Search - NOVA: Mystery of the Senses - Smell on DVD

Perfume, Cockroaches, Men, and More

Jeffery Mingo | Homewood, IL USA | 03/06/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Like the other installments I've seen from the Senses series, this shows how the brain works with or processes smell. The taste episode covered France and Latin America. The touch episode went to sub-Saharan Africa. This episode visited the Arab world.



As I expected, this episode compared our inferior sense of smell to the superior sense of dogs. However, it showed that cockroaches have strong senses of smell and the Jungian in me just did not need to see a jar containing cockroaches. I will just take scientists' word that they are impressive creatures, but I don't need to see it. In the installment on taste, it was emphasized that our taste helps us avoid poisons. I wish this work spoke about bad smells. Honestly, one great thing about smell is how it helps humans avoid flatulence and excrement.



As a series for public television, it danced around sexual matters. At one point, they film a Thor-like male athlete throwing a javelin. The phallic nature of the scene is not commented upon. The female narrator says men have stronger pheremones than women. She goes into a locker room shower area, positions herself in the middle of bare-chested men with towels on, and says, "Yup! I smell men." Ladies, rarely does every man in a male locker room have on a towel. This scene almost had camp value.



This was the first installment which almost implied that a sense can be inferior to another. It was subtly suggested that smell is not as important as sight and hearing. I appreciated this because the touch installment seemed overblown. With the taste episode, I wanted to eat afterward; with the touch episode, I still felt no need to touch a person or be touched. This episode was in-between: I did leave it thinking, "Maybe I should buy some more colognes.""