In Defense of the New

Ratatouille is a fantasy, but a fantasy so close to reality that the fantastic bits almost go unnoticed. The moments where the film asks us to suspend our disbelief are so few and so minor that we forget the film is about a talking rat who can cook. Remy’s unbelievable intelligence is what creates the conflict for the whole story.

Yes, the movie is an allegory for those shunned due to their background or class and the pressures of enjoing new success while staying true to one’s roots. I wouldn’t deny these layers of meaning anymore than I would deny Linguini’s physical humor or the frustrating reasons behind Colette’s toughness. The well developed story and characters of Ratatouille are what make it so easy to forget that the plot never explains how it is that Remy and his clan of rats can understand humans. There is no Secret of NIHM moment where we realize they’ve been tested on and exposed to chemicals. All we know is Remy watches and understands TV, as do his nest mates, and that once Linguini gets over the shock of Remy communicating with him, he accepts all other developments accordingly.

So Ratatouille is not just about “overcoming one’s background and the prejudice of others.” The use of animals to disguise the race/class/ethnicity tropes normally trotted out for this kind of story telling force Ratatouille into strange territory. Almost accidentally the film sets itself up to defend the rights of uplifted animals. One of the most intense moments of the film comes when Remy’s father, Django, explains How Things Are and encourages Remy to accept the status quo. To drive home his point, Django shows Remy the display window of an exterminator. Remy’s response is brilliant:

Django: Take a good, long look, Rémy. This what happens when a rat gets a little too comfortable around humans. The world we live in belongs to the enemy. We must live carefully. We look out for our own kind, Rémy. When all is said and done, we’re all we’ve got. [starts to walk away]

Rémy: No.

Django: [stops] What?

Rémy: No. Dad, I don’t believe it. You’re telling me that the future is, can only be, more of this?

Django: This is the way things are. You can’t change nature.

Rémy: Change is nature, Dad. The part that we can influence. And it starts when we decide. [he walks away]

Django: Where are you going?

Rémy: With luck, forward.

These lines are generic enough that they appeal to all calls for rights and social acceptance and the bravery of being different. But the key line, “change is nature” is something special. That simple assertion is still one of the most difficult concepts about evolution that one can grasp. Species, biospheres, cultures, companies, internet memes, and fashion are always changing and it is by changing we know they are still relevant, still alive. The reverse is also true: living things will and should change into new, different, and perhaps unsettling things. Django is seen as less right than Remy not because he miscalculates how humans treat rats or because he doesn’t understand that Remy has a friend, but because he does not understand that communicating with humans changes the whole framework of the debate.

Normal, unintelligent, wild rats are always going to be killed by humans because the two species are at an impasse. Remy and his clan, however, demonstrate transrodent-like ability, being super-smart for their (or any non-human) species and capable of interacting on the same intellectual level as humans. Unlike racism and classism, it is not prejudiced to presume a non-human cannot cook or use language to the same degree as humans, as there is no evidence even close to proving otherwise. Therefore, what Linguini (and eventually Colette and Ego) do is not overcome their prejudice but accept the extraordinary claim of Remy’s intelligence by his extraordinary proof: repeatedly cooking world-class meals that impresses the toughest critics in Paris.

The argument Ratatouille seems to be making in terms of animal uplift is that any one test of intelligence is ultimately irrelevant. Remy is not subjected to an IQ test or an MRI or anything else. His cooking, a dynamic, creative, complex activity that is simultaneously an art and a science, makes all his arguments for him. Given that cooking is a uniquely, perhaps essential, human behavior, that Brad Bird would make this the proof of Remy’s personhood is quite fitting.

The toughest critic, Anton Ego, is so rocked by the revelation of Remy’s ability that he is forced to look inward, to criticize himself in order to allow this new idea of a cooking, and therefore sentient, rat:

Risking a “defense of the new” is, indeed, the most powerful and meaningful thing a critic can do. To do so requires overcoming one’s “repugnance” of the new, for whatever reason it manifests, and braving into uncomfortable and dangerous territory. All three humans that help Remy take huge risks, and, as we see at the end of the film, are justly rewarded with a successful restaurant of their own. To risk something for an idea is to take ownership in the value of that idea, to internalize and personalize that risk.

Ratatouille makes an interesting point about the risks involved. Not only is it morally right for those who believe in Remy’s abilities to support him openly, but it is also rewarded financially. Though Ego loses his job and Gaston’s is closed, the new restaurant, La Ratatouille, is co-owned (I presume) by Linguine, Colette, and Ego, and, with Remy and Colette’s cooking, bound to be extremely profitable. While government regulations (vermin infestation) and social norms (repugnance of rats) reinforce the urge to discredit Remy, capitalism opens a door for his and his supporters’ success.

