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.
These words are from the sacred scrolls of the apes, the
intelligent and civilized simians who rule the earth in the distant future
prophesied by the 1968 film Planet of the Apes. The passage is
striking as a stern condemnation of humanity and its perpetually evil ways. In
unmistakably religious tones, it paints "the beast Man" as
irredeemably wicked and perverse; the only way to deal with him is, in essence,
to avoid him at all costs.
Of course, in reality, these words were penned by human
beings, who are their own harshest critics, and there is no way we can avoid
ourselves. As Kant said, "Out of the crooked
timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." This is a
sobering perspective that would ultimately give the lie to all dreams of human
progress, for we can never escape what we are, and what we are includes all of
the darkness within. According to the tragic vision of human nature that has
traditionally dominated Western thought, that darkness can never be eradicated
by social or political action nor by the application of science and technology
(at least not without, as has often been argued, taking away something
fundamental from our very humanity, such as free will).
When I was a boy, Planet of the Apes was
one of my favorite movies. Back then, of course, I had little to no
understanding of the film's themes; I just enjoyed it, as I did many another
science fiction movie, as a spectacle of strangeness and wonder (which it very
much is). I read the novel it was based on (by the French author Pierre Boulle)
just once, when I was in about the second grade, but I still remember it vividly.
The book differs from the movie in several significant ways, and, although it
is probably, as might be expected, a more sophisticated work than the movie, I
believe that the film approaches the theme of the worth of humanity in its own
distinctive way, and, at least by Hollywood standards, with a fair degree of
subtlety and poignance.
One of the sections of Boulle's book that has
especially haunted me is an extended scene involving ape scientists who are
performing psychological experiments on the bestial humans of their planet. The
apes have figured out how, by way of hypnotic regression, to get the erstwhile
dumb, brute human beings to speak—not in their own voices, however, but in the
voices of their long-dead forebears—and thereby to elicit a series of
narratives, culled from the depths of the humans' unconscious ancestral
memory, about the gradual eclipsing of the former human civilization by the
apes. This scene is not only wondrously eerie, because of the mechanism of
having people who are long dead speak through their living, not to mention mute
and unintelligent, descendants (a feat of channeling that is accomplished by
scientific means!); it is also haunting because of the stories that are told,
and the lost history that is revealed, by the voices of the ancient humans.
Unlike the movie series, which portrayed the
apes' conquest and the humans' downfall as happening rather suddenly and
dramatically, the parallel process in the novel is revealed to have been much
more gradual and mysterious. For whatever reason, the humans are undergoing a
process of devolution while the apes are rapidly evolving their capabilities of
thought and language. Eventually the apes begin to display increasingly defiant
and ominous behavior toward their human masters, who are simultaneously less
and less able to function to their full human capacities. Eventually, the apes
are the masters, the humans their servants. When shown in this way (a manner
which is, to be sure, better suited to a novel than a Hollywood movie), the
ascent of the apes and corresponding descent of humanity become much more
chilling and somehow more believable.
Boulle's novel has been described as a sort of
space age variation of Gulliver's Travels, and, like Swift's
classic novel, uses its fantastical setting and situation to satirize the human
race. It can justly be said that, in some sense at least, both novels are
misanthropic. The main point of each is not to provide mere escapist fantasy
adventure, but to hold the human race up to ridicule and mockery, to deflate
our pretensions and vain hopes, to condemn our flaws and failings, and to keep
us humble. The movie does not eschew satire, but it often expresses it much
more broadly, one might even say in a dumbed down way: for instance, when the
three apes visually enact the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"
motif; the "human see, human do" joke; etc. Of course, so much is to
be expected in a major Hollywood motion picture. However, the movie does
something else with Boulle's premise, something that might at first glance
appear to be a mere concession to popular taste and sentiment, but which is
actually quite nuanced, moving, and profound. The film almost seems to reverse
the polarity of Boulle's novel and thereby turn Planet of the Apes from
a misanthropic satire into a tragic and ultimately deeply humanistic morality
play.
***
Colonel George Taylor (Charlton Heston) is the
protagonist in this drama, the U.S. astronaut who finds himself on a planet
where intelligent apes rule and humans are mere beasts. Taylor is himself a
misanthrope, but the bizarre situation in which he finds himself ends up
turning him into an unlikely defender and advocate of the human race. It is
this complex and ambiguous attitude toward humanity (particularly as
exemplified by Taylor) that gives the film its distinctive philosophical cast
and a large part of its dramatic power.
At the beginning of the picture, we see Taylor
aboard his spaceship, recording his final thoughts before entering hibernation
on the far voyage across interstellar space. He says:
This much is probably true - the men who sent us on this
journey are long since dead and gone. You who are reading me now are a
different breed - I hope a better one. I leave the 20th century with no
regrets. ... Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious
paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his
neighbor's children starving?
