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Love & Bananas
Dec. 13th, 2018 11:17 amLove & Bananas wants, I think, to be the Blackfish of Asian elephants, but it doesn’t have quite enough oomph to make that happen. Most of all, it lacks a compelling central character. Blackfish becomes a cri de coeur for freedom for all orcas by telling the story of Tilikum: the documentary recounts his life following his capture as a baby, showing how the unnatural experience of activity drove Tilikum to psychosis that ended with him dismembering SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in front of a live audience.
Ashley Bell, the director of Love & Bananas, doesn’t give the audience that kind of detail about Noi Na, the partially blind elephant whose trip to an elephant sanctuary the documentary follows. Bell accompanies elephant conservationist Lek Chailert to the trekking company where Noi Na gave elephant rides, but that’s as much of Noi Na’s history as we learn; we don’t get the same sense of character as we do with Tilikum.
In particular, I think Bell missed a trick by not at least interviewing Noi Na’s mahout. Now, unlike interviews with Sea World trainers, this would have required a translator, but it would have given more insight into Noi Na’s life at the trekking company and also perhaps into her character - and Bell was right there.
If you’re using an art form - a novel or a documentary or whatever - to try to push reform, then you need to make people care about an individual character within the work. If all goes well, they’ll extrapolate beyond that first character to care about the plight of all orcas or Asian elephants or what have you. But you need to make the first individual connection: that’s what makes people not only agree intellectually but feel the burning need to make all their friends read and watch this thing so they’ll convert to the cause.
Love & Bananas convinced me that humans treat Asian elephants shamefully (I am of course an easy sell on all things elephant). But it didn’t fill me with a compelling need to shout “WATCH THIS!” at everyone I know.
Ashley Bell, the director of Love & Bananas, doesn’t give the audience that kind of detail about Noi Na, the partially blind elephant whose trip to an elephant sanctuary the documentary follows. Bell accompanies elephant conservationist Lek Chailert to the trekking company where Noi Na gave elephant rides, but that’s as much of Noi Na’s history as we learn; we don’t get the same sense of character as we do with Tilikum.
In particular, I think Bell missed a trick by not at least interviewing Noi Na’s mahout. Now, unlike interviews with Sea World trainers, this would have required a translator, but it would have given more insight into Noi Na’s life at the trekking company and also perhaps into her character - and Bell was right there.
If you’re using an art form - a novel or a documentary or whatever - to try to push reform, then you need to make people care about an individual character within the work. If all goes well, they’ll extrapolate beyond that first character to care about the plight of all orcas or Asian elephants or what have you. But you need to make the first individual connection: that’s what makes people not only agree intellectually but feel the burning need to make all their friends read and watch this thing so they’ll convert to the cause.
Love & Bananas convinced me that humans treat Asian elephants shamefully (I am of course an easy sell on all things elephant). But it didn’t fill me with a compelling need to shout “WATCH THIS!” at everyone I know.
