Friday, March 13, 2015

Burros? Icky? Apes? Maple Street? Monsters?

How do the thematic elements(i.e.- humans' destruction, reversal of the expected, inferiority, etc...) presented in The Planet Of The Apes movie make us contemplate and wrestle with the concept of xenophobia? Does it pertain to any of the Science Fiction we have read? Use quotations from the movie and texts to support your claims. Respond to this blog by 2:30p.m. on Mon., March 16th.

21 comments:

  1. Planet Of The Apes represents xenophobia that is not created by man but directed towards them. This xenophobia is more personal because the apes fear of humans exaggerates our bad qualities. This movie uses fear created by another species to bring forth horrible qualities that man harbors. These qualities such as distrust and hate of others can potentially destroy us which is ultimately the message of Planet of the Apes. The Silk and The Song is similar to planet of the apes because it also demonstrates xenophobia directed towards humanity. Both stories ensure that the concept of xenophobia is recognized and felt because sympathy is felt for the humans impacted by it.

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  2. The thematic elements presented in Planet Of The Apes shows that humans fear others as much as others fear humans. The King Of The Beasts shows two beings who are nervous of bringing a human to life. "The visitor stepped sharply back from the tank. He said, 'Then it must be… But you wouldn't dare!' The biologist nodded. 'Yes. It’s a man.'"

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  3. I have always thought that post apocalyptic and/or role reversal or even just changing the cast to another race over all are great ideas. I tend to live in my head and in the moment so thinking about these things doesn't really make me question anything nor does it scare me at all.

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  4. Planet of the Apes brings an interesting perspective to the literary table in regards to xenophobia; from the beginning of the film we are led to believe that it is taking place on an Earth-like alien planet where roles are reversed in the evolutionary order, but at the end it turns out that the movie was taking place on Earth itself. I think this is unsettling for humans because it doesn't make sense to us when we compare it to our current scientific knowledge.

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  5. the xenophobia presented in the movie planet of the apes makes us consider and ponder a new definition of xenophobia. the reversal of who is in charge and why make the main cherecter, charlton heston wrestle with the fear and the hate of the unknown. for instance, when the crew of men first incounter other human beings, they quickley are at ease because they assume they still rule the world. but when the apes come into controll, charlton finds he hates the apes because he doenst understand why they are in charge.

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  6. The thematic elements shown in Planet of The Apes make us heavily contemplate how xenophobia could affect our own lives. The film represents a world where humans are not even close to being a dominant species, something that is a very scary thought to many humans. This ties in with xenophobia in the fact of an uprising, and another species overpowering us beyond our control. This would cause a rational fear of the foreign, and also in my definition of xenophobia, a fear of change. This is extremely similar to King of The Beasts where the biologist announces they are regrowing a man, sending the visitor into panic. This relates because theme of another type of creature becoming dominant over mankind stays standing. The thought of mankind being any "lower on the food chain" than the top is frightening and irrational to all, even though that is just due to xenophobia when it really shouldn't be too big of a deal.

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  7. the planet of the apes shows us that xenophobia is not a human invention, but rather an idea that all things live by. when something is confronted with an idea that it doesnt understand that conlficts with its way of life, it will try to destroy or remove the foreign idea, to preserve its original way of life. we see this concept in Muse, where the father tries to kill icky to save his son, even though he doesnt have a full understanding of him, and just wants his life to go back to normal. All of the stories we have read, enforce the idea of xenophobia and how it effects all things.

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  8. The element of xenophobia is very very strong and dominate in the film the planet of the apes. The main characters, the humans, are the whole time in the story are treated as savage beasts and are locked in cages and kept away from the apes in society. Now when some escape it turns to chaos and no one know what to do and they all freak out. No this shows xenophobia because the apes are just scared of what is not there type so therefore they want nothing to do with is

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  9. The thematic elements shown in The Planet Of The Apes is ape is higher class than man. The movie also denies that man is able to talk and do ape like things. The movie Planet Of The Apes pertains with The silk and the song as both human are enslaved.

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  10. Human destruction, reversal of the expected, and other themes that are shown throughout Planet Of The Apes express what it would be like to have the roles reversed. If we were considered "aliens", how would we be treated? How would we treat "aliens"? Probably not very well. We see that acceptance is not always present when it comes to the unknown throughout the film.

