HUMAN AND ANIMAL

The Anthropocene is a proposed, and at the same time the most recent, geological epoch, beginning in the point of time where the human being started to make significant influences on the 5 Earth Systems: The geosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and the atmosphere.

The word Anthropocene comes from the Greek word for human, ‘anthropos’. As Lewis and Maslin write in ‘Defining the Anthropocene’: “… the Anthropocene marks a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the earth.”

This project explores this relationship that humans currently have with earth. It questions whether humans have power over nature and earth, or the other way around, and in general to explore this complex relation. It’s an ongoing cycle of changes in power dynamics.

Then there’s Verlaan, who writes the following: “… this disputes the modernistic view of a strict division between nature and culture and reveals an Earth that is not a neutral background for human activity.” (Verlaan, 2016, p.1)

Verlaan makes a very strong statement by mentioning the Earth as a non-neutral background for human activity. I argue that nature and culture are intertwined with each other. They, as Verlaan states, do not have this strict division between them. Culture defines how humans experience and see the world and therefore how they act and alter the environment around them; but this is inseparable from their genetics and natural instincts, as well.

With my work I want to portray this in a very raw and uncensored way. I want to show that humans cannot endlessly make use of Earth without it having any consequences. In the form of animated film, which gives me the opportunity to explore and create alternative realities, I therefore investigate a circumstance where the human character is submissive to nature and earth. The human protagonist is outnumbered, frightened and eventually gets taken over by nature.

“Posthumanism critiques the use of the (western) human as a normative ontological, epistemological, and ethical category and advocates a greater acknowledgement of the interconnections with other beings, including non-humans. Hence it can be argued that posthumanism shares a common interest with the decolonial critique in that it directs our attention toward ‘that’ which is objectified, muted or rendered passive by a certain manifestation of anthropocentrism or human exceptionalism.” (Zembylas, 2018, p. 254)

Zembylas explains the essence of posthumanism and describes how it directs our attention towards that which is objectified or muted. I argue, along with Zembylas, that due to our anthropocentric views we often objectify or mute other living beings. Stepping on an ant and killing it might mean nothing to me, even though we’re both living beings and sentient in our own ways.

Through reading of this publication the topic of posthumanism became of more importance to this project. One of the intentions of this film is to unmute the ‘muted’ that Zembylas speaks of. This is done by illustrating the frog having power over the human and have them connect through the body of the human. The frogs are not given a literal human voice to become unmuted, they become unmuted due to the actions they pursue which are portrayed in the film. They influence the behaviour of my protagonist through body language, and eventually take over the protagonist's body by parasitically entering it.

As the protagonist swallows a tadpole, his body becomes the host of this creature. The power roles become reversed, the tadpole is in control over the human, and not the other way around anymore.

‘A Brief History of Humankind’

While doing this research, I was recommended to read the book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Harari is a Israeli historian and professor. His book, Sapiens, provides a survey on the human evolution from the first human beings to the twenty-first century homo-sapiens.

The information in this book however, was not fully applicable to my project. I expected to receive mostly factual information from a historian writer, but a lot of the information was brought in a very subjective way. One of the critics that wrote on his publication, John Sexton, wrote the following: “… his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is an effort in the genre of universal history. Like many such efforts, it does not contain much actual history. Rather, it is a speculative reconstruction of human evolution, supplemented by the author’s thoughts on recorded history and the human condition.” (Sexton, 2019, p. 105) This describes my experiences with this book very well, in the sense of Harari adding his own thoughts on recorded history and the human condition. Therefore it becomes less of a valuable source. It seems like reading someone’s commentary on human history.. Nevertheless these disagreements still gave me inspiration for my film, which I will elaborate on further below in this chapter. Here, I will discuss some specific examples from the book.

Harari starts by writing the following: "The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorilla's, fireflies or goldfish." (Harari, 2011, p. 4) By writing this Harari seems to value a species based on the impact they have on the environment.

Next to that, he declares gorilla’s, fireflies and goldfish as insignificant. This is in itself a very Anthropocentric statement. For a human being, the presence of gorilla’s, fireflies and goldfish may not be of importance, but if they were to go extinct it would for sure have its consequences on the environments they live in. His kind of thinking and arguing is what I want to question through my film.

He then proceeds to write this:
"Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals. (…) Yet the real meaning of the word human is 'an animal belonging to the genus Homo'..." (Harari, 2011, p. 5)Harari does not give reasons as to why sapiens tend to do this which makes it difficult to agree with this statement, especially after he breaks it down by giving us the real meaning of the word human. There’s significant similarities between humans and other animal species.

He continues with the statement: "One on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees." (Harari, 2011, p. 42)Harari himself gives factual information in a subjective way (in this case by adding ‘embarrassingly’), and even contradicts himself later. First he argues how we as sapiens are part of the animal kingdom only to later on call this embarrassing.By calling this similarity embarrassing, Harari makes it seem as if the human sees itself as a powerful entity, that can not be compared to anything else.

These two paragraphs describe a way of comparing the human being to other animal species that is essential to the film I am making. As mentioned before, this film is here to create a more neutral balance between human and non-human beings. Harari’s arguments representing a more general way of thinking, served as a fuel for the motivation behind this film. His arguments make it seem as if this barrier between humans and other living species is something factual.

A Research Document and Animated film by Femke Janssen

There is a lot of ethical debate going on when it comes to our relationships with and the way we treat our fellow earth inhabitants. A good example of this debate is given in Ward M. Clark’s book Misplaced Compassion: The Animal Rights Movement Exposed (2001). In his book he mentions the following:
“ “Even if animal research is insulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
With this quote, Ms. Newkirk demonstrates a nearly unparalleled disregard for human suffering. It’s been predicted that in the next thirty years or so, AIDS may well kill half to three quarters of the population of Africa. PeTA would let them die in the name of saving some lab rats.” (Clark, 2001, p. 37)

Clark clearly states that human lives are worth more than the lives of rats. This is an ongoing discussion which I argue is missing arguments. It is a very subjective matter, there is no factual proof that a human life is of a higher value than any other form of life. Human lives are often valued over anything else because of our anthropocentric view. Everything around us is regarded in human values because of the enormous impact of humans on the ecosystem.

I aim to counter this way of thinking with my film by having the frogs take the lead over my human protagonist. This subjectiveness of the topic comes back in my film in the way of applying abstract animation and a more poetic way of storytelling. There is no clear reason as to why my protagonist is transforming into a frog, or as to why he is swallowing a tadpole to begin with. Sometimes he does things because of his own subjective way of thinking. The same goes for the frogs. There is barely any actual interaction going on between them because they are both living in their own world, in which they are the center of everything.