Ratatouille‘s story of overcoming the limits of one’s background and the prejudices against it is an argument for the possibility of animal uplift and presents a potential new criterion, cooking, for determining personhood. C’est magnifique.

Coconut Octopus

I was debating which of the twenty sites that posted on the tool-using octopus to link to when I noticed Neatorama went the extra mile and made a Monty Python reference in their post. National Geographic’s article and video (embedded) provide wonderful illustration.

Fantastic line from the interview showing how much joy scientific discover can bring:

“We were blown away,” said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. “It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask.

I guess we get to add octopi to the ever growing list of animals that are way smarter than we had thought.

We’re Just A Bunch of Wild Animals

I saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox last Thursday. It is easily my favorite Wes Anderson movie and my favorite Roald Dahl adaptation, making it a double threat. The animation is beautiful, the humor is spot on, Anderson’s strange sentimentality is drawn out nicely and the voice acting is superb. Mr. Fox has a good surface message – we’re all a bit *hand wave* different and insecure in our own ways – and is weird and dark enough to make it a classic. And like all great kids’ movies it has a deeper, more subversive message. Spoilers ahead.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is about the process of civilization and self-domestication. All of the main characters – save the evil triumvirate of Boggis, Bunce and Bean – are animals that have adapted to living in the world of humans. Foxes, badgers, beavers, rats, rabbits, and opossums are urban and suburban creatures. They live along side people and have adapted to eating what we produce and living in buildings we build. They’ve also picked up our neuroses and ennui.

The journey of the Fox family is not a hard-and-fast allegory for any particular arc, but the core symbolic movement of Mr. Fox involves the movement from a hole in the ground, to a home in a tree, to a sewer system beneath a supermarket. Echoes of poverty to wealth, rural to urban, and scarcity to abundance come with the trajectory, but I don’t think any one of those themes is the specific focus. Instead, we come to see Mr. Fox suffer a midlife crisis that threatens the whole community.

The vibe of Mr. Fox is intentionally jarring. Badger, the lawyer, wears a lovely pinstripe suit and advises Mr. Fox to not move into the tree which, though much nicer than his current hole, is in a “bad neighborhood.” The creatures of the film are overly civilized most of the time and weirdly self-aware (knowing their own scientific names, having droll debates that turn into circling snarl fests), yet will occasionally behave as if they are actually just  animals (carrying a chicken in jaws, gobbling food). The breaks in civility are highlighted by both the contrast with the animals’ own actions and in their perception by human beings. That Boggis, Bunce, and Bean try to hold Kristofferson hostage and send a magazine-letter note to get to Mr. Fox is perhaps one of the most bizarre suspensions of disbelief the film asks us to make. We are forced to see the animals as instinctual creatures, as having a parallel culture to humans, and as existing within human civilization.

While the most wild animal moments are contrasted against the humans of Mr. Fox, the most civilized moment is contrasted against the only “wild” animal in the film: a lone, black wolf. Throughout the film, Mr. Fox’s fear of wolves is emphasized. It isn’t a natural wariness as one would expect from a fox, but a phobia: an irrational terror. The normally smooth and poised Fox loses his composure every time Kylie, the simple but loyal opossum, accidentally brings up the topic. The scene with the wolf occurs with both the city and the mountains in sight. The wolf is majestic, resolute, and unbound by language. It serves as a reminder that foxes once were wild creatures but that now they are not: they are urban fauna.

The final point that The Fantastic Mr. Fox seems to be making  is that all of these parts of our personalities – the inner animal, the civilized social self, the rule-breaking survivor, and the concerned family member – are all our real selves. To give ourselves too much to any aspect leads to a neglect of the others and a sense of internal disunity. But really, I’m not sure if there is  a moral or a point to The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I came away from it thinking about how we are the summation of our lives, yet also only what we are at any given moment and that we’re all “different,” whatever that means.

It’s a lovely film. Go see it.

The Day of the Super-Turkey Could be Nigh

So claims Daniel de Vise over at the WaPo, and I think he makes a compelling case for tricking out everyone’s favorite foul for feasting:

The possibilities for genetic manipulation seem endless. At a bare minimum, the turkey might be genetically engineered to convey a bit more flavor. And turkeys aren’t the most comely of birds; could they be bred for better looks as well as taste? How about a turkey that arrives pre-stuffed, or packed with extra endorphins to pacify a dysfunctional family? Or thighs thick enough for the NFL?

“For me, it would be gigantic, Earl Campbell legs,” said Damian Salvatore, chef of Persimmon Restaurant in Bethesda, alluding to the former football great. “If they could get some of that leg taste into the breast, that would be perfection to me.”

A fluff piece, yes, but Virginia Tech did sequence the turkey genome. There are a lot fewer ethical qualms with at least testing out genetic engineering on turkeys than other livestock. They’re so dumb as is, they might be the first candidate to grow headless and de-feathered. Vat turkeys. Delicious.