CANE TOADS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 155

of accessing or illuminating wider human social issues informs Lewis's practice as
a filmmaker. At every stage, knowledge pertaining to the toad is utilised as a
microcosm through which wider human social issues can be read.
A similar strategy is at the heart of Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010). As the first
Australian feature film produced in 3D, it benefits from two decades of evolution
in film technologies and the higher production values enabled by an exponentially
larger budget. Beyond the spectacular aesthetics of HD cinematography and the
visual poetics of 3D, it shares many similarities with the first film. A number of the
original characters even appear again. Monica Krause, now grown up, reflects on
the passing of Dairy Queen; Dr Glen Ingram returns to discuss the toad's anatomy
and breeding cycle; Dr Mike Freeland riffs on the ways in which the toad has
exceeded expectations, travelling faster and multiplying more rapidly than he
predicted in the first film; while Tip Byrne, the archetypical angry farmer reappears,
much older and wizened, to quip, 'They don't belong here at all—send them back
to Hawaii—send them back over there to Barack Obama', updating his knowing
racism and nationalism to a contemporary socio-political context. In the latest film,
the 'deep north' of Queensland is transposed to the 'deep centre' and west of
Australia, where a cast of Territorians are now battling or simply observing the
toad's journey into Western Australia. Entrepreneurs have found other uses for the
toad, processing its body as a resource for consumer products like handbags,
Chinese medicines and fertiliser. A travelling 'Toad Show' of stuffed toads proved
unpopular with Queenslanders, but a giant toad statue, erected in the Queensland
town of Sarina, has become a tourist attraction.
One of the most distinctive features of Lewis's filmmaking practice is his use of
humour. In Cane Toads: An Unnatural History he pioneered the approach of using
humour as a means of subverting the wildlife genre and satirising the parade of dry
experts that are usually wheeled out to offer their opinions in science docu-
mentaries. His films contain all of the usual ingredients of wildlife documentary,
such as amplexus (or the toad's sexual habits), its reproductive cycle, its evolutionary
adaptations, its omnivorous eating habits and its ecological interactions. But to
these, Lewis added a range of stylistic effects—including devices borrowed from
thriller, alien and horror films—which he uses to parody the familiar clichés of the
wildlife genre. For example, in Cane Toads: An Unnatural History the toad's mating
ritual is depicted through a reconstruction of a published account of a cane toad
observed mating with a dead toad, a victim of road kill. In another scene, designed
to send up the traditional predator-captures-its-prey sequence, a white mouse
gingerly picks its way through a group of cane toads as a faux Hitchcockian
soundtrack amplifies the tension. There is even a pastiche of Hitchcock's famous
shower scene from Psycho , in which a man singing in the shower pulls back the
curtain to reveal a large toad eyeing him from a distance. This scene, in particular,
was intended as a comment on the sensationalised media coverage that cane toads
usually receive, peppered with language designed to inspire anxiety and terror
(Lewis, 2010: 23). Similar devices are deployed in Cane Toads: The Conquest . In
particular, Lewis parodies the Disneyified vision of nature by depicting the act of