Tag: HAR: Language/Communication
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Project X. Dir. Jonathan Kaplan . Twentieth Century Fox. 1987.
Project X explores the journey of a chimpanzee named Virgil, taking him from the safety of his home with psychologist Teri Macdonald to an Air Force base where he participates in a secret experiment named Project X that trains chimps as pilots. We learn that Teri has taught Virgil to communicate with humans via American Sign…
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dir. Garth Jennings. Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. 2005.
Garth Jennings’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy introduces its science fiction narrative by destabilizing the assumption that human intelligence is greater than that of all other animals by conceptualizing that they are in fact only “the third most intelligent creature on the planet” and dolphins are the second. A satirical image entitled ‘Why Dolphins are the…
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Ratatouille. Dir. Brad Bird. Buena Vista Pictures. 2007.
In the Ratatouille scene where Remy and Emile enter an old woman’s house, questions of animal invasion into human spaces are raised. The woman’s reaction is to kill the trespassing rats; a reaction which, in reality, we would be unlikely to query. Fig. 1 As uncaged rats they represent pests, undesirable to find in one’s home. The…
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Ratatouille. Dir. Brad Bird . Walt Disney Pictures . 2007.
Ratatouille’s exploration of human cruelty towards rats is encapsulated in the scene where an old lady discovers that her home is infested by rats. The old lady is introduced through a static frame that captures her sleeping peacefully whilst highlighting her pink garments, both of which depict her as a stereotypical gentle grandma figure. …
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Ratatouille. Dir. Brad Bird . Walt Disney Pictures . 2007.
Ratatouille’s exploration of human cruelty towards rats is encapsulated in the scene where an old lady discovers that her home is infested by rats. The old lady is introduced through a static frame that captures her sleeping peacefully whilst highlighting her pink garments, both of which depict her as a stereotypical gentle grandma figure. …
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Planet of the Apes. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox. 1968.
Planet of the Apes (1968), dir. Franklin J. Schaffner It is from the Planet of the Apes’s first encounter with its ‘more or less human’ characters that we are made aware of their muteness; something that shapes the human/animal relations throughout the film. In his ignorance of the subverted hierarchy the film explores, Taylor, the main character,…
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Bringing up Baby. Dir. Howard Hawks. RKO Radio Pictures. 1938.
Bringing up Baby is a film which explores the relationship between humans and animals through the use of doubling. This is particularly evident in the scene where Susan lets a wild leopard escape from a circus and culminates in the scene where the leopard is wrangled into a jail cell by David. The use of doubling…
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Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. 20th Century Fox. 2009.
Set in the year 2154, Avatar (Dir. James Cameron, 2009) follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine who is given the opportunity to take part in a program on the distant moon Pandora. Pandora is inhabited by a wealth of creatures and biodiversity, as well as the desirable mineral ‘unobtanium’ which the humans are attempting to…
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Water for Elephants. Dir. Francis Lawrence. 20th Century Fox. 2011.
Water for Elephants (Dir. Francis Lawrence, 2011), based on the novel of the same name, is a story about a young man Jacob (Robert Pattinson) who joins a travelling circus and is unsurprisingly about confinement and freedom. It’s brimming with animals from horses to lions to the star of the show, Rosie the elephant, all of…