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  11. Especially the concept of inferiority found in The Planet of the Apes relates to xenophobia. The apes in the movie brand the humans that they find to be inferior to them. This notion that they have is driven from simply a piece of paper that was found by their orangutan leader, and then the outlook on people that he passed down due to what he found. The apes fear what they don't know, and based off of that proceed to house the humans like experiments and do tests on them. In Planet of the Apes, our expectations are reversed, as the concept of xenophobia is directed at us as a race. Rather than our fear of the unknown, it is the fear of the apes, and this layout exaggerates our shortcomings. This is found in multiple of the other stories that we read, such as The Silk and the Song, in which the human race is also dominated by another.

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  12. The Planet of the Apes allows us to see that human nature destroys things unknowingly. All of the stories that we have read depict humans to not be worthy enough and not able to be on their own without help or takeover from another species/planet. In The Muse, Leonard needed Icky in order to produce beautiful music and have the confidence to be on stage. In the Silk and the Song, the Hussirs control the humans and use them like animals. Most of these stories show human nature to be a bad thing, and eventually something that could destroy us leaving us useless. This all pertains to xenophobia because people are afraid of what we will become based on past events and our evolving technology. People are scared and they immediately point fingers on themselves, believing all humans are evil.

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  13. The Xenophobia that is presented is the future of mankind isn't going to be up to most of us. Its up to people like Obama, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jon Un, Xi Jinping, NATO, ISIS. Our World leaders and militant forces are disgracful, and at the moment mankind looks like its in a bit of a predicament, from the ignorant to the advantageous, we as a society are killing our selves, With some outside provocateurs.

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  14. Xenophobic is presented in POTA in the way of two opposing forces who refuse to compromise and the apes only can control the humans because they have powers, numbers. The inferior species is almost never given a voice or a chance to show who they truly are. This is also shown with Muse and the father killing Icky. "Can you replace anything Icky gave me? No, you can't!"

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  15. In planet of the apes, we see that xenophobia is more wide spread than we would believe. In a lot of the stories we read such as "The Silk and the Song" and "Muse" we see humans falling prey to xenophobia. But in "Planet" we see that this may not just be a human problem. That any form of intelligent life has the ability to fall prey to xenophobia.

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  16. I believe the role reversal and human brought destruction show in Planet of the Apes is relevant, even in todays society. It pushes the idea of xenophobia in that we as a society are afraid of what the future holds. In reality we dont know what the future holds an that brings a concept of reality to the fear we have.

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  17. The thematic elements in the Planet of the Apes brings up a new way of thinking about the movie. While watching it I knew that the planet had to be Earth due to evolution and that a different planet would have made the apes, or creatures, much different than humans had ever seen before. And the apes spoke english which means that they had been in contact with humans and learned from them. Knowing this about the story made me more calm about the situation even though the humans were still in danger and inferior. It never made me scared that the humans would die, but helped me understand what we do to animals now which is horrible.

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  18. Human destruction, reversal of the expected, and other themes that are shown throughout Planet Of The Apes express That humans fear that in the future we will be lower than animals and that they will be the dominant class on earth learning to speak and right as we do.

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  19. Planet of the Apes is a great contribution to the movies of science fiction. I believe this because the fact that the movie is able to take a concept such as animal treatings it shows that humans may feel they are not in wrong but the movie was able to show us that we may actually being doing a lot of harm to these animals and what not.

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  20. The various thematic elements in The Planet of the Apes directly relate to the ideas of xenophobia. When someone watches the movie, their instinct is to believe that it is a planet that isn't Earth. When the viewer sees the Statue of Liberty at the end of the movie, they realize that this is, in fact Earth. Having always been the number one race and having apes, something humans consider lesser than themselves, rule over them is traumatizing for Taylor. This plot is similar to Puppet Show, in which we don't understand the importance of the donkey until the very end. In both stories, the reader can relate the story to their life and the fact that creatures we really know very little about are things we see every day and ignore.

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  21. A concept of inferiority found in The Planet of the Apes relates to xenophobia. The apes in the movie label the humans that they find to be lesser than them. This idea that they have is driven from simply a piece of paper that was found by their leader, and the outlook on people that he passed down due to what he found. The apes fear what they don't know. In Planet of the Apes, our ideas are reversed, as the concept of xenophobia is directed at us as a race. Rather than our fear of the unknown, it is the fear of others.

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