Page - 87 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Film, Parable, Reciprocity | 87www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 69–98 Parable happens in the disquieting gap between the deliberative speech of the researchers and the gestural, facial and aural communication of both human and animals. The researchers discuss their observations, experiments, data and the im- portance of basic research with expressionless faces, a contrast to the mothering attention given to the newborn primates and the primates’ range of vocalisation, their gestural and facial expressiveness (some of it agonisingly clear in its messag- ing, some of it ambiguous). The ambiguity of parable opens up a sense of kinship with these animals, and some alienation from the monotone humans. What lingers, in my perception of the film at least, is not the deliberative discourse, in Panagia’s sense of “narratocracy”. I am undone by the protest of the spider monkey in all its bodily and vocal resistance to capture; it brings me to a painful place of more- than-reciprocity. Although this is one of Wiseman’s early and more polemical films, it doesn’t allow the viewer a free pass to judge scientists, for all of us benefit from the medical and other technology that results from curiosity-driven research involv- ing animals. It may also raise questions for the viewer: what aural and physical cues am I missing or ignoring in my daily encounters? Fig. 6: Film still, Primate (Frederick Wiseman, US 1974), 01:11:32. Fig. 5: Film still, Primate (Frederick Wiseman, US 1974), 01:11:32.