Fierce Creatures is the “not-sequel” to A Fish Ccalled Wanda. It was directed by Fred Schepisi and Robert Young and its cast starred Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cleese and Kevin Kline. The movie is set in an English zoo that has been taken over by Octopus, an American company. The environmentally conscious messages are of course all over the movie, as it is of course about the poor British David against the evil American Goliath (Kevin Kline in a dial role). The Americans (of course) only want to make money which is why Rollo Lee (Cleese) and the other workers (amongst other a brilliant Michael Palin) have to gang up to save the zoo (a plot involving a gun, a lemur and flour).
The scene that environmentally struck me the most though was when Vince McCain brings in an animatronic Panda. At first the workers don’t realize it’s an animatronic reacting all the more betrayed when they find out. They argue that an animatronic doesn’t belong in a zoo because it is “artificial” to which McCain simply replies: “Having pandas in England is artificial for God’s sake!”
This quote crystalizes the constructedness of environmental discourse and its understanding of the “natural” a theme we have spent quite a bit of time on lately.
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