Plants, Animals, and (Almost) Humans

Almost Humans

Animals

Plants

The Call of the Wild

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia

Little Shop of Horrors

Nature Poem

Never Let Me Go

Blood Child

Ex Machina

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The X Files

S1, Ep. 5: "The Jersey Devil"

  • Mulder and Scully investigate a series of murders caused by an enigmatic man-beast called the Jersey Devil
  • It turns out to be a surviving member of the Neanderthal species, but it is still put down like an animal

S1, Ep. 11: "Eve"

  • This episode follows clones, named Eve, with heightened abilities who are so smart that they are driven deranged
  • They murder their adoptive fathers and are found by an older Eve clone and then murder her
  • Mulder and Scully eventually are able to outwit and capture them, but they are taken to a facility where it is revealed that there is another live adult Eve in captivity and tests are being performed on them

Ethics

  • Should such clones be created?
  • Should they be given the same rights as humans even though they have no empathy and seem to enjoy killing? #

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Agency

  • Mulder and Scully, the older Eve, and the young twins all believe they are in charge
  • The older Eve gets murdered, the younger Eves finally are captured by the agents, and the government takes the Eve twins from Mulder and Scully to continue performing tests
  • They are all controlled by the people who made them, in the Eve's case, or who employ them, in the agents' case, which turns out to be the same people # # #

Agency

  • These clones appear to have some sort of control over their lives, yet in reality their lives are predetermined
  • "Here was the world, requiring students to donate." (263) # #

Futility

  • Tommy and Kathy fight for a nonexistent delay
  • Only a delay, not a salvation

Ethics

  • These clones are made to
    provide "real" humans with organs
  • However, educated clones are
    indistinguishable from "real" humans
  • How can this be reconciled? # #

Ethics

  • Should Nathan have created such an intelligent AI?
  • If he had let her have freedom, would she have tricked and murdered him?
    # # #

Agency

  • The Terrans seem to have a choice of who bears the offspring, but in reality the Tlik can easily influence those decisions
  • The humans are enslaved, but they don't see it that way # # #

Futility

  • Both Nathan and Caleb believe they are in control, but Ava was pulling the strings all along
  • "One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction." --Nathan # #

Relationships

  • Normal family structure is destroyed
  • Tlik serve as parents, siblings, confidants, lovers, and slavers
  • Terrans are a mix between pets and livestock to the Tlik, but there is still a sexual component to relationships between Tlik and N'Tlik
  • "'But you came to me... to save Hoa.' 'Yes.'... 'And to keep you for myself.'" (28) # # #

Relationships

  • Ava tricked Caleb into falling for her with the help of Nathan, who designed her to be able to manipulate him
  • Nathan builds female AIs and has a father-like relationship with them, but then reprograms them to be mindless sex bots for him to use
  • "And the answer to your real question, you bet she can fuck." --Nathan # #

Gender Roles

  • The female Tlik run the society, with males fertilizing as grubs and dying off
  • The Terran men give birth because they are not valued as highly by the Tlik for keeping the Terrans alive
  • Tlik do not impregnate women for fear of them not being able to bear Terran children #

Gender Roles

  • Nathan created sexy female robots because he wanted something to have sex with
  • He also created Caleb's perfect woman so he would fall for her manipulations in her attempt to escape
  • Despite the AI "winning" in the end, she is still viewed as a sex object from both Nathan and Caleb's and the movie's perspectives. #

Plant Poems

Teaching a Plant the Alphabet

Ethics

  • The Neanderthal is killed because it had killed humans to feed itself in the past
  • However, it never killed a human except in desperate need
  • Why did the humans get to decide that this race be exterminated? # # # # #

Relationships

  • The Neanderthal women attempts to have sex with Mulder while he is chasing her
  • She knows she needs to become pregnant to keep her race alive, so she stuns Mulder and rapes him to prolong her species # # #

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Eyewitness depiction of the Jersey Devil
(As seen on my water bottle)

Futility

  • There is no way that a plant can learn the English alphabet, yet Baldessari goes on teaching it anyway
  • Even if it did somehow learn it, what is the point of having a plant who knows the alphabet? How could we even test its knowledge? # #

Agency

  • The plant is incapable of deciding whether or not it wants to be taught
  • It is forced to passively accept its fate, no matter if it wants the teaching to stop
  • Plants cannot control what happens to them, but often they are the ones who survive after all else is gone # #

Agency

  • Tommy Pico said he would never write a nature poem, but he decided to redefine what a nature poem is and write it for himself
  • He took his insecurities and other people's perceptions of who he should be and shone a light on them and forcing those who wanted to push certain roles on him to back away # # # #

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Cultural Stereotypes

  • Tommy Pico is caught between the "urban-gay" stereotype and the "Native American-one-with-nature" stereotype and he desperately longs to be seen as his own person
  • He writes Nature Poem to try to escape that in his own way #

Futility

  • Pico is making an impassioned cry for him to be seen as his own person, but he knows that he likely will be unable to change anyones minds about Native Americans and LGBT+ people on his own
  • He can only write what he thinks and hope others will do the same # #

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Ethics

  • Should Seymour have let the plant live once he realized it thrived on flesh and blood?
  • However, would it have been better if the plant was fed non-human meat? Where is the line between proper food and improper food? # # # # #

Relationships

  • Any relationship that starts with one person murdering the other's current partner is doomed to failure, no matter how evil the first partner may have been
  • There is no way they can live out their suburban dream fantasy with that as their history # # # # #

