Comments on Unemployed Negativity: Ape Like Imitation: Repetition and Difference in t...

Another interesting take on _Rise of the Planet of...

2011-08-18T11:16:58.201-04:00

Another interesting take on _Rise of the Planet of the Apes_:
http://thiscageisworms.com/2011/08/17/on-rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes/

Yes, I love that essay, and your remarks about it ...

2011-08-14T21:20:28.867-04:00

Yes, I love that essay, and your remarks about it raise an interesting point. It suggests that every film must provide just enough identification and distance in order to make such acts of revolt enjoyable. I also think that you are right to suggest that the film is analogous to a a prison film, with all of its rivalries and indignities.

Finally, and on a somewhat unrelated point, I am struck by how Caesar solves the "problem of organization." He recognizes that the apes are weak as individuals but strong as a mass, the great scene with Maurice the Orangutan and the bundle of sticks (despite its shades of fascism), but is confronted with the fact that the apes fall into petty conflict. So what does he do? He elevates their intelligence with the gas which I suppose can be seen as either class consciousness in aerosol form or the necessary intellectual labor for autonomous organization.

Jason, I like this post very much. Having seen th...

2011-08-14T15:29:10.518-04:00

Jason,
I like this post very much. Having seen the film only a few days ago, the riots (and discourse around them) were forefront in my mind. I think what you refer to as aesthetic identification in your comment might be further elaborated in the terms laid out in Jameson's "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture." In sum, it seems that, despite the construction of identification with the apes (esp. in the great scene on the bridge), the species divide serves undercut or defuse this identification (and its extension into some kind of political identification and action), creating, as Jameson might have it, a "safe" release valve for antagonism---similarly with the sub-plot in the ape sanctuary (which I see as a reworking of the prison film genre). (There is probably something significant here as well in the way that Cesar, who the audience is made to feel closest to, is, in contrast to the creepy one-eyed ape, decidedly against killing the cops.)

I have been thinking more and more about this film...

2011-08-10T13:01:41.497-04:00

I have been thinking more and more about this film especially in the context of the riots in London. Not in the sense that I am drawing any parallel between the rioters and apes (or any other animal), although such comparisons are a staple of the racist press and comment boards. What strikes me about this film, and many like it, is that it gets its audience, most of whom are probably law abiding people, to take such pleasure in the destruction of police cars and helicopters, not to mention society itself. There is an aesthetics of revolt that manny people are seduced by, seduced by the identifications with exploitation (after all, the film was a surprising critical and initial commercial success), but often this aesthetic identification does not carry over into political life.