The Human Animal (TV series)
British nature documentary series by Desmond Morris (1994) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
British nature documentary series by Desmond Morris (1994) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species is a British nature documentary series written and presented by English zoologist Desmond Morris, first transmitted on BBC One in the United Kingdom from 27 July to 31 August 1994. It was co-produced in association with Discovery Communications (later Warner Bros. Discovery) in the United States, as well as several public broadcasters include: ORF in Austria, various ARD networks (MDR, SFB and WDR) in Germany, and Teleac in the Netherlands.
| The Human Animal | |
|---|---|
UK VHS cover | |
| Genre | Nature documentary |
| Presented by | Desmond Morris |
| Music by | The Vanbrugh Quartet with Louise Hopkins |
| Composers | |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
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| Producers |
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| Editors |
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| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | BBC One |
| Release | 27 July – 31 August 1994 |
The series was later repeated on BBC Knowledge between 29 November 2000 and 31 January 2002 – with the exception of its controversial fourth episode due to various erotic scenes with sexually explicit material.
The programme has been written to accompany its six-part television series made by the BBC's Natural History Unit in Bristol, owing a debt of gratitude to all members of the large team that made their enthusiasm for this project unflagging within the immense care and effort they took to recording various patterns of human behaviour all over the globe was ultimately inspiring.
It described as "a study of human behaviour from a zoological perspective", he travels the world to filming the diverse customs and habits of various regions while suggesting common roots. The series which took two years (between 1992 and 1993) to make, this time will be a fascinating controversial moment especially the filming of orgasm shots from inside a woman's body, standing upright on our human sexuality and the simple anatomical fact as Morris commented:
Nothing was faked, although it was done under very special circumstances. We had a television camera inside the vagina. I'm not trying to be sensational. If you tell the truth about sex, you get into trouble.
More than the mere fascination of finding out particularly in a cultural moment, making it easier to see those of other cultures, faiths, political beliefs or sexual orientation as so distinctly from us that we shared humanity, examining a different biological component of our behaviours and ways of being – a timeless reminder that shared far more than we think.
At the close of its first episode, Morris described through as it follows:
I've sometimes been accused of degrading mankind, of insulting human dignity, of making man beastly. This surprised me because I like animals, and I feel proud to call myself one. I've never looked down upon them, so to call human beings animals is not, to me, degrading. It's simply being honest: putting us in our place as part of the scheme of nature on the planet Earth.
Morris studies the natural habitat within its most interesting and odd species of all – humans, as we have evolved from our ancestors, instincts and behaviour are still rooted in our animal past. By denying this inheritance we are in danger of destroying everything we have strived so hard to create, as well as the different skin colours, beliefs and rituals to be found in the 5,000 million human beings alive today, we actually all share an almost identical genetic heritage.
In this portrait of the human species, Morris takes us right to the centre of existence exploring all aspects between life and behaviour from the way we our young to the common use of certain facial gestures, and covers a fascinating variety of subjects – our hunting instincts have been channelled into an extraordinary range of sporting activities; how the modern art world can trace its roots back to an early primate picking up a stone that resembes a face; how different courtship rituals across the world reflect the universal emotion of love. Morris also looks at some of the damaging consequences that can be seen when we try to deny our animal heritage – how territorial fights erupt when the tribal systems within our overcrowded cities break down, and how human relationships disintegrate when natural social or sexual patterns may change.
In this final episode, the last remaining lines which focused about dealing with various aspects of human behaviour when Morris said:
Of all the millions of species that have ever lived, we the human animal, are by far the most extraordinary. We're the magic combination, the threshold leaper, the risk-taker, the venerable child for all occasions.
The most controversial moment in the series takes place in the fourth episode, which was originally transmitted on 17 August 1994. It includes sexually explicit scenes of a couple making love by using tiny endoscopic cameras placed inside to show intimate orifices located over the naked body, as well as several shots of full-frontal nudity by using thermal imagery to stimulate their sexual positions. The programme also depicts the insertion of a man's erect penis into a woman's vagina culminating in an orgasm and the ejaculation of semen. The depiction is followed by a microscopic view of human fertilization, helping to explain the defensive behaviours of the ovum to prevent multiple sperm cells from fertilizing it. For the first time, the programme actually showed artificial insemination, highlighting how these mechanisms work in a controlled environment.
