Abstract
The Planet of the Apes—created by Pierre Boulle in 1963—is a fictional world in which apes are the dominant species while humans have taken their place in the wild. The screen adaptions in 2011 and 2014 tell the story of the genesis of this world, tightly bound up with the biography of Caesar, an ape who not only learns to talk but establishes a humanlike society of apes. With an animal as the protagonist, there seems to be a nonhuman focus. Nevertheless, Caesar cannot really be categorized as an animal, due to his socialization and artificially enhanced cognitive skills. The article introduces Caesars biography as a struggle with his identity to analyse the human-animal relations represented by these movies.
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Notes
- 1.
Mitchell, “Anthropomorphism,” 100; Mitchell et al., Anthropomorphism, 3–5.
- 2.
Daston and Mittman, Thinking, 4.
- 3.
Spada, “Amorphism,” 49.
- 4.
Ibid., 40–42.
- 5.
Miles, “Anthropomorphism,” 385.
- 6.
Hauskeller et al., Palgrave Handbook, 4.
- 7.
An example for this ascription can be found in the Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television: “[T]he Apes films’ most political message is their performance of a posthuman narrative […] haunted by humanist dispositions” (Henderson, “Haunts of Humanism,” 321).
- 8.
Gosling et al., Planet of the Apes, 10.
- 9.
The development of Caesar’s supreme cognitive skills is induced by medication given to his mother, as well as himself, changing his DNA.
- 10.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 1–3.
- 11.
Ibid., min. 4. (All transcriptions in the following are my own.)
- 12.
Ibid., min. 5.
- 13.
The name of Caesar’s first son who appears in the first scene of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, “Blue Eyes,” refers back to her and—even though originating in an objectifying treatment—might be interpreted as reference to the intimate relation between Caesar and his human family, his longing for his own origin (or identity) as well as his acceptance of his life starting as a human possession, which means an acceptance of his animality. He mostly overcame these questions of identity in the course of the first movie.
- 14.
Interestingly, Franklin is also the first human who contracts and dies of the so-called simian flu, an unexpected side effect of the drug. His empathy towards the apes comes into conflict with his inability to actually do something to stop their suffering that is a result of self-interest, as he is afraid of losing his job if he were to interfere (ibid., min. 10), which ultimately proves to be his death sentence. Because he follows his orders against his better knowledge, he is guilty through action as well as omission. It also makes the apes not active perpetrators but a passive medium of the humans’ own creation.
- 15.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 8.
- 16.
Ibid., min. 11.
- 17.
Ibid., min. 10.
- 18.
Ibid., min. 9–11.
- 19.
Ibid., min. 14–15.
- 20.
Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaus, 272.
- 21.
Ibid., 238.
- 22.
Forrest, “Andy Serkis Interview.”
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Gosling et al., Planet of the Apes, 11.
- 25.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 27.
- 26.
Ibid., min. 26.
- 27.
Ibid., min. 33–34.
- 28.
Ibid., min. 32.
- 29.
Ibid., min. 41.
- 30.
Cf. Gosling et al., Planet of the Apes, 53.
- 31.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 43–45.
- 32.
Ibid., min. 61.
- 33.
Ibid., min. 53–55.
- 34.
“That we possess a basically primate ‘hardware’ hardly challenges our self-esteem. However, we become slightly uneasy when our ‘software’ is at stake: our mind.” Most scientists hang on to claims of human uniqueness, assuming that “only humans create tools with foresight and for future utilisation; only humans keep utensils for re-use; only humans employ a variety of artefacts in a logical sequence” (Hof and Sommer, Apes, 158). On the discussion of the understanding of mental states and the ability of primates for anticipation, see, for example, Kaminski et al., “Chimpanzees.”
- 35.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 106.
- 36.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 64.
- 37.
Maurice is the only other ape Caesar is able to communicate with, since he learned to use sign language in a circus (ibid., min. 48). Obviously, it is not considered a problem for an ape to use language if he has been taught. They just usually lack the tools to express themselves.
- 38.
Haraway, Species Meet, 77.
- 39.
Ibid., 244.
- 40.
Ibid., 19.
- 41.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 114.
- 42.
De Castro, “Notion of Species,” 18.
- 43.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 80.
- 44.
Ibid., min. 23.
- 45.
Cf. Gosling et al., Planet of the Apes, 56, 110–112.
- 46.
Carbonell, “Contest of Tropes,” 158.
- 47.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 4–6.
- 48.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 88.
- 49.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 9–10.
- 50.
Also known as March of Progress.
- 51.
“Language is often viewed as a bugbear for any cross-species comparisons, in that language is believed to be a species-specific behavioural propensity which bears no comparison with the communication systems of other species. Programs orchestrated to teach nonhumans language are objected to as fraught with unverified anthropomorphic inference and description” (Mitchell et al., Anthropomorphism , 11). Lacking a common language, human-animal communication has to rely on behaviour, on gestures and actions that can be interpreted in a much more varied way and thus might lead to misunderstandings. Even the basics are still questioned as there is no common ground if anthropomorphism is to be allowed or if it is unscientific.
- 52.
Kobayashi and Kohshima, “Unique Morphology.”
- 53.
Tomasello et al., “Reliance on Head,” 314.
- 54.
Gosling et al., Planet of the Apes, 11.
- 55.
Wyatt, Rise, min. 12.
- 56.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 38.
- 57.
Ibid., min. 44–46.
- 58.
Ibid., min. 45.
- 59.
Ibid., min. 46.
- 60.
Ibid., min. 63–64.
- 61.
Ibid., min. 44–45.
- 62.
Ibid., min. 95.
- 63.
Ibid., min. 9.
- 64.
Ibid., min. 58.
- 65.
Ibid., min. 59.
- 66.
Ibid., min. 70–72.
- 67.
Ibid., min. 72.
- 68.
Ibid., min. 88.
- 69.
Ibid., min. 93–94.
- 70.
Ibid., min. 9.
- 71.
Ibid., min. 111.
- 72.
Haraway, Species Meet, 80.
- 73.
Reeves , Dawn, min. 112.
- 74.
De Castro, “Notion of Species,” 17.
- 75.
Henderson, “Haunts of Humanism,” 329.
- 76.
Haraway, Species Meet, 73.
- 77.
Powell, “Growing,” 78.
- 78.
Haraway, Simians, 152.
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Media
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Rupert Wyatt. © 20th Century Fox, 2011.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Matt Reeves. © 20th Century Fox, 2014.
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Wolf, D. (2018). Caesar: The Rise and Dawn of a Humanimalistic Identity. In: Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (eds) Animal Biography. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_9
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