The above title isn’t a reference to the 1972 John Waters film Pink Flamingos.
Instead, the title comes from a long-ago discussion, when I was fifteen.
I was walking (in a Michigan neighborhood) with a German foreign exchange student.
We passed by a front yard bedecked with pink flamingo* lawn ornaments, when my new friend commented that this was the way she expected all American homes to look.
I got it.
She expected all Americans to be vulgar, ignorant and low-class.
It’s just the way Europeans thought of the U.S.A.
(I tried not to take it personally.)
This memorandum compares the 2006 English translation of the German eco-thriller The Swarm, to the 8-part mini-series (based on the novel), which aired on European TV in March of 2023, and in the U.S. on CW (sadly, the lowest-rated American network).
A future memorandum will deal with science-fiction novels that deal with humankind’s relationship with nature, and the oceans.
The Swarm deals with humanity destroying the oceans—dumping radioactive and industrial waste; laying down deep sea cables with magnetic fields (that interfere with the homing instincts of salmon and eels); and laying waste to ecosystems and coral reefs.
As the result of this activity, entities in the oceans begin to fight back.
Although the novel is science-fiction, and not a scientific book, most critics say The Swarm presents marine biology and geology very accurately.
The Swarm novel sold over 4.5 million copies and has been translated into 18 languages.
The mini-series has an international cast, and the mini-series was the most expensive German TV show ever made.
There’s also a popular strategy board game, based on the novel, in which each player sends scientists to confront the ecological catastrophes.
Frank Schätzing, creator of the novel, is of the same generation as the German exchange student I knew in the late 1960s.
In his novel, the U.S. President talks about the “ridiculous little countries” of the U.N., and says that “God’s still holding His protective hand over the West.”
CIA Deputy Director Jack Vanderbilt wears “a bright yellow T-shirt bearing the words ‘Kiss me, I’m a Prince,’ stretched over his expansive belly,” when he greets a team of scientists.
The U.S. Defense Secretary arrogantly says to the President: “We are the free world. Europe is part of the American free world.”
(Most of the American government officials featured in the novel are hyper-nationalistic jerks.)
While the basic plots are the same, scientists versus a higher intelligence—that’s existed in the oceans for millions of years—a lot of material couldn’t be used from the 881-page novel.
Some characters (Norwegian biologist Sigur Johanson, American astrophysicist Samantha Crowe, and Canadian biologist Leon Anawak) carry over from the novel, but they’re altered, both in appearance (age and ethnicity) and in personality.
New characters were created, and the novel’s main American villains—General Judith Li, and CIA Deputy Director Jack Vanderbilt—are completely erased from the mini-series plot (probably, because of misguided hopes for reaching the “American market.”)
At the beginnings of both versions of The Swarm, we’re introduced to several scientists as they begin to realize that a superior intelligence exists deep in the oceans, and is moving against humanity.
Whales overturn ships, and millions of white eyeless crabs invade the shorelines.
A species of marine worm (with teeth) destabilizes the continental shelf, causing a tsunami that kills millions in Northern Europe.
Eventually, some of the scientists are united on a big ship, and attempt to communicate with the intelligence (named the Yrr by Dr. Johanson).
In the novel, the scientists unite on a gigantic U.S. Navy ship.
In the mini-series, a Japanese industrialist finances the mission.
Despite calling out many countries (including Germany) for their non-ecological methods, the novelist does focus, in a few instances, on American actions.
According to one section on the Vietnam War dolphin experiments, the U.S. Navy created a:
Swimmer Nullification Program. . .Those animals were trained to tug at divers’ masks and flippers and disconnect their air-supply. . . The navy strapped hypodermic needles to their beaks and the dolphins were ordered to ram the divers. . . Our animals killed over forty Vietcong and two of our own guys by mistake.
While I’ve read that the U.S. Navy did use dolphins to blow up ships during the Vietnam War, the idea of dolphins being turned into “killing machines” is a bit hard to accept.
Another sequence deals with the U.S. Navy Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), and how its’ brain-damaging sonar makes whales beach themselves.
(“Evidently the Americans couldn’t pass up on the opportunity of putting 80% of the world’s oceans under surveillance,” says a Canadian character in the novel.)
However, the U.S. already has plenty to feel guilty about in terms of polluting the oceans with DDT, nuclear waste, and chemicals (in case you’ve never read Rachel Carson’s 1962 science book Silent Spring).
In the novel, the first “physical” interaction with the Yrr occurs when dolphins return to the ship hanger with Yrr and murderous orcas.
Alicia Delaware, and other crew members, die gruesomely, and she’s taken over zombie-style.
Mini-series episode 7 is far less violent than the novel.
In it, after oceanographer Charlie Wagner (Leonie Benesch) and a robotics expert return to the ship in a submersible, they unknowingly bring the Yrr along.
Later, Alicia Delaware (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) is alone in the hanger, when she spots a strange glowing form in the water.
The Yrr hijack her nervous system (just as it took over sperm whales, orcas, lobsters, and crabs).
Delaware is the Yrr’s first human experiment, and rather than becoming a zombie, she goes into a coma.
The final chapters of the novel involve the heroes fighting (action-movie style) with part of the U.S. Government.
Aware that destruction of the Yrr might end in earth’s extinction, the scientists hope for co-existence.
However, the American officials just want to eradicate the Yrr. . . no matter the consequences!
(In an attempt to implement their plan, Li and Vanderbilt kill many of the hero-scientists.)
The novel ends with the big ship going down, and journalist Karen Weaver traveling down 3,466 meters in a submersible and dropping off a corpse (full of pheromones), for the Yrr to examine.
Only a few scientists and crew members survive the sinking.
Canadian biologist Leon Anawak rescues Karen Weaver from the water in a helicopter.
A year-later, an epilogue reveals that the nations of the earth are slowly recovering from the tsunamis and the Yrr-created pathogens.
We don’t learn much about the Yrr, but they do give surface creatures a reprieve.
However, at the point that the novel ends, humankind has gone into in a deep funk over its’ “loss of primacy,” and armed conflicts are spreading across the globe.
The mini-series ending is not quite as dark as the end of the novel.
Episode 8 concludes with oceanographer Charlie Wagner traveling deep in the submersible (to show “good faith” to the Yrr?), communing with them/it, and (strangely) washing up alive on shore.
Even a comatose Alicia Delaware seems to survive!
Since the last episode was listed as a season finale, and not a series finale, there’s the possibility of a second season.
Putting The Swarm into context, it’s in the tradition of eco-thrillers. The 1968 Japanese film Genocide, also released as War of the Insects, tells of insects attacking humanity because of humanity's nuclear threat.
(Brave scientists battle the unreasoning American military in that film, as well.)
In 1972’s Frogs, reptiles, insects and amphibians stalk rich patriarch Jason Crockett after he uses poisons against creatures on his estate.
In Phase IV, ants (taken over by a superior intelligence from outer space) wage war against humankind in the American desert.
*According to the Wikipedia article on pink flamingos, some U.S. homeowner associations forbid the placement of these lawn ornaments because they lower real estate values.
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