The naked actors and married couple became famously known for their appearances in the 1991 sexually explicit educational video The Lovers' Guide. 31-year-old Wendy Duffield from London compounded the controversy further when she told a newspaper said "the only thing that wasn't faked was the orgasm". She made love with her husband, 38-year-old Tony, taking three times a day that required 63 sessions of strenuous effort by the couple over a period of three consecutive weeks in front of a film crew in order to show the physiological processes at work in sexual intercourse. Many scenes were also added later by using "tricks" to fool the viewers.[1] Despite sufficient warnings being also given to the public, many complaints arose about this episode which was watched by an audience of more than 12 million viewers during the post-watershed slot; the BBC eventually described the production as a normal standard practice in documentary film-making.
The controversial fourth episode was initially shown on several television networks when it was first aired, including:
It was not previously broadcast on the digital educational channel BBC Knowledge (between December 2000 and January 2002) due to various scenes of sexually explicit material containing intimate moments of a couple during orgasm were too offensive for many viewers.
| No. | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Language of the Body" | 27 July 1994 | |
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In this first episode, Morris takes us through around the world tour of cultural body language differences with a repertoire of 3,000 gestures and facial expressions, emphasizing the well known awkward situations they can produce for those unaware finds that beyond the superficial effective there are biological similarities turned out to be virtually universal, a product of our evolutionary history as much so that we share many of them with our closest cousins – chimpanzees. | |||
| 2 | "The Hunting Ape" | 3 August 1994 | |
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The episode continues as Morris traces back our ancestry from arboreal gatherers to bipedal hunters, whether learn so many of the eating habits we take for granted simply aesthetic as non-functional even separated from feeding to reveal the instincts that our ancestors acquired long ago due to powerful evolutionary selection pressures, and the implications of many of those adaptations in our modern world. | |||
| 3 | "The Human Zoo" | 10 August 1994 | |
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The third part of this episode explores the evolutionary and psychological implications of modern city living, a kind of natural environment to which our genes have not yet had time to adapt. Despite seemingly vast cultural differences when Morris reveals a very odd species replete with several arbitrary beliefs, rituals and traditions that work as mechanisms of social cohesion and group identity. | |||
| 4 | "The Biology of Love" | 17 August 1994 | |
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This fascinating controversial episode examines the profound impact of human sexuality analyzes how the attendant patterns of behaviour, within the signals between health and fertility have evolved to ensure genetic survival and pair-bonding for their romantic quests. Morris described the pubescent periods of maturation, stages of courtship and aesthetics of physical beauty were studied, along with the anatomical mechanics of sexual arousal and copulation. The intimate moments of love making to illustrate the intense physiological changes take place during reproduction and fertilization, as well as the stresses placed on couples which affect all lives in an urban crowded world are explored. | |||
| 5 | "The Immortal Genes" | 24 August 1994 | |
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The penultimate episode looks at biological basis about natural history to inspect our life cycle of the human parent and a child looking for reasons why we devote more time than any other species to raising our offspring, and reveals offer a way of overcoming death itself as average humans now live for 20 years after their breeding capabilities are over. Morris travels to the Mexican Festival of the Dead and into the depths of an Etruscan tomb to find out the answer. | |||
| 6 | "Beyond Survival" | 31 August 1994 | |
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The final episode of this series addresses the question we have all been asking ourselves since why do things like art, music, literature and philosophy. Morris concludes by exploring the deepest humans – what we do become once have our basic needs for food, warmth and shelter, as well as various concepts like creativity, artistic progression and symbolic thinking to demonstrate how aesthetic decisions are being made every day by people across the world, undoubtedly their insatiable playfulness that make us "superbly". | |||
The programme's title music were composed by Howard Blake and Guy Michelmore, which includes the opening rendition of Franz Schubert's "String Quintet in C major, D. 956" (from the turbulent section of Adagio used as the sublime second movement) was one of its haunting orchestral themes ever written also arranged by Irish classical music group The Vanbrugh Quartet with English cellist Louise Hopkins.
The accompanying 244-page book of the television series published by BBC Books on 21 July 1994,[2] and also a large-print version of the book (with 256 pages) was published by ISIS in January 1995. The book is also available in several different countries include: Australia, Finland, Italy, United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Denmark, Israel, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, China and Spain.
It was also available as a VHS format of the programme released by BBC Video on 3 April 1995, containing six episodes in a dual cassette edition with the running time of 293 minutes.
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