Koko: A Talking Gorilla presents pioneering documentary wildlife footage, shot long before Love Nature and BBC Earth emerged, it offers a direct hands-on approach to the crafting of naturalistic wonder.
In a scholastic setting.
Is it possible for gorillas to acquire humanistic language skills?
Yes, Barbet Schroeder showcases the evidence within, and even if Koko doesn't learn to sign perfect human, he still learns hundreds of words by heart, and can engage in elementary small talk.
However, I have to admit that as I watched Koko and Penny Patterson communicating, I felt kind of bad for the verbose beastie, who seems somewhat uncomfortable a lot of the time within the film.
He often seems like he'd much rather be foraging around in the jungle, and although the experiment produces compelling results, did it thoroughly take into account Koko's natural instincts, his innate desires to gorilla about?
I like experiments that teach us more about animal kind because they're good at deconstructing stereotypes regarding non-humans, but so many of the them end with horrible results for the animals, that sometimes it seems like it's best not to conduct them.
I'm thinking about Susan Casey's book Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins, anyways, which starts out with a cool example of beatniks swimming with dolphins in Hawaii, while totally respecting dolphin kind's independence.
But then chapter after chapter chronicles horrendous interactions between well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) scientists (and others) and dolphins, which left me with a rather critical outlook regarding such experiments, since so many of them ended horribly.
I think animal awareness has remarkably improved in some countries and regions over the past 20 years, and there's certainly an abundance of caring people sharing animal love on the internet.
And I imagine generations are following David Attenborough's incredible example as they respectfully interact with our fellow Terran inhabitants (who have just as much of a right to this planet as we do).
But the good's still mixed with an abundance of bad of cruel practices and experiments that are socially accepted, not to mention cultural prejudices which display shocking misguided horror, sign up for emails from Peta, be prepared for extreme woe.
Koko's treated well in the film and the people involved don't employ old school viewpoints, which justify outrageous abuses of intelligent animals based upon preferences for intellectual standing.
Rather they try to break down the barriers which uphold so many distressing rationalities.
Koko still seems like he'd rather be playing.
I'm not sure where to draw the line.
I wonder what Jane Goodall thinks of this film?
Note: I love Orangutan Jungle School.