Later, after the astronauts have arrived on the titular
planet (but before they have discovered the nature of its civilization), Taylor
says to one of his more idealistic companions: "I'm
a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking that
somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to
be."
This sardonic statement concisely expresses
Taylor's misanthropy, a rebuttal to the humanistic notion that man is the
pinnacle of creation. It recalls Nietzsche's statement in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, with regard to his concept of the Übermensch (Overman or
Superman), that "Man is something to be surpassed." However, as with
Nietzsche, Taylor's apparent antihumanism is conjoined with a strange sort of
idealism—the longing for a being that is better than man, that succeeds where
humanity fails. While Nietzsche saw this being, the Overman, realized in the future
history of human evolution, Taylor seems to believe that such a superior being
must already exist somewhere in the universe. His statement implies a belief
that the universe would be mysteriously incomplete, not to mention
disappointingly lacking, if in fact humanity proved to be the highest and most
advanced creature it had produced, considering all that humanity leaves to be
desired.
Shortly after their arrival in this strange
new world, the astronauts stumble upon the seemingly Edenic existence of the
primitive humans who dwell in the planet's forests. They are unimpressed by
their uncivilized human counterparts. Taylor quips, "If this is the best
they've got around here, in six months we'll be running this planet."
Of course, Taylor goes on to discover a
civilization on the new planet—one that is certainly different from man, but
not necessarily better. To his shock, this civilization consists of apes.
Boulle's device of casting apes as intelligent and humans as beasts is in
itself a bitterly antihumanist conceit, upending as it does the entire notion
that humanity is inherently superior to other animals. In the context of
humanity's age-old pride of place in the cosmos, this inversion feels to us
both humiliating and perverse. To think! That the "monkeys" would be
our masters! That we would be their pets, their zoo animals,
and their unwilling scientific research subjects!
And yet, this outrage to human pride is,
incomprehensibly, the actual state of affairs on the planet of the apes. Almost
immediately on the heels of this bewildering and disturbing discovery, Taylor
is wounded by gunshot and captured by the apes, then brought into captivity. To
make matters even worse, due to his injury he cannot speak and therefore cannot
prove to his ape captors that he is in fact an intelligent and articulate
being. He must endure being treated in the inhumane and undignified way in
which we ourselves often treat animals, and is unable even to protest.
Eventually Taylor recovers his voice (in one
of the film's most memorable moments: "Take your stinking paws off me, you
damned dirty ape!"), and comes to be regarded as a freak of nature by the
apes. Ironically, his cause is not helped by the fact that the apes, as
exemplified by the learned orangutan Dr. Zaius, seem to share Taylor's own
misanthropy: "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."
What did Taylor expect? That the apes would
regard humankind much more favorably than he himself does? It is when he faces
antihumanist attitudes from intelligent nonhumans that Taylor's heart begins,
almost of necessity, to change. In this "upside down" world, he finds
himself the lone voice capable of defending what our humanists once called the
Dignity of Man against the withering contempt of the apes who believe
themselves infinitely superior to us. The fact that the apes regard humankind
as essentially worthless causes Taylor to appreciate and to defend what worth
we may possess in spite of it all.
He accomplishes this, at times, by less than
noble means. After making a journey to the wasteland known as the Forbidden
Zone, Taylor ties up Dr. Zaius in order to facilitate his own escape. The ape
most sympathetic to Taylor, the female chimpanzee Dr. Zira, cries out,
"Taylor! Don't treat him that way!"
Taylor: Why not?
Zira: It's humiliating!
Taylor: The way you humiliated me? All of you? You led
me around on a leash!
Cornelius: That was different. We thought you were inferior.
Taylor: Now you know better.
But the film is far from being a
simplistic cheerleader for humanity. Its pessimistic vision does not champion
the liberal Enlightenment faith in human progress—a faith which has been seen
by some historians as being based to a large degree on assumptions inherited
from Christianity. Instead, Planet of the Apes echoes another,
much less sanguine heritage of the West's Christian tradition: the concepts of
original sin and the Fall of Man. At one point Zaius remarks: "The
Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages
ago."
There is no need here to describe the film's ending,
one of the most iconic scenes in movie history, and I would not spoil it for
those who have not seen it. Because of its familiarity, it is difficult for
most of us to register the full shock of it, but the final visual
revelation, its unforgettable image of ultimate ruin and loss, remains
powerful and chilling. It is commonplace to make fun of the dramatic final
lines shouted by a distraught Charlton Heston, but in the context of the
picture, seeing not Heston but a broken Col. Taylor, this utterance is nothing
less than deeply tragic. They are words of heartrending despair, spoken by a
shattered, uncomprehending, and, in the moment, barely articulate human being:
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all
to hell!
The film's tragedy lies in the fact that the
human race, by its actions, has justified the apes'—and Taylor's—misanthropy.
