributes to subcultures in which locals hunt and destroy rattlesnakes or everyday people refuse to learn about the reptiles in their local area so they can easily ID the dangerous ones and avoid them. Basically, continuing to make snakes the easy enemy helps give people the fear motivator to kill snakes. Not just one or two here or there. Thousands.
So, you can understand my frustration and sadness about all of this. I am, after all, a snake lover. I have *7* snakes in my house, and I’ve kept reptiles as pets most of my life. Even with my enthusiasm and love for these creatures, it’s incredibly hard to break through the barrier most people put up when it comes to snakes.
I do have a recommendation, though. Many reptile expos, zoos, and organizations exist to educate the public on snakes. Go to one of their events. Give a snake a chance. You don’t have to touch it or hold it, but learn about them and come to understand what makes them the fascinating and strange creatures that they are. Maybe go to more than one event to build up your confidence so you can try holding one. And if you’re not sure you can do that, start with lizards and work your way up.
I’m not asking you to remove all of your fear of snakes. You should always be cautious about them in the wild because some snakes can be dangerous. I’m just asking you to temper that with knowledge. So, give a snake a chance!
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