The Human Zoo

I’m here. It looks all right, so far… but there’s a kind of smell in the air, like someone has gone crazy with the mint-and-lavender air-freshener.

I’m a bit confused, still.

Me and my big mouth.

Oh! You want to know how it happened. Bear with me while I do one of my Voices skits. I am a stand-up comic, after all…   

-      Real people.

-      What do you mean?

-      I’m not about to spend megabucks on safaris, when there’s raw material galore here.

-      That’s nasty.

-      Specimens, then. Natives.

-      Explain.

-      My idea is to have visitors. They come here and see… and pay.

-      You disgust me.

-      We feed and clothe these… persons… and…

-      …make money off their backs. Isn’t that it?

-      Why not? It has been done before, and no doubt, will be done again.

-      I hate the very idea.

-      But you won’t hate the trappings of wealth that will come with it.

-      Yeah, astute choice of word, trap-pings.

-      Come on, I was only trying to be punny.

-      The very idea of using real people as exhibits, disgusts me.

-      I present to you the Great Paris Exhibition of 2013, in which…

-      I know all about that. I’m a history major, remember.

-      I didn’t know the degree covers such esoteric niches…

-      Oh yes. I won an award for my haiku;

“two by two they come

amphibians, insects, fish, fowl

heirs and masters of the earth”

-      But as I was saying…

-      I know, dammit, what you were saying.

-      Listen to me. People are jaded, they need new things to pique their curiosity. My ‘inhabitants from foreign lands on display as article of curiosity’ is a sure-fire money-spinner.

-      If you say so. 

-      It will be bigger and better than anything that’s gone before. I may even call it The Pan-European Attraction Unlimited.

-      Oh yes. Why not celebrate the religion of post-modernist atheist colonialism?

-      Ah. I knew that sooner or later you’d start with the verbiage.

-      Yes. Just as this ‘noble cause’ waffle in this pamphlet draft here.

-      Awareness. Discernment. That’s what it is.

-      It’s a travesty. It’s man’s inhumanity to man.

-      You are misinterpreting me. All I want is to make people aware. If it means I earn oodles of boodle into the bargain, I’m easy.

-      Oh come on. In a moment, you’ll be saying that you are challenging the romantic and exotic view of creating the stereotypical noble savage.

-      Say that again, will you, so I write it down and add it to the blurb. It rolls off the tongue.

-      The hell I will. What you are doing is violence. Racism. Bigotry. A rampant, misguided, moral superiority complex.

-      It’s Art, with an upper-case A. Art must challenge, provoke, stimulate…

-      …make use of uncouth savages…needs must when the devil drives, and all that…

-      I see you’re getting the picture.

-      You don’t even recognise sarcasm when it hits you right between the eyes.

-      Racism is not at issue here.

-      Really? It’s just the second fowl of when you kill two birds with one stone. An incidental death – but a murder, anyway.

-      It is a latter-day voyage of discovery; a means to an end. Using the interest and delectation of the crowd to make me - and you - some dough. Stop being so self-righteous, for Pete’s sake.

-      It’s not that I’m being smarmy or anything. It’s that this kind of twisted idea of what passes for entertainment, using others to line your pockets, that’s just not cricket.

-      Look you have it all wrong. The term Human Zoo has probably put you in mind of the Theory of Races.

-      Isn’t that what it is?

-      No, not at all. My idea is to emulate the great international trade fairs of yore, without the tackiness. I will pay the inhabitants of the villages, and make sure that they have decent working hours. 

-      Really?

-      Really and truly. I will even allow them to join a Union. If they want to.

-      Oh yes. And, of course, they will have to re-enact their sacred rites and rituals, in front of paying visitors… when you know as well as I do that these are supposed to be shrouded in mystery and not even the lower castes may participate…

-      If the celebrant is not really an ordained one, it is just a re-enactment…

-      And you know that most native inhabitants of the pseudo-villages in historic Human Zoos had to eat meat – dog, cat, rat, whatever, just so that the oglers would see them disembowel and clean the animals…

-      Well…

-      I learned that their diets were usually gruel-like. When they had to eat meat on a regular basis, they became ill and their blood pressure shot up.

-      Well…

-      You are beginning to sound like a cracked record, stuck on the chorus of well, well, well… 

-      “God has some work for everyone to do. There can’t be no idle hands in His Kingdom.”

-      Quoting Hemingway now, are we?

-      You’re a sharp one.

-      Yes, amn’t I? I am not titillated by the spectre of cultural superiority.

-      My version of the Human Zoo will