They have betrayed Taylor's would-be defense of humanity and proven themselves
worthy of the apes' condemnation and derision. And yet, as with all true
tragedy, humankind is shown to be noble even in its weakness and its
downfall—even in its moral failings. It is tragic precisely because something
very great has been lost; it grieves us to know that we failed so
completely, so terribly, because we know we could have done better. In our
tragic fall, we see not only our failure but our nobility and our promise.
***
When I watched Planet of the Apes as
a child, as I said, I simply enjoyed the imaginative wonder of it. Even after
many repeat viewings, it remains just as strange a film to me today. It is
strange, however, not only in the same fantastical ways I appreciated as a boy,
but also now in new ways that are related to its theme. From my distant but
still remarkably clear memory of the novel, I would say that the book seems to
leave us simply with the bleakly pessimistic impression that the human race is
not all that important in the grand scheme of things—that we may (and
ultimately will) be easily and carelessly superseded by other species. It is a
message befitting the book's bitterly satiric misanthropy.
In the film, however, I sense a more complex,
more tantalizing vision. Taylor may be a misanthrope, but he is, in his own
words, a seeker. He seeks something better than man. He hardly finds it on the
planet of the apes, for the apes' society exhibits many of the same follies and
foibles as our own—it is, in fact, a mirror of our own. The shifting, silently
mesmerizing cosmic lights seen at the beginning of the picture and the sleekly
futuristic spaceship in which the astronauts traverse the stars suggest the
wonder and mystery of the cosmos and the hopefulness and courage of human
exploration, expectations which are profoundly disappointed by the desolate and
forbidding landscape of the world upon which the astronauts arrive and by
Taylor's harrowing and dehumanizing escapades among the hostile ape society.
This is a bold exploratory reach for the stars that proves entirely futile and
demoralizing. It is an expedition of adventurous discovery that ends in total
waste and utter defeat. Zaius's response to Taylor's desire to venture further
into the Forbidden Zone may very well apply to the astronauts' original mission
to explore the unknown universe:
Taylor: There's got to be an answer.
Zaius: Don't look for it, Taylor. You may not
like what you find.
It is a statement that seems to underscore the
inherent risk involved in any type of exploration or discovery, any quest for
knowledge. If we seek truth, we just may find it—whether we like it or not. We
may discover that the world is not as welcoming to us as we had thought, that
the universe is indifferent to our highest human aspirations and ideals. We may
discover deeply unhappy truths about ourselves.
At the end, Taylor's quest—his search for
"something better than man"—remains unfulfilled. Stranded on the
planet of the apes, he has no hope of ever finding what he seeks, his mission a
dismal failure, leaving him alone in the universe, in possession only of the
most bleak and bitter of truths. Perhaps he has found wisdom. But at such
cost.
And yet, I remain haunted by Taylor's words,
by his almost spiritual quest (indeed, as he has no evidence of any such
superior creature existing in the universe, it can only be a matter of faith
that such a being might in fact exist; and it may also be considered spiritual
in the sense that it is an aspiration or desire of his soul). He may not have
found the object of his vision, but we are left with the tantalizing
possibility raised by the vision itself—what if, somewhere out there, there
really is something better than us? What if the universe really has produced a
creature more noble and pure—everything that we aspire to be, but never seem
able to become? To me, there is a profound sense of longing and emptiness at
the heart of the picture. The desolation of the landscape stands as symbol of
that unfulfilled cosmic yearning, while the shimmering silence of the stars
beckons mysteriously toward the unknown object of that longing.
***
It is interesting that Planet of the
Apes was released the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The latter picture, of course, through its music, makes overt reference to
Nietzsche's Overman myth as told by the prophet Zarathustra, and it, too, is a
film that expresses sublime cosmic yearnings. 2001 is a more
optimistic film than Planet of the Apes, but both films are
informed by the idea that "man is something to be surpassed". This
is, at first glance, a seemingly antihuman sentiment that nevertheless often
finds expression in a desire for transcendence and transfiguration. It is not
so much the notion that humanity is worthless as it is the idea that we were
meant to be, or at least are capable of becoming, something more—something
better than man. Ultimately, then, it is perhaps closer to being a profoundly
humanistic conviction, a faith in what the philosophers have called our last
end—our final potential and possibility, the true fulfillment of our being that
we have not actually witnessed in empirical reality. Humanity has always felt
this longing, as seen throughout the vast history of its religions, and it is a
desire that has not vanished in our modern secular age. All dreams of progress
are based upon it.
For the time being, though, we are left with
ourselves as we are. Both religious and secular faith in the perfection of
humanity must wait for the future to see their fulfillment. Until that day
comes, if it may and however it may, we must continue to live with our crooked
timber, and we must never give up the ongoing, inevitably imperfect attempt to
treat each other with—as we so poignantly call it—humanity.
Yes, Col. Taylor. I'm afraid this is the best
we've got.
