Monday, March 14, 2016

Burros? Icky? Apes? Monsters? ... Xenophobia?

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., Mar. 14th.

22 comments:

  1. Xenophobia shoes that humans are capable to judge without reserve based simply on our own biases. “Master race should be human” from the Puppet Show, or in Muse where it says “wait we got rid of it for you” the father talking about the slug that was dispatched. Sci-Fi will always exploit human fears, that is the beauty of that genre, that it makes us face ourselves.

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  2. The stories we read had showed that humans or the "Master Race" are able to judge the alien life form without any sympathetic thoughts. In "Puppet Master" Garvane is profusely judged for his grotesque appearance.

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  3. Especially in the story Muse, the slug, Icky, is killed because he is different. The men know that he is different and just expect the worst. Icky was not hurting anyone or hurting anything yet he was still punished and killed for being strange. This is a darker form of xenophobia and I hope that people take this story as a warning and a lesson.

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  4. I think that the concept of inferiority in Planet of the Apes puts into perspective how we treat other things and how we constantly believe that we, as humans, are superior to all. In a sense, Planet of the Apes showed humans being given "a taste of their own medicine" by treating them as modern humans would treat animals. This is also shown in The Silk and the Song. "'We have to find a way to force the Hussirs to accept humans as equals, not as animals'" (Fontenay).

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  5. In The Planet of the Apes, Cornelius reads a line from his sacred scrolls. "Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." The Apes have their own biases against the humans because of old things that the humans had done. It makes us contemplate xenophobia because it shows that maybe other animals have some kind of xenophobia towards humans, maybe xenophobia is something every species exhibits.

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  6. The inferiority of humans presented in The Planet Of The Apes helps us understand the concept of xenophobia because it changes our perspective from being the "master race" like Puppet Show, to being a slave, like in The Silk and The Song. ("All men look alike." - Planet of the Apes)

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  7. Within these stories, the element of Xenophobia shows that groups that are different from each other are easily able to judge each other. As seen in puppet show, "Horror came to Cherrybell mounted on a burro led by an ancient dirty and gray-bearded desert rat of a prospector who later gave the name of Dade Grant" (Brown). It shows that they barely knew him, yet they judged him based on what he looked like because he was different from them as a whole.

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  8. In the movie The Planet of the Apes Dr.Zaius was telling all the other apes that Taylor is evil and is not capable of being intelligent. Dr.Zaius knew that Taylor was an intelligent human being, but he denied it and wanted no one to see. Taylor was just different than all the other humans, and Dr.Zaius did not like the fact that he was smart because he was afraid of what Taylor could do.

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  9. Xenophobic elements show up when examples are present of human judgement based solely on previous prejudices. We have always seen horrid depictions of things different than us in popular culture and media, so it comes as no surprise that many authors describe humans as cold and unwelcoming to strange occurrences and beings in works of science fiction.

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  10. The role reversal of humans in Planet of the Apes shows humans in the place of animals, and exhibits how many creatures treat other species just because of their differences. This displays xenophobia because of the fear of the power of another creature, and the violence and treatment of that creature based on history. This relates to the Silk and the Song, because man was seen as livestock, and the Hussirs where inferior to the humans. Just like in Planet of the Apes, the leaders of the superior races didn't believe humans were capable of intelligence and just viewed them as animals. "Alan did not answer Blik, for it was forbidden for humans to talk in the Hussar languagae except in reply to direct questions." (131)

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  11. I think the concept of reversal roles in Planet of the Apes makes us "watchers' think of how we treat animals differently. Cornelius reads a line from his sacred scrolls stating, " Beware of the beast Man, he kills for sport or lust or greed." I think if we put this in the different perspective, we would think of the Apes differently. Some people fear things that look different like Icky, even though it made Lea feel better and made him happy, his father killed it because it was weird and un-natural.

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  12. The apes in “Planet,” as with humans in “Muse” are superior because they believe they are, essentially. Icky can’t speak or write or communicate with anyone else besides the person they are connected to, and the humans in the film can’t communicate at all. Apes became less primitive and seem to have learned from man’s mistakes while men did the opposite and became more primitive as a result--a sort of reverse-evolution for man, which relates in a way to “Maple Street.” The people acted out more on their fear and anger and self-preservation, which may have led to their downfall when in “Planet,” when their savagery had more control over them than logic and reasoning did. They acted out on their most basic, animalistic instincts and they destroyed each other as well as themselves.

