“And in the greatness of thine excellency thou has overthrown them that rose up against thee: Thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble. And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as a heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea” (Exodus 15: 7-8).
Sperm whales, cannibalism, anthropomorphism, and then some nitroglycerin soap and a hunky Brad Pitt. This should be a fun post.
In all honesty, I was quite surprised at how well In the Heart of the Sea and Fight Club paired together. After I finished reading/watching the two, my mind immediately jumped to their commonality in promoting and supporting hegemonic masculinity; but, after our class discussions on Monday and Wednesday, I stumbled upon a new revelation—one that was more hidden, yet all the more tragic and terrifying. Yeah, In the Heart of the Sea and Fight Club are about a society’s deep-seated desire to assert manhood and the morals of manhood and how such expectations can lead to a crumbling psyche and disappointment in oneself. However, there is something deeper, something perhaps even darker than choosing to resort to cannibalism or beating each others’ brains in: there is an intense fear of the animalistic, fight or flight nature in all of us and the recognition that perhaps we aren’t so different than the supposedly-conscious, revengeful whale out there in the open sea.
But, but…I thought we were HUMANS!? I thought we were above all that? Well, haha…perhaps we’re not. You and Fido, the dog sitting on your lap right now, might be more alike than you think.
As Suzanne said in class, there is something absolutely terrifying about the malleability of our own human behaviors and the limits of our morality. We think we’re in control; we think we are above the animalist nature of those lower-order mammals. But, as we saw in In the Heart of the Sea, morals are a malleable, disposable set of beliefs; when death is imminent and survival depends on choosing to eat your dead shipmate, you eat your dead shipmate. Nasty, but true. Morality is a MAN-MADE system; when it boils down to it, we are nothing but animals, no different than the whale who attacked the ship. Yes, we are more cognoscente and intelligent than any other animal on this planet (simple neuroscience can tell you that), but what terrifies people today (as much as it terrified the men on the Essex), is that perhaps we are not alone in our ability to plan, think, and execute. Chase believed that the whale really did commit an act of revenge against the whaling ship. He saw the whale’s eyes—he saw the look of rage and vengeance. And that…that would be terrifying, not only because you have a 1-2 ton animal set on your demise but because you suddenly don’t feel so superior anymore. Suddenly, you’re an animal, too. Superiority complex = shattered.
Recent research has actually discovered that animals are perhaps more cognoscente that previously thought. Neuroscience is making leaps and bounds in discovering the neural pathways of other animals, and they are finding startling similarities to our own neural pathways—a little unsettling, huh? Maybe your dog actually was ticked off at you for getting home late so he purposefully planned to urinate all over your new dining room rug. Puppy Plotters. Creepy.
In Steven Kotler’s book A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life, he discusses recent discoveries about a dog’s personality and actions. “’The hallmark of PLAY circuitry in action for humans is laughter,’ wrote [Jak] Pankseep in his Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, ‘a projectile respiratory movement with no apparent function, except perhaps to signal to others one’s social mood and sense of carefree camaraderie. Some believe laughter is uniquely human, but we would doubt this proposition.’ Pankseep doubts this because he discovered that rats make a chirping sound while at play … these chirps showed up every time the animals played” (Kotler 167). Then, other scientists began to probe further and explored if the behavior existed in other species. Turns out…it does! “Cognitive ethologist Patricia Simonet recently recorded the sound of dogs wrestling and discovered a pant she believes is also laughter. When Simonet played the sound over loudspeakers in an animal shelter near her home in Seattle, the dogs inside stopped barking within a minute—something that rarely happens. And this result has been duplicated by other researchers in other shelters across America” (Kotler 168). There is actually a tape on the internet of this recorded laughter. Play if for your dog(s) next time you’re home; see what it does! Okay, maybe I’m an oddball for posting a sound clip of what sounds like a dog just panting, but if you’ve been around dogs, you know this sound. This sound accompanies play.
http://www.petalk.org/DogPantSpect.html. Dogs laughing? Maybe they’re more sophisticated than we thought. Or maybe we’re less sophisticated.
But, onto Fight Club. This movie is, well, awesome. Creepy, but awesome. Upon closer criticism of the movie, I started to discover something, something that eluded me the first time I watched it. The men who join fight club use fighting, a primal resort to fight or flight instinct and reliance upon adrenaline and epinephrine to block the pain receptors and keep you fighting, to release their frustrations built up from their lives in the corporate world. Even though this is a cathartic process for the men, they will not talk about Fight Club outside of Fight Club. Why? Yes, it’s violent and slightly creepy, but I think there is another reason they won’t openly discuss their violent coping method: you can’t talk about the animal inside of you—the primal animal you let have full rein once a week. It’s not the actual Fight Club you’re worried about talking about; it’s the animal that is released at Fight Club. It’s not demeaning to fight. Hell, if that were the case WWE wouldn’t be as popular. It’s the animalist nature of their fights in Fight Club that are so important to keep quiet. They become less than human down in those basements at night; they become primal beasts reliant upon evolutionary instincts. That reliance upon one’s own animal nature is demeaning. You’re at par with the lowest orders of the social heirarchy: the animals. That’s disgraceful.
The animal within: he’s/she’s shameful and should be kept quiet. But, when we realize that we perhaps aren’t any better than those animals who enact revenge (note the polar bear with a chainsaw in the picture on the sidebar), we become afraid of losing our human selves. And that--that loss of morality and control over our animal instincts--is terrifying.
So, we’ve got everything from polar bears saying they’re “fucked” and fighting back with chainsaws to a sound recording of dogs laughing. That’s one weird blog post.
And...just because it's funny and slightly creepy :] (this song is in the original 1967 film, Dr. Doolittle).
Kotler, Steven. A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. Print.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Print.
How did you know my dog, Fido, was sitting in my lap?! Haha kidding. I agree that I didn't expect that Fight Club and In the Heart of the Sea would have so much in common. I will honestly say I have been a bit captivated by the thought of what people's "white whales" were since the facilitation on Moby Dick, so relating human's animalistic tendencies to that of the whale doesn't seem that far fetched at all! In fact perhaps the role of pushing for masculinity in society goes along somewhat with our fear of being animals ourselves. I tend to think about this a lot. Since morality is a man-made thing, it makes me wonder who the "person" was who thought it up in the first place. There had to be someone who had the original thought that the beastly actions we used to commit was wrong (I am suddenly picturing a caveman drawing pictures on cave walls and scolding other cavemen and women, whether I believe that or not haha).
ReplyDeleteWow! The studies on animals you talked about were so interesting! I don't actually see it as creepy though. In fact, sometimes I think animals have better "morals" than humans do. I actually think it's pretty cool that we could be more connected than we seem, although polar bears with chainsaws is pretty freaky(of course, I think humans with chain saws are freaky too haha). I know my animals definitely have their own unique personalities! In comparing ourselves to animals, or by looking for our own traits in animals, we may even find that the fears we have of being like them are really our fears of change or not being able to control something(like you mentioned above). I think this also relates to Jack's own fears once Tyler begins to get to his real plan. Tyler: "I am Jack's fears." I think the main thing that that we have in common with the common beast is dominance. It is seen all over the animals kingdom, but the thing that may be scarier about humans is that we obsess over it while it seems to come as part of the "circle of life" for animals.
P.S. I sort of want to be Tyler Durden, which may sound a bit destructive at first, but I don't think I'm alone here haha. That was the first time I had seen Fight Club. Mind Blowing!