The Lives of Animals

Ethics

  • Michael could have been in love with that goat, but he had no way of knowing if the goat was in love with him
  • In addition, the goat could not consent to having sex with him, therefore he was raping the goat # # #

Relationships

  • Michael had a strange, semi-sexual relationship with his son
  • He had been turned on by his son as a baby one time
  • He fucked a goat, and believed it to be a spiritual and loving relationship # # # # #

Masculinity

  • When Ross first finds out about Michael's affair, he is not surprised until he finds out Sylvia is a goat
  • Adult men are so used to each other cheating on their spouses it's no longer a problem until a different sexual deviance is added # # #

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Non-Human Sentience

  • The story is not told directly from Buck's point of view, but he is shown to have very complex thoughts and emotions on certain subjects
  • It challenges the view that animals are lesser than humans due to their lack of imagination or brainpower # # #

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Relationships

  • The relationship between Buck and John Thornton is one of the only healthy and mutually beneficial relationships between human and non-human in the course
  • We know they had mutual affection and love for one another # #

Agency

  • Buck was content with his cushy pet life, but had no real control or freedom
  • After he was taken, he was able to free himself and take control of his life
  • "Thenceforward he would be unafraid of [the humans] except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs." (61) # # #

Relationships

  • John has a strained relationship with his mother; he finds her abrasive, unpersuasive, and contrary
  • Similarly, he has a strained relationship with his wife, partly because of his mother and partly because she could not get a job at the same university as John # # #

Agency

  • Elizabeth Costello was invited to speak under the impression that she would speak about her novels, but she took the invitation to talk about something she is passionate about
  • She took control of her own opportunity and used it to move forward a case she believes in # # # # #

Ethics

  • Elizabeth, for all of her argumentative flaws, brings up a valid point about the ethics of eating animals
  • Why are some animals considered not proper for eating, and others considered okay?
  • We would never eat humans, so why should we feel comfortable taking the lives of other animals, who feel just as much as us? # #

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Consider the Lobster

Animal Poems

Caddyshack

Ethics

  • Should the gopher really have been hunted just because it was disturbing the golf course?
  • Is a simple pastime of humans more important than the gopher's entire life? # # # # #

Relationships

  • The aggressive relationship between groundskeeper Carl Spackler and the gopher on the golf course was more than man versus pest
  • There was a mutual respect, with Spackler recognizing that the gopher had a significant intelligence, one greater than could be measured with human standards # # #

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Society

  • Wallace uses the lobsters as a metaphor to critique people for being "tourists" in their own lives, passively moving through life without thinking about the consequences of their actions
  • "As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing." (240, footnote 6) # #

Ethics

  • Wallace forces us to actually put real thought into the way we consume animals, lobsters in particular
  • He forces people to think about the fact that lobster feel when they are being boiled alive
  • He wants people to understand that doing something without understanding the implications is much worse than understanding the implication and taking action anyway # # # # # # # #

"Bat"

  • Society
    • The speaker sees bats as frightening, but they have never actually caused him any harm that we are aware of
    • There are very few stories of bats threatening human lives, so their stigma is entirely societal
    • Even the speaker knows that in China they are viewed positively, and yet still refuses to see it

"Man and Bat"

  • Relationships
    • The relationship between the bat in this man's house and the man is violent and aggressive, but the man realizes that the bat has fears and emotions
    • He feels as though he has no right to take the bat's life, but still relentlessly pursues it to the point of near-death

"Snake"

  • Ethics
    • The speaker sees a beautiful snake that he has been told to kill because it posed a danger to humans, but he cannot bring himself to do it
    • He wonders if it is because he is afraid, but in reality he is brave for doing what he thought was right despite what he had been taught as a human

"The Fish"

  • Ethics
    • Should we really feel comfortable fishing for sport?
    • Why are we okay hurting those animals when it is much harder to hurt the animals that resemble us?

"The Moose"

  • Society
    • This poem is mostly about living in Maine and communicating with other humans about how to live and be happy, but the thing that truly brings everyone on the bus together is seeing this massive, majestic beast in the road ahead
    • The animals that we deem less significant than us are often what bring us together

"Sheltered Garden"

  • Society
    • The speaker is critiquing the tendencies of humans to make everything too safe and secure
    • She believes that the way to make a more beautiful garden with tastier fruit is to leave it open to the elements, rather than protect it from all harm
    • With this, she believes that giving people more experiences will make them more successful and better people #

"Reapers"

  • Human Nature
    • The speaker relates the relentlessness of the reapers to the realities of human nature
    • We are cruel beings who kill not only to support ourselves but for pleasure
    • Plants mean less than nothing to cultivate and destroy, and even when there is another living, breathing creature that is hurt in the process, humans continue on as if nothing had happened

"Sea Rose"

  • Femininity
    • The speaker is prioritizing women who have had more experiences, who lived life the way they wanted to rather than by how society expects them to stay beautiful

"Sea Poppies"

  • Agency
    • The speaker sees this flower as a beautiful tragedy, a once stunning flower brought low and strewn on a beach with the other flotsam and jetsam
    • She wonders what meadow it came from, and how it came to be tossed about in the ocean waves with no control over its own fate

"In a Station of the Metro"

  • Society
    • The people in this metro station are all dots of beauty against an otherwise drab background
    • They are each an individual, and yet part of something greater

Made By: Ciaran McEnroe