The Representation of free nature and the feral child in TV and Film: An Appraisal 

 

This appraisal will be exploring the boundary of what differentiates humans and animals, discussing the relevance of cohabitating together and similarities in behaviours. It will consider whether Instinctive behaviours in both humans and animals are relevant in the ability to survive in the wild and civilization. The feral child is often labelled as inhuman, connected to savagery (Newton, 1996. p.297) and the case studies will discuss how feral children are portrayed to be wild and undeveloped without social influence, and whether they can be domesticated, in a natural and unnatural habitat (Candland, 1993. p.371). 

 

The notion of being wild and feral is present in various films and TV series, which focus on the child living in a natural state, away from civilization and without any direct human contact. This appraisal will be discussing two episodes of The Grimm Series One for TV (NBC. 2011) and the 1994 film Jungle Book (Sommers, 1994). They each focus on primitive behaviours in humans and the importance of conditioning in the early developmental stages, which affect maturity and adulthood (Panksepp, 2004. P.29).

 

The Jungle Book in particular focuses on the freedom of identity and the boundary between being human and animal (Newton, 1996. p.306). In the opening scene a young boy is found holding a wolf cub and is accepted by the pack, this suggests that the mother’s maternal instincts allow the boy to survive and live in companionship with them. Susanne K. Langer explains a synopsis on maternal instinct; 

 

On a few known occasions the maternal instinct of a bear or a wolf has held the foundling more sacred than did mans moral law, and child has grown up, at least to pre-adolescence, without human influence (Langer, 1990. p.107).

 

After the introductory scene where the boy is separated from humanity, Mowgli is seen to be uncivilized; portraying a wild aesthetic. The camera cuts away and shifts to another scene, emphasizing a change in time and he has grown to be a man. Presumably he has outgrown his clothes and abandoned them for a small cloth tied around his lower half, suggesting they are irrelevant in the jungle and he has developed a tolerance to heat and cold. His new identity is indecent for civilization but relevant for free movement in the jungle and close camera footage captures the speed where Mowgli is running amongst wolves; his clothes do not restrict his movement and his stride is remarkably fast, similar to that of a predator. 

 

As a small boy Mowgli recognizes that he is “half of a tiger” and belongs in the jungle. He is shown standing face to face with a tiger, communicating through eye contact and without using words. He is left unharmed and overlooked as a human because he is seen as a creature of the jungle; and in the tiger’s eyes, he is not a threat. Mowgli is both the friend and the master of the other animals. Once again, Mowgli's mastery is purely the result of his nature; the other animals cannot meet his gaze simply because he is human (Newton, 1996. p.306). Newton suggests that Mowgli is of a social hierarchy and a ‘master’ of the jungle because he is human and continues to explain that he does not struggle for survival and wants nothing of the animals but to live in companionship with them. 

 

Mowgli is later seen imitating various animals through growling and using his four limbs to support his stance during a scene where he is in captivity. His facial expression and body language both reflect fear and distress at being separated from the jungle, and he shows no sign of understanding the English language. He is perspiring and looks fearful of his surroundings and although he is human his behavior mimics animal tendencies, rocking back and forth on all fours and gazing without any focus. This scene shows similarities to the case of Victor ‘The Wild Boy of Aveyron’ who was later taken into the care of Dr. Itard for five years of teaching (Itard, 1800). The boy was firstly institutionalized and considered to be an animal because he did not have the necessary socialization skills to be human (Candland, 1993. p.17). 

 

The film later suggests that the boy can connect on an intimate level with another human when he shows a strong fondness towards a female character, trying to kiss her in a gentle ‘civilized’ manner. Her presence alone allures the boy into a deep remembrance of their pre-separated childhood. However, although Mowgli is shown to reveal socialization skills and feelings towards a woman, the primitive quality towards a female is at the forefront of his personality, as it is of all male mammals’ intentions (Panksepp, 2004. p.15). He is shown fighting to defend her, an instinctive behavior in both humans and animals.

 

The next case study looks at the transformation of humans into animals in the TV series The Grimm, which totals to four series of eighty-eight episodes. The show focuses on the interlinking personalities between humans and animals, tricking the viewer into not knowing what is human and what is inhuman. This is often referred to as an uncanny feeling, ‘When something we believe to be imaginary appears to be a reality’ (Freud, 2003. P. 244). A homicide detective sees hybrid people hiding their true nature by living normal lives within surrounding neighborhoods, and has an obligation to imprison them due to an unwanted genetic inheritance. This gains him recognition as an officer, because colleagues who are confused by his success to solve mystery cases admire him. The introductions to each episode consist of individual passages, taken from old fairytales and extracted from the original books written by the brothers Grimm; they lead you to question the forthcoming events and the symbolic meaning behind them. Professor G Ronald Murphy explains they are ‘remnants of ancient faith expressed in poetry’ (Murphy, 2002. P.3) and continues with… 

 

The brothers stated that their book consists of stories which are precious crumbs of ancient faith... Stories embodying religious faith found in poetic tales primarily of three ancient traditions: Classical Greco-Roman, Norse-Germanic, and Biblical’. (Murphy, 2002. P.3)

 

Episode one of the series introduces the viewer to a ‘Blutebad’, a character named Monroe, a human with a transcendent identity who is later seen transforming into a wolf, the ancestor of a dog. ‘The wolf thought to himself, what a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful...’ (NBC. 2011. Ep. 1) The transformation is evident during a scene where young children are in passing and the creature struggles to restrain its natural primal desires to attack; forcing a transition from human to animal, seen facially through prosthetic make up effects and CGI, computer generated image, which work collectively and technically to complement one another. 

