You all seem to be a rather astute bunch so I am sure you noticed the complete lack of a Rummaging Through the Old Maids Friday segment. This is because Anna and I went camping this weekend with her parents, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. We left Wednesday evening from what was to be four days of semi-roughing it in the North Woods area, followed by me racing back to the Cities Sunday afternoon to pull a lovely nine hour closing shift. But to say our plans went a bit awry might be down playing it slightly.
Anna and I both enjoy camping but, unfortunately, never have much opportunity to do so. The biggest culprit is my job, as it requires me to work weekends, and while I do have health insurance and a 401K, in a surprising twist I do not get any vacation time. So not only do we have few days off together, but any trips are financial annoyances due to the lack of vacation time.
To work around this we try and limit my time off to around the most major of family gatherings. Usually that means Christmas and a yearly camping trip or two, but my little sister’s wedding is causing all sorts of additional weekend excursions. Man she owes me big.
But this week was to be one of the few times a year where we get to get away from The Cities and relax. In anticipation of this year’s getaway Anna and I purchased our own tent. We had discussed getting one for a while, and a recent sale offered us the opportunity to purchase a modest 3-person dome tent that should easily meet all our needs for a price that we couldn’t refuse.
Of course I haven’t been running this site for very long so I didn’t think to warn people I would be offline for almost five days. I’ll make sure to improve on that area in the future. Though, with recent talk, Anna and I are soon to start looking for a laptop for me so that I can both write and watch movies when we go on vacation. And I quietly hoped this weekend would afford me an opportunity to get caught up on some writing . Kind of like a lo-fi dry run of my own personal writers retreat. A chance for me to get away from every day distractions and try to get some work done when we are not hiking, canoeing or any other general camping activities.
But somewhere along the way things went horribly wrong. What started out as impossibly perfect weather on Wednesday and Thursday, though to be fair with an unrelenting horde of blood thirsty bugs, turned into thunderstorms by Friday morning. Trapped in the tent as Anna already headed to the safety of the showers, I was enclosed in an air tight plasticine tent that suddenly began to leak. Not just drip, mind you, but full on seams splitting open and water rushing in type crappiness.
So as Anna was safe and dry in her parents nearby camper, I was reduced to sacrificing my clothing to plug the leaks as I quickly collected her things and shielded them from the storm. Oh sure, my sleeping bag and pillow suffered some critical water wounds during the assault, but Anna’s things were safe and that meant I wouldn’t be yelled at. So I have that to hang my hat on.
Soon wet turned to still wet as the rain continued all day and night, reducing us to huddling in the camper to stay dry and making a short run into town in search of entertainment. There we met a crazy book lady who told us she had the only DVD’s to rent in town as she asked us to pet her pregnant Chihuahua’s belly. Why? Because she liked it. Whether that means the lady or the bitch I’ll never know.
We followed that up by running into a random herd of Emus and an animal I could only describe as a turkey/duck, foolishly flame grilled steaks during a thunderstorm, and watched some awful 90′s television show about psychics, only to discover the rest of the weekends forecast called for cold and rain.
So here I sit; damp and cold in Anna’s parent’s camper, using my book light to help me coalesce my thoughts while everyone else sleeps. On the inside looking out, just wondering if we are any better off then lowland gorillas. Well, maybe not those African gorillas that Sigourney Weaver keeps chasing after, but maybe one of those gorillas that knows sign language and enjoys all of our creature comforts as well. Their life certainly couldn’t be any wetter.
Koko the gorilla (or possibly monkey for the Seinfeld fans in attendance) is an internationally renowned gorilla, who unlike her more famous counterparts Mister Ed, Lassie and that ass in the military, can actually talk without the aid of peanut butter, Milk Bones or a wire through her lips. Koko, who this 4th of July will be celebrating her 37th birthday, has become the larger then life fulcrum of a growing number of animal intelligence research projects (various Great Ape species, dolphins and parrots have already been studied) that have discovered these animals ability to communicate, reason and emote is far greater then science or popular culture ever believed possible.
But in 1977 Koko was merely a six year old gorilla was only just beginning to fascinate the scientific and viewing public with her exploits. Koko: A Talking Gorilla occurs during one of the most tense moments of Koko’s early life. Viewed by the San Francisco Zoo as their property, Koko is unknowingly involved in a legal battle to determine whether or not she should be sent away from her home at Stanford University back to the zoo where she was born. Terrified that Koko would be taken from her, researcher Penny Patterson decided to allow noted French director Barbet Schroeder to film her research in a last ditch attempt to prove her research, and more importantly Koko’s wishes, would be best served if the study remained at Stanford.
But Koko: A Talking Gorilla rarely follows that particular sub-plot and in the end only devotes a few minutes to the controversy. The true narrative of the film is simply in following Koko, and in every frame she is utterly captivating. Opening with a short scene of Koko using a viewfinder, one finds their past view of gorillas being shattered. Not a clumsy creature or one content to let life pass them by without contemplation, Koko is a being totally enamored with everything placed in front of her. As she rapidly displaces the images in the viewfinder you can’t help but be entranced, and then she pauses. Her eyes never leave the viewfinder and at that moment you know she is capable of appreciating in ways never dreamed possible. In mere seconds Koko will change the world you view forever.
But Koko doesn’t merely rest on its laurels after that initial introduction. With each passing scene Koko ‘s personality bursts off the screen. As she asks for her favorite red sweater, demands to play during her training sessions, or merely sits down at her computer and repeatedly asks for more apples Koko will challenge beliefs that animals are something separate from humans. She isn’t an object of possession, but a living, breathing individual who is trying to enjoy her life as much as anyone else.
From there Schroeder attempts to asks several questions to the viewer so they will ponder with greater thought just what an animal like Koko truly represents. None of these questions are easily answered, and while some might seem as juvenile attempts at diminishing humanity, their true nature reveals that they are attempting to do something far greater and apply humanity to those who aren’t quite human, but still capable of giving us a blood transfusion.
But while Koko is a captivating subject to watch, it is the way she will force people to adapt their outlook. Koko: A Talking Gorilla is a film that not only pushes boundaries, but redefines them. Making audiences realize they are as much a part of nature as Koko or chimpanzees or any other animal is. Koko: A Talking Gorilla finds a way to blur the separation between man and ape, and far from diminishing the human race by doing this, uplifts all species as a result.
