A few years ago I was going through a $5 bin of DVDs at Walmart when I found one of my favorite childhood films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. I bought it on a whim, excited to watch a movie I hadn't seen in years, hoping that it had retained its watchability, though I wasn't optimistic. Luckily I loved every moment of it. I loved the action, impressed with the men in the costumes skateboarding and fighting believably, and I even loved the campy humor and terrible puns. But the point of this article isn't to justify my almost biannual screening of this movie, it is to talk about the message in this movie that surprised me while watching it for the first time as an adult.
We know that in the mythology of the Ninja Turtles, four baby turtles were exposed to a green ooze that spilled into the sewer, mutating them into half human half turtle organisms. A man nick-named Splinter, was also exposed to the ooze, and he himself was mutated into a huge sewer rat. This is a kid’s movie, and they could have glossed over the details about their creation, but instead the movie makers decide to make their mutated nature the main message of the movie. A cautionary tale about genetic modification.
When I watched Ninja Turtles, I had recently read several fascinating articles about a genetic modification experiment gone wrong. The French call it the “Killer Algae” (Johnson), and the website where I originally found the article calls it “The Mutant Killer Seaweed of Doom” (Solensky). Either way, it is not a B-Movie villain from the 30s, but a genetically modified seaweed developed in Germany. This mutant killer seaweed known as Caulerpa taxifolia. is known for its large green fern like fronds, a toxin it releases that prevents fish from eating it, and it growing an average of three inches per day. It was exactly what the aquarium needed, and was immediately used in all of the tanks. It seemed perfect.
But all that needed to happen to ruin everything, was for a piece of the plant the size of a fingernail getting flushed down the toilet to create the thousands of acres of Caulerpa fields that now exist on the floor of the Mediterranean Ocean (Johnson). It grows so quickly, that before anyone could do anything about it, it had grown over other plants, and had effectively taken over thousands of acres of the ocean. Because of the degrading effect this seaweed has had on tourism through scuba diving, the fishing industry, and natural wildlife in the Mediterranean, when pieces appeared off the San Diego coast the mutant seaweed was met with being covered in tarps and then chlorinated to achieve total destruction. This incident not only proves how little we know about genetic modification, but shows the kind of impact one failure can have on the environment, the kind of failure that results in the destruction of many plants and animals on the seafloor.
With this article fresh on my mind, imagine my surprise at the message this children’s movie told. The movie concentrates on the problems caused by a company called TGRI, or Techno Global Research Industries, and how in an effort to clean up their public image, they are cleaning up the sites where they dumped an ooze known for genetically modifying organisms. The huge corporate disposal attracts the attention of master Splinter who raised the turtles and trained them to be ninjas, but the ooze also attracts their enemies.
In my research for this article, I found an article in an African business magazine where Stuart Price wrote about the dangers of GM crops, in it he writes about the unpredictability of genetic modification. He says that many times, the companies that produce these GM crops make it seem like they know exactly what they are doing, when in reality in the process of genetically modifying an organism, “you get lots of weird and wonderful versions. These are normally just thrown out and ignored” (Price 16).
In the Ninja Turtles, the Shredder (the main bad guy and arch nemesis of the Turtles), uses the mutating ooze to transform a wolf and snapping turtle into huge monsters. His intention is to use these monsters to draw out the Turtles and destroy them. Unfortunately he realizes that the monsters are babies and he wants to toss them aside, thinking them useless, much like many failed genetic modification experiments that Price mentions. It isn't until he sees the destruction they can still cause (witnessing them knock down telephone poles and turn over cars), that he begins to see their value.
Stuart Price explains in the article already referenced, about what the dangers of genetic modification could be, “...GM crops have a much higher probability of containing mutations of the genome....These may have consequences, such as the production of toxins, which could take years to manifest themselves as harmful to consumers” (16). The important thing we need to remember about the introduction of a GM organism into the environment is that there is no going back. Once those genetic properties are outside of the lab, their effects will be felt for generations (16).
My love for the Ninja Turtles has never faltered. I follow the new animated series on Nickelodeon, have and regularly watch several of their movies, and even have a Ninja Turtles LEGO set that I display in my bedroom. For all of the early nineties awesomeness, and awesome terribleness (a brief cameo by Vanilla Ice), this movie and this franchise in general isn’t trying to be anything it’s not; lots of fun and lots of action. But we can learn something from this movie, and should listen to the message it contains, and remember that while the benefits of the genetic modification of organisms are vast (the Ninja Turtles definitely being a value to justice in New York), the side effects which will certainly happen, could undo all of that.
Johnson, Christina S. "KILLER ALGAE FOUND!!" California Sea Grant Home. University of
California, San Diego, 12 May 2002. Web. 30 May 2011.
Solensky, Richard. "Mutant Killer Seaweed of Doom." Damn Interesting. Alan Bellows, 25 Jan.
2008. Web. 25 May 2011.
Stuart Price. "Danger! The hidden perils of GM crops. " African Business, 1 Dec. 2004:
Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 30 May. 2011.
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