 

The make-up is not stereotypically excessive and artist Barney Burman talks about the nature of the application and the reasoning behind a naturalistic design, where the humans are masked inside of each individual beast and recognized underneath the prosthetics. He ‘lets the actor’s actual head and face dictate changes to the original design’. (Burman, 2011. CTV) explains...

 

I really try to make things look organic and natural, as either authentically alive or authentically dead, as I can make them. I want to get to that point and then I want to just push it to a little bit of a fantasy realm, so you still have that believability, but it's still not something you would quite see in real life (Burman and Ohanesian, 2013). 

 

The prosthetics are subtle and believable, actor Silas Weir Mitchell who plays Monroe explains ‘when someone morphs, they don’t just turn into a generic werewolf or whatever. They turn into what they would look like as this creature’ (Weir, 2011. TMR). They simply emphasize the inner beast without diminishing the facial features and the effects are synchronized with computer-generated imagery in the transition processes. 

 

The two main characters build on a relationship of trust and partnership, typically seen between humans and domesticated dogs. There are genetic differences between dogs and their living ancestors the wolves, which result in hormonal change and substantial behavioral dissimilarities; 

 

Those hormonal differences cause profound differences in behavior; they result in an animal that never really behaves like a mature canine. In a nutshell, a dog is a wolf in arrested development; they act very much like adolescent wolves their whole lives (Belyaev, 1969. P.56). 

 

Therefore, the ‘Blutebad’ character is more like a domesticated dog and companion than a wolf of a wild nature. 

The above text is relevant to the behavior of the character Monroe in the GRIMM series, he is a tamed hybrid who shows signs of daily struggle to control the natural desires he possesses as a wolf. Panksepp emphasizes the complexity of the human brain and ascertains that ‘The human brain can generate many thoughts, ideas, and complex feelings that other animals are not capable of generating.’ And ‘organisms learn to make effective behavioral choices’ (Panksepp, 2004. P. 14). The characters human brain is dominant and he has grown to be domesticated in his most developed form, living anonymously within a human community.

 

The final case study will outline the notion of wildness portrayed in a feral child named Holly Clarke in series one, episode seven of GRIMM ‘The earlier meaning of the word “feral” refers to the release of a domesticated or socialized being into the wild’ (Candland, 1993. p.371). The episode focuses on the emotional distress of living without adult supervision and away from civilization, with the girl instinctively surviving in the wild from the age of seven for nine years without any societal influence. She is alone, aggressive and fearful of her surroundings; 

 

The child is helpless. It is mainly the adult who provides the context of its experiences. Normal development is determined when the external world, initially represented by the parents, neutralizes what is aggressive, fearful and anxiety-producing. (Robben and Su’arez-Orozco, 2000. P.55)

 

This episode introduces the viewer by quoting a reference to the fairytale Rapunzel, found in the Brothers GRIMM books, 1812 "The enchantress was so hard-hearted that she banished the poor girl to a wilderness, where she had to live in a miserable wretched state" (NBC. 2011. Ep. 7). The passage introduces the viewer to an un-nerving scene where a young ‘Blutebad’ girl is found surviving in the forest, wild and unattended. She uses her untamed long hair as a weapon, breaking the neck of a criminal threatening to kill two hikers. Learning from the forest surroundings, she shows no remorse towards the target human and disappears into the mist, away from the cameras focus. 

 

In a later scene Monroe finds Holly injured inside of a treehouse by intuitively knowing s

he is a young and uneducated ‘Blutebad’. He is able to pick up her scent which leads him to her safe house, effectively hidden in the trees and away from the dangers of the forest below. At this moment, the viewer is introduced to the girl’s self-sufficient lifestyle and the ability to survive in solitude predictably shocks the detectives. This scene mirrors a social and economic conflict in the developing world, where ignorance dismisses the many uncontacted communities within forests globally, who avoid civilization and prove to successfully live off their indigenous surroundings (BBC. 2011). The endangered communities were historically urged to instinctively survive and labelled as “savage” due to measuring as smaller brained races.  Newton explains… 

 

Idiocy is an invariable consequence… "Small brained races", of non- European origin, are stuck physiologically in the condition of childhood. Commonality of the human: if the "savage" is to the European as the child is to the adult, then this leads us into a recognition of our identity with the origin (Newton, 1996. P. 145)

 

The child’s living conditions within the forest portray a wild aesthetic and she is only able to be brought back into civilization when the character Monroe convinces her of her safety; gaining her trust by howling back and forth, communicating in his animal form. The episode emphasizes the importance of nurture in the early development years of a child’s life and suggests that a child can be civilized after years of separation from humanity. However, there is little evidence to support life like cases where a child has become civilized and instead, lead to technical breakthroughs for the education of deaf mutes to communicate (Candland, 1993. P.37).

 

All three case studies demonstrate the importance of instinctual behavior in order to survive in the wild and in civilization. More so, the wild behaviors represented through the individuals in each case contradict the ‘natural laws’ of humanity to which we, as a society, live by (Barnett, 2014. p.17). The media symbolises feral children through hybrid characters, imaginably [human to animal transformation] where they too are categorized, representations of animals in human forms, and in the cases, which have been discussed, seen to be ill suited for society. (Barnett. 2014) estimates the value and complexity of instinctual behaviors in a developed society and the book will be analyzed in a literature review along side evident feral children cases (Candland, 1993).