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  13. Humans always find a way to destroy themselves. It's not a matter of if its just when. We are never content with what we have and we will always try to get more. This showed up on planet of the apes because the area where they found all of the ancient human artifacts obviously used to be a striving society. My theory is that the humans got greedy and that's why they eventually got destroyed. All in all, humans tend to destroy themselves all the time and you can see that in planet of the apes and also many of the stories that we read

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  14. In Planet of the Apes, the apes treat humans as completely lesser beings, on the assumption that apes are smarter. When a more intelligent human is revealed to them, a perfect example of xenophobia becomes apparant. The apes go as far as to remove one of the intelligent humans ability to speak via surgery, and enslave another, entirely out of fear of the unknown, and what the humans may be capable of. Similarly, in Muse, the main characters father destroys Icky, saying "we got rid of it for you", when Icky was no threat.

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  15. Xenophobia really presents the thematic idea of things destroying humans or humans destroying themselves. This is greatly shown in Planet of the Apes. Apes have gone to extremes to wiping out humans and that is not a good thing. This idea is also shown with humans destroying themselves in the story “Random Sample”. At the end, the little girl who has been evil to the extraterrestrials or aliens, end up dooming the humans to a horrible end “Look at the sun. Look at it. It’s spreading out over the whole sky. It’s burning up the city”.

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  16. Xenophobia is presented in an extreme way in Plant of the Apes by showing the ultimate human fear; suppression. For most of humans life of Earth we have been the dominant species, because we have the ability to suppress other creatures. In Planet of the Apes humans are the suppressed species and the Apes are in complete control. When the apes say they are giving the humans "a taste of their own medicine" it shows that humans should not have such an ego about them due to their dominance, but should be more grateful for their intelligence.

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  17. In "Planet of the Apes", Dr Zaius says, "You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself." I think this is representative of how humans are viewed in this movie and in the stories we read. They are destructive and different so they apes fear them so some degree. This shows a reversal of xenophobia. In the short story, "Random Sample". The aliens are quick to make judgments about man based on the violent tendencies of two young children. Xenophobia it seems, stems from small examples of a society and then rules further judgments prohibiting interaction with what is different.

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  18. “Planet of the Apes” shows that we are quick to judge just like the apes, if a monkey came to us and tried to change what we believe in now that we are the most intelligent beings than be would take it as a joke. Even with a lot of proof it would be hard to change our reality. Just like when people started to question the church, people were quick to oust them from making outlandish claims. But what makes the church back in the 1700s better than everyone else? Nothing, they just came to conclusion that they have god on their side. A God that has created all being equal expect humans. Why? Because we say so. And with this logic is what created slaves, the idea that the difference was lower. And is what was shown in Planet of the Apes as the more superior race could not convince themselves that they were less intelligent or even equal to what they believe was lower. This is xenophobia in the way that the so called superior people can come to think as equals to outsiders. Especially when their egos are as big as the humans.

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  19. The film comments on a variety of complex social conditions. As an outsider, Taylor is exposed to the issues of forbidden knowledge, power, and xenophobia for the first time with a different perspective. The films main commentary is that the freedom of knowledge and action are obviously the inevitable future of any intelligent species. The film, however, questions whether these freedoms are a good thing at all, or if they ultimately lead to destruction.

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  20. The film comments on a variety of complex social conditions. As an outsider, Taylor is exposed to the issues of forbidden knowledge, power, and xenophobia for the first time with a different perspective. The films main commentary is that the freedom of knowledge and action are obviously the inevitable future of any intelligent species. The film, however, questions whether these freedoms are a good thing at all, or if they ultimately lead to destruction.

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  21. In Planet of the Apes apes are the dominate creature in the movie rather then humans. In the movie the forbidden land is a large area of land that has been destroyed and is unlivable by the humans. I don't think the apes fear of the humans was wrong. As for the humans had destroyed their land. In the short story "Random Sample" aliens come to visit Earth and judge the human race on these two little kids who joke with the aliens. In the end the aliens don't like this greeting and start to destroy the them. I think that the aliens judgment of the human race as a whole based off two kids wasn't right but the human race is destructive.

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  22. In the short story Random Sample, it depicts a little girl sharing an other worldly experience with her brother after showing how mean and nasty she is. After explaining her experience there is a bright light. This shows xenophobia by showing the reactions by the otherworldly beings doing the same thing the little girl was doing to the ants. The otherworldly beings were afraid all Humans were like this little girl and wanted to stop them before they could destroy their own world and other worlds. In the story Muse, the main character’s father feared Icky because of how different the slug was and how the father thought it destroyed his son. The father told his son “we’re only trying to help you” trying to hide the fear he has for Icky. In the film The Planet of the Apes, the main character, Taylor experienced what animals experience in the present day. He got experimented on and treated like animal and humiliated by being walked on a leash around the apes’ village. “You know how I was humiliated, by all of you? You led me around one a leash!” “That’s different, we (the apes) thought you were inferior.”

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