Thanks to the AMC channel, I have rediscovered one of my favorite films, Planet of the Apes. Of course, I'm talking about the real version starring Charlton Heston as George Taylor, the astronaut who leaves the earth on a mission deep into space and time, from which he will never return. He does so without a second thought, as he has nothing and no one to hold him behind. The film's scientific interpretation of travel at the speed of light is such that when his ship crashes on an “unknown” planet, it is nearly two thousand years after the time he left.
He states toward the beginning of the film that “somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.” Soon after landing, Taylor stumbles upon that potential in a civilization of apes which reviles man. Man on this planet is mute, ignorant, cruel, crude and a general nuisance to simian society. The apes alternatively hunt, kill and detain these unclothed, foraging men for experimental brain surgery. Apes themselves are divided between the religious and political overseers (orangutans), the military and laboring class (gorillas) and the scholarly professionals (chimpanzees).
While Taylor is able to jab at various injustices within the ape society including its “inhuman” practice of “gelding” captured humans (brain removal), the real target of the film's critique is man himself. Throughout the movie, two chimp scientists support Taylor as the first talking human the apes have ever encountered amidst the priests' attempt to silence him. Indeed, our own conflict between religion and science is mirrored in their society. Taylor's revelations humble the apes in their practices toward man and bring them steadily toward an archaeological discovery that an earlier, technologically superior human civilization once existed.
In the end, however, it is Taylor who is humbled. Staring at the remnants of the Statue of Liberty, he makes the terrible discovery that somehow his ship crash landed on the earth, two thousand years in the future. As Taylor realizes that human society was destroyed in a nuclear war which was a very real fear to the film's audience, his desperate cries on the beach summarize the unity of humanity's achievement with the depths of its depravity: “Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was...We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
The symbol of our society's progress and its highest ideals, the Statue of Liberty, lies in ruin – the victim of man's arrogant pride and aggressiveness which ironically is paired with his capacity to reason. This unfortunate duality within man did not pass unnoticed by Dr. Zaius, the ape's chief scientist and defender of the faith, whose burden is to protect the secret that man preceeded the ape civilization. His critique of man is sharp, reflected in the account of man within the apes' sacred scrolls: “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.”
The truth in this account of our civilization stings. While you and I know that man is capable of earning a far better report card, I believe our potential lies not in what we can achieve in a material sense. Although this is not the place and I am not the one to take on Voltaire and Rousseau single-handedly, I believe we are more creatures of the Enlightenment than we realize. The history of the twentieth century bears powerful witness of the falsehood of the claim that through reason man can solve all our problems, or worse, craft a “perfect” order of things. Dictators, purges, five-year plans and the like are the undeniable end of the human attempt to replace the divine with his own mind.
I think we would do well to realize that we did not create the earth, we do not sustain it and we will not perfect it. We are merely temporary stewards of its many blessings. Too often, we forget our greatest blessings – that we have God and each other – as we become absorbed in individualism and a society oriented mostly toward obtaining whatever we can, however we can in the short time allotted to us. My own theology leads me to believe that the earth has already been perfected and yet there is so much work left to do to bring humanity into the type of life for which it is destined. If we would live as though we already have been given everything we need, I believe our challenges would become far less challenging. Perhaps then we could become the “enlightened” society we claim to be.
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