Is Twelve Monkeys The Solution For 25 Primates?

I am thinking of the Terry Gilliam film Twelve Monkeys. I watched it maybe a half or whole year ago on VHS with bad audio, which made the gripping-if-convoluted plot difficult to follow. Like most of ex-Monty Python Terry Gilliam's films (the dystopian Brazil, the insidious fantasy of Piano Tuner of Earthquakes), Twelve Monkeys requires - and deserves - to be revisited.

Although I have still seen the film only once, I have nonetheless revisited it in my head increasingly of late because of its environmental subtexts.

Never a fan of Brad Pitt, I nonetheless admire his portrayal of psychiatric patient Jeffrey Goines, an animal rights activist and anti-consumerist. It is a confluence of two events - the release of humankind cleansing virus and the release of animals from captivity - that enabled (non-human) animals to once again live in freedom and prosperity.

Whether The Army of the Twelve Monkeys were responsible for releasing the virus is doubted, but they definitely claim responsibility for liberating animals from the zoo.

The question the movie has forced me to address - for I have been acknowledging it for a good duration - is if (non human) animals can only thrive once again if humans are removed from the equation of life?

It saddens me to hear that conservationists have newly publicised a list of 25 primates on the edge of extinction.

These include the Sumatran Orang-Utan, the Peruvian yellow-tailed woolly monkey, and the Hainan black-crested gibbon and the Cross River gorilla. I have names only four of the twenty-five because three are enough to serve a purpose: One is native to Sumatra, one to Peru, one to China, one to Nigeria. Four completely distinct geographical regions.

Natural geographies the world over are being razed and our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are being wiped out. Not that their genetic proximity to humans should matter. All animals should be conserved, no matter how distinct they are from mankind.

Or should that be all animals must be conserved except the human animal? Is it time we start considering that, for the sake of the sanctity of all life, it is humans who must be sacrificed?

Without humans there would no longer be the drain on natural resources because of material greed, there would be no destruction of nature, no living in disharmony with Gaia (if one is inclined to personify the Earth).

Humans are the only life-form on the planet that has the capability of subverting nature with such disastrous effects.

In the current fear-induced climate of terrorism, eco-terrorism is never going to be thought of as a sane option, even if limited to philosophical pondering. Thus I find myself occupying a padded cell with Jeffrey Goines, deemed mad by society for being anti-consumerism and pro animal rights, unable to make the world look at itself in the mirror to see how absurd it has become. Animals are dying and the ones who care, who would counteract, are divested of power.


Without eco-terrorism as a viable option, all I can do is ask anyone who might chance upon this blog to look at the photo (left), of an Sumatran Orang-Utan cradling her infant, and ask yourself what you can do to stop this animal from being erased forever. And do something about it.