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Introduction by Jenny VanWyk, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Global Change, Hampshire College.Science on Screen® presents creative pairings of current, classic, cult, and documentary films with lively introductions by notable figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine.
This remake of the science fiction classic moves the action from 1950s smalltown USA to 1970s San Francisco.
After bringing home a strange plant specimen, biologist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) notices that her live-in boyfriend, Geoffrey (Art Hindle), doesn't seem like himself; he's cold, distant, and somehow just not quite there.
When she turns to her friend Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a colleague at the Department of Public Health, he convinces her to see Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy), a pop psychologist who argues that the problem is all in Elizabeth's head.
Soon, though, Matthew and Elizabeth begin to notice that people all over the city are changing subtly and inexplicably. When their friend Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum) and his wife Nancy (Veronica Cartwright) find a lifeless, half-formed doppelganger covered with plant fibers in the mud baths they own and operate, the group of friends finally begins to understand that a sinister transformation is sweeping their city.
Topic: “Rooted in Science: How we understood plant sentience in the 1970s versus today”
In the early 1970s, a plant craze spread in popular culture. It was a transformative period in botanical research as scientists actively pushed the boundaries of how plants respond to the world around them. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) came out on the heels of the best-selling book The Secret Life of Plants, which challenged conventional science and blurred the line between science and pseudoscience, ultimately contributing to a decades-long pause in research on plant sensing and behavior. Fifty years later, this talk revisits that history and highlights how new research is updating and refining our understanding of the science behind plant sentience.
Speaker: Jenny VanWyk, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Global Change, Hampshire College
Jenny VanWyk is a community ecologist and botanist. Her research addresses factors that govern community dynamics for native bee populations, including disease transmission, plant-pollinator networks, environmental stressors, and community response to human disturbances. Her research focuses on how plant and insect traits mediate species interactions, and how these interactions — both mutualistic and antagonistic — affect population dynamics and broader ecological outcomes. Jenny obtained her PhD in Ecology at UC Davis and completed her postdoctoral work at UMass Amherst. In her spare time, she grows plants that take over her greenhouse and gardens at home.
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Event Venue
28 Amity St, Amherst, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01002
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