Analysis Of Dr. Zira's Song: The Planet Of The Apes
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This song is often regarded as the commercialized origin of the concept that all African-Americas look similar. Dr. Zira’s proclamation that all men look alike to most apes is a clear attack on the tendency to not recognize the members of an alternative race. Furthermore the use of apes as the stand in for African-Americans directly confronts the “monkey” designation used by some to describe African-Americans. The startling similarity of that quote to the 1896 song and/or the cross-race effect in social psychology startles the viewer of The Planet of the Apes. The prevailing argument from the alternative timeline suggests that no one species is greater than the other. Both humans and apes find themselves at war within their own species. Humans decimate themselves following the global thermonuclear war in the…show more content… The story refers to African-Americans as the children of Ham invoking the story of Noah and his sons in Genesis chapter 9. In the story, Noah becomes drunk and lays naked in his tent. Ham, one of Noah’s sons finds his father naked and tells his brothers. Noah is infuriated and curses Ham’s descendants to be slaves of Ham’s brothers. Ham’s descendants were the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Africans. Pro-slavery groups in antebellum America used this story to argue that slavery of Africans was biblically justified. By having her hypothetical government refer to African-Americans as “Children of Ham” in The Handmaidens Tale, Margret Atwood suggests that the characters in her story wish to demean African people. Furthermore, Atwood describes that the plan for the “Children of Ham” is to transport them back to Africa. This particular action stands in stark opposition to the attempt at equal utopic living in The Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Instead of cooperation and living together, the government in The Handmaidens Tale approaches race relations by shipping descendants of Africans back to