Planet of the Apes and Philosophy by John Huss

Author:John Huss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780812698275
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Westward, Ho(mo sapiens)

The westward escape of Taylor and Nova in covered wagons mimics the American pioneers going west and the theme of the New Frontier. According to Frederick Jackson Turner and the “Frontier thesis” of Manifest Destiny (which he wrote about in his 1893 essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History), Americans would conquer and cultivate the West. Turner said the frontier encouraged American values of independence, hard work, bravery, and common sense.

In Planet of the Apes Taylor is an American pioneer, re-creating the westward movement of the pioneers when he sets off with Nova on horseback to establish new territory and a new civilization. So the cycle goes: human—ape—human. Or, possibly, the humans and apes can do an “Eastside/Westside” and see who blows whom up first.

The theme of the New Frontier was popular in the 1960s because of its prominence in John F. Kennedy’s speech on July 15th, 1960, when he accepted the Democratic nomination for president. In the speech JFK called for “new pioneers” on a “new frontier” that included science and technology, particularly space. Speaking in Los Angeles he said “For I stand here tonight facing West on what was once the last frontier. . . . the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their lives to build our new West. . . . Some would say that those struggles are all over . . . that there is no longer an American frontier. . . . But . . . we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier . . . the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats . . . the New Frontier.”

Rod Serling was a Kennedy supporter. In 1963 he served as a “goodwill ambassador” of the Kennedy administration to Australia and the South Pacific and in 1964 was asked by the United States government to make a documentary about the Kennedy assassination. If Kennedy was an optimist (his idea of sending a man to the moon seemed “space-age” at the time) so was Serling—an idealist. Both dreamed of the “new frontier” but both also feared the Hobbesian nuclear war. It was during the Kennedy administration that Americans hunkered down in bomb shelters, echoing the time they sat in front of their TV sets to watch the classic depiction of nuclear war in “Time Enough at Last” on The Twilight Zone.

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