Entertaining Fake Animals or Boring Live Ones?

The entire article on taxidermy by Desmond was interesting to me, I’ve always found taxidermy to be a peculiar subject and so I was happy to read a bit more about it. I also was intrigued by the prompt to relate this subject to contemporary zoos because that definitely wasn’t my first thought while reading. Desmond describes taxidermy as aiming to “capture and preserve the vitality and living energy of the animal” (160). It seems odd that we would use the death and even purposeful killing of an animal for the means of a lifelike display, especially in light of the fact that we do have zoos which also aim to present a natural animal vivacity. What’s more is that taxidermy tries to depict a “typical,” or rather what we perceive as typical, pose. Near the end of the essay Desmond talks about how our depiction of animals often lies not in natural fact, but in our imagined stereotype of some unseen wild animal. I found this connection to be the most interesting statement in the article because it seems to eradicate any trace of the actual animal in favor of how humans choose to identify the animal.

Animatronics and animal special effects are obviously an offshoot of taxidermist practices; however they relate more closely the modern zoo because they share a goal of entertainment. Curiously, animatronics aims to create realistic animals only to act our unrealistic, animal fictions. I would assume the goal in the strange recreation is to humanize the animal, yet it also seems to me that this practice distances us from the actuality qualities of the animal. Zoos on the other hand, do depict real animals however it is common for zoo spectators to taunt the animals in order for them to be more entertaining. When we see animals on screen or in other fictional displays, we suspend the disbelief that these creatures are somewhat humanized because in our everyday lives we mainly encounter fictionalized animals instead of real ones. Yet I think this is problematic for zoos because when we see animals in real life they are often sleeping or doing other mundane behavior. But humans want to see the animals act out, we are so entertained by these fake animals that we expect real animals to act the same. So the question I arrive at is will fictional representations of animals replace zoos in favor of entertainment? Do we need real animals if we can see convincing, life-like animatronic ones?

Concrete Jungle

About 4 years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I was in a play called "Words, Words, Words." It was a 3 person play in which our characters were chimpanzees whose personas were modeled after the authors, Milton, Swift and Kafka. (Which in and of itself seems like an interesting study in anthropomorphism, but on with the story) In order to act like more realistic chimps on stage, our director decided to take us to the Milwaukee County Zoo for an observation session. At the height of my vegetarian/animal rights phase I was already troubled by this, but I decided to go in as an optimist.

Zoos have always been a confusing place for me and even now, I am not really sure how I feel about them. When I was a kid, I had a really hard time looking in to the concrete elephant and hippo cages and not getting upset. Perhaps this ultimately factored into my PETA phase? But as we were walking around the zoo, I was beginning to feel a little better. I mean, the people that work here and care for these animals have to be compassionate right? Some of the exhibits looked better than I remembered and the animals seemed happy for the most part.

But then we got to the monkey house, specially the indoor bonobo exhibit. As soon as I looked into the cage I started to feel a bit uneasy. Something about the concrete trees and fake painted walls seemed disturbing to me. Everything in the the habitat just seemed so fake, so human. I have a really distinct memory of standing there with my cast-mates and simply feeling sad. The monkeys themselves didn't seem unhappy, but rather unamused, accustomed to our grins, points and stares. Climbing through their concrete jungle, never knowing what they are missing.

I've been back to the zoo since then and haven't had a such strong reaction but something sticks out to me about that day.

There was something about that particular exhibit that had such a strange effect on me. I felt sympathy and pity for them, I realized what a show all these animals lives often become. While they may blissfully swing through their man-made trees, its hard not to think of the real habitats they are modeled after and the wild monkeys swinging in them.