I have less than a month left of high school.
Last week was technically the last ‘normal’ week of classes before AP and state testing wreck havoc across the land. For me, it was the busiest week of my high school career. I had my final Model UN conference, which ended with a joke motion to “get rid of Ohio (via bulldozer boats)” (don’t ask). Guess I won’t be off to Kent State in August, for it had to be sacrificed to save America from the rapidly expanding, parasitic Buckeye State. On other days of the week, I found myself in parts of my school I had never seen in my entire four years of attendance there. The secret agent lurking inside of me adored that, though I still question why my school doesn’t use its perfectly preserved time capsule pool for more than the swim team and physics class boat races, or why I didn’t know they have a room full of iMacs.
All that aside, it gives me mixed emotions to know that the public school system I’ve been tethered to for the last twelve years will be soon be behind me.
It’s even odder placing my role as a freethinking high schooler in the context of our current culture. More and more attacks on critical thinking have been entering schools across the country thanks to concerned parents who would prefer their children remain ignorant to history and the world at large. Reading about book bans and threats towards teachers who teach the truth is disheartening and, frankly, terrifying. It’s a shame that we as humans, instead of encouraging nuance and intelligent analysis, have allowed for those actively promoting ignorance to have an increasingly large platform. Society is being rapidly dumbed down at the hands of these types, the ones who let their favorite political pundits and reality show stars—what’s the difference nowadays?—determine their every opinion instead of stopping to think about what they are consuming. They may be puppets, but they have power.
We live in a world of ever-increasing absurdity, plain and simple, and humans are basically just strange little animals trapped in an overcrowded cage. They do weird things and can seem very kind one moment and then be seen brutally mauling each other the next. Recognizing these truths is the only way to see the world for what it is. And when logical thought and critical thinking are placed at the forefront of this observation and emotions don’t blind us, work can be done and change can be made for the better—for all of us. When education devalues these qualities and promotes homogeny and close-mindedness in their place, you are learning nothing but a lie.
I’m genuinely grateful that I was able to receive a quality education throughout my high school career. And I’m miffed that the things that made those four years so valuable to me—the discussions I’ve had in my English and social studies classes, the documentaries I’ve watched and dissections I’ve done in anatomy class, the support I’ve received from my teachers—are being disparaged across the country. But then again, people still think that the Kent students protesting the Vietnam War on that crisp spring day in 1970—the anniversary of which is coming up rapidly—were the true agitators when the National Guard came to town. And that’s not stopping me any time soon.
As I enter the next phase of my life, I will continue to seek the truth.
Go Ape
Sunday, May 29th, 2022I got around to watching Planet of the Apes for the first time last night, and I don’t think a film has soared like a blasphemous paper airplane so high above my already lofty expectations before. I adored it. Rod Serling must have been having the time of his life writing the script—”human see, human do”? Come on. It’s too good. I have literally never been so giddy watching a movie as I was when the high judges at Taylor’s unjust trial recreated the famous “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” formation as Zira and Cornelius tried to present their theory of human-to-ape evolution. It was just too perfect.
Despite the film having been released in 1968 (and featuring a “don’t trust anyone over thirty” reference as a sign of the times—though that’s probably just what all this ‘boomer’ talk mutated from) it felt all too relevant. If anything, it was refreshing. Too often into today’s world, the human is viewed as a creature of pure goodness and virtue by both sides of the societal equation. Either acts of cruelty are always good and just, or they are inhuman and unnatural. But neither of these perspectives recognize that humans are equally capable of good and bad. The same goes for the film’s apes: you have your Zaiuses, and you have your Ziras. The ape society shown in the film insists that it could have never evolved from a previous species; socially accepted religion states they were created in their higher power’s image. The earthly powers that be within that society know the truth—that they evolved from dirty, uncivilized humans—but calls heresy on anyone who tries to legitimize the facts. Doesn’t this fear of truth in favor of species superiority sound familiar? The apes repeat the flawed duality of the humans that came before them, and Taylor retains it as he tries to claim superiority over the apes instead of equality. It goes to show that a lust for power over others is an innate and primal instinct, and it can only be tampered by favoring reason and fact, which, while not impossible, is being slowly eradicated on a wide scale—and even the proprietors of the truth aren’t always perfect.
Life is so fun!
With all of this superb social commentary, I find it really amusing that the film’s popularity inspired a slew of sequels that, from what I understand, centered on primal action scenes over a message. They ended up even making Planet of the Apes toys so that America’s youth could not only watch man find himself reflected in what he once saw as the complete opposite of his society, but also reenact it on their own on a miniature scale. And how do you get kids to buy toys in the 1970s? You put that crap on TV.
The youth of that era needed to know that the off model, extremely dinky figures and play sets being churned out were the coolest, most action-packed experiences ever conceived in between their Saturday morning shows, and how else to do it but to condense the film your toy line is based off of into about a minute of compact insanity?
Whoever was responsible for this commercial was clearly having the time of their life. It totally reduces the film down to it’s most base parts but does so so creatively, so elegantly, that I say it deserves some sort of spot up there with the original. Budget and length constraints only imply the opening spaceship crash via the astronaut doll literally washing up on a sandy shore. He provides extremely dramatic, kung fu gripping narration as he explores his surroundings and is captured by apes who seek to “OPERATE” on him to keep him from being a “FREETHINKER.” He swiftly escapes with the help of some actual human children, who were also probably also having the times of their lives moving him around the plastic set.
But the absolute best part comes at the very end. Mimicking Taylor and Nova’s ride into the Forbidden Zone at the end of the full length film, the newly-free, nameless astronaut doll sits on the back of a mechanically powered toy horse as it actually trots across the shore. The human kids are gone, as they have gotten bored and moved on to the next hot licensed toy line. The astronaut peeks out from behind a seaside rock formation to explore “WHAT STRANGE PLANET” he’s crashed on. The screen immediately cuts to the most adorable rendition of anything ever: a cutesy shadow of the Statue of Liberty stretches out across the beach as the terrified astronaut gasps “OH…NO…” upon realizing that this mysterious planet was his own (despite surely having not been made in the US of A). He stops short of goddamning anything to hell, which would not be permitted on child oriented TV. It is absolutely glorious.
And I will always be a cheerleader for reason and logic, but sometimes you just need a dose of gorgeous, perfectly executed insanity. You just gotta bask in the glory and remember where you came from.
Thank you, Rod Serling, for being such a genius; and thank you, MEGO Toys, for being such shills!
Tags:advertising, commercials, common sense, de-evolution, films, humanity, old toys, Planet of the Apes, Rod Serling, society, the truth, things I enjoy, videos
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