The Planet of the Apes is in New Jersey

So, yesterday was September eleventh, the ninth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States if America in 2001.

For me, one of the sadder, more poignant aspects of yesterday was all the earnest reminders, in every medium, from friends and strangers, never to forget. On it’s face, this is absurd, almost inane. 3,286 days ago I had been in the habit of programming my TV to wake me each morning to MTV2 (do they still actually play music videos on MTV2?) and this would get me out on the right side of bed to start the day. Ever since, every SINGLE day, 3,285 in a row, I wake up and check the news headlines, sometimes on TV, sometimes over internet, and ask: Have they done it? Did they finally catch bin Laden? Is his head at last on a spike on public display where it belongs?

This ugly, dysfunctional obsession is just one of the keepsakes I have from that day. The Marooned Astronaut won’t bore you with all the details of the other souvenirs he has (remember, “souvenir” means literally “to remember”): the emergency rations, gas masks, baseball bat, machete, Geiger counter – yes, Geiger counter – that take up so much space in my closet ever since.

So, for me – for most of the world – a reminder to “Never forget” is quite superfluous.  But, of course, I understand what inspires it. When most people say, “Never forget” 9/11, they are actually asking you to commiserate with them, to grieve a little, and for you to support them a little in their grief over something which, after nine years, still has no satisfactory means of being made rational through words. The event was insane, an undoing of 10,000 years of civilization, perpetrated using two of the most potent symbols of that civilization’s success, the jet liner, the skyscraper, transformed into a hideous and all-too-real nightmare. We do not look at jet liners, or skyscrapers, or each other the same way since. And we don’t know what to say, so instead we say, “Never forget,” and we know what each other means, which is something inexpressibly other than “Never forget.”

After a solemn, but exhausting morning of brooding on the sorrow that contemplation of 9/11 germinates in me, I decided to try and take my mind off it.  I decided to review some of the basic literature concerning Marooned Astronauts as part of an ongoing proficiency program we are all, as a trade, obliged to study. I watched, for the umpteenth time, Planet of the Apes.  The real 1968 one with Charlton Heston. Not the 2001 cock-up by Tim Burton – an otherwise inspired filmmaker. In retrospect, this very willful attempt “to forget” was flawed. Doomed from the outset.

The planet of the apes is in New Jersey. 

Did you know that? There is a scene in the first film of the series, 50 minutes in, where Marooned Astronaut Taylor (Heston), muted by a gunshot wound, tries to explain in pantomime to his scientist chimpanzee benefactors (Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter) where he came from. We all know the surprise ending (SPOLIER ALERT) that Taylor eventually finds out he has been on Earth all along. In the film’s final scene, he and girlfriend Nova (smokin’ hot Linda Harrison) blunder upon the melted, mostly-buried Statue of Liberty. So, we know he’s in New York. During the scene I mention at 50 minutes, Cornelius (McDowall), who is a chimp archaeologist by trade, offers a map of the local region as a visual aid to help vocally-challenged Taylor tell his story.

It is clearly (and appropriately) a map of the New York Tri-State area.

According to Taylor, his ship, the Icarus, splashed down in Long Island Sound and he and surviving companions Dodge and Landon came ashore in the mortifying desert of the Forbidden Zone, AKA: Westchester County.  They then hiked to the Garden State where they ran afoul of a civilization of speaking, misanthropic apes.

Yes. I know. Has happened to me, too. In Georgia.

Planet of the Apes is really a superb film and if you haven’t ever seen it, you should treat yourself. Much of the dialog is dated and stilted. No surprise, as the script, the good parts, anyway, flowed from the pen of master sci fi melodramatist Rod Serling. Indeed, it is easy and fun to view Apes as a Twilight Zone episode writ large. To enjoy POA, you have to accept the clunky dialog as style, as non-rhyming verse. But, if you can accomplish that and watch, it is sublime. It offers deep social commentary on issues that are no less vibrant or urgent today than they were 42 years ago.

On a more selfish, more practical note, it is also chock full of helpful dos-and-don’ts for the average Marooned Astronaut. Take notes when you watch.

So, I watched. Taylor crash lands in the water, goes through his ordeal among the apes and finally escapes the clutches of his bloodthirsty simian captors, only to find out: the planet of the apes is actually planet Earth. (For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll include New Jersey as part of planet Earth.)

Taylor is understandably dismayed. When he first left Earth on his mission, he understood the world was already populated by brutes. In an opening monologue, he laments how Man treats his fellow human and admits, coyly, a wish that his kin back home might outgrow this barbarism while he is away in space. Instead, his worst fears are realized. The humanity he left behind only went on to grow even more barbaric, to the point of self-annihilation. And in place of that homo sapiens civilization has risen another just as brutish, just as barbaric. So one of the many morals of the film is: Planet Earth is always in danger of becoming, and intractably remaining, a planet of the apes.

It is important to remember, though, that the only point of a cautionary tale is to dissuade the audience from a course that will lead ultimately to the undesireable fate invoked within the story.  The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his premature, mournerless grave so that he may choose to avoid it.  Planet of the Apes shows us an Earth that is forever doomed to be a planet of apes – naked apes or furry, but all brutes, all murderous. Yet, this does not mean such a fate is inevitable for this Earth. Planet of the Apes warns us to make sure this Earth does not become Taylor’s.

Planet of the Apes was made, as I mentioned, 42 years ago. So, how are we doing, team? Is this a world at peace with itself? Is there even a country (let’s take – oh, I dunno, the United States of America, for example) which is at peace with itself? When there’s an Earthquake in Haiti, do we actually send in the rescue monies we’ve promised for recovery? Do we decline from painting all members of one religion with the same brush we use to characterize the homicidal fanatic minuscule minority of that faith? Do we let folks who fall in love marry each other, no matter who they are or how many penises or vaginas they have among them? Are we able to engage in political discourse (to figure out the best direction in which to drive this blue planet) without referring to, and treating, our fellows across the aisle as sub-humans? When attacked, do we resist the urge to lash out at the easiest, most accessible target, even if that target had NOTHING to do with our wounds? Do we withhold our political support from candidates and parties who espouse or permit the promulgation of baseless fear and hate? Erstwhile politicians who would rule by anger?

Planet of the Apes closes with a prayer. An angry prayer. Angry prayers are not healthy ones. And no good comes of angry prayers. You can bet your bottom dollar that there were some angry prayers being muttered in the cockpits of Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93 nine years ago.

Marooned Astronaut Taylor’s angry prayer at the end of Planet of the Apes is:

            You maniacs.

            You blew it up.

            Damn you.

            God, damn you all to Hell.

I have said that prayer. I said it nine years-plus-one-day ago. I found myself saying it again yesterday, and, despite best intentions otherwise, I have repeated it all too often in the countless months between. Despite all these prayers, I find I am, as you are too, still stuck on a planet of apes. I can’t promise that I won’t ever say that angry prayer anymore, but I tell you, I know (from nine years of hard experience) it doesn’t accomplish much. I’ve never seen anything to suggest that any prayers, angry or not, ever do.

We can avoid Taylor’s Earth. We don’t have to pray. We just have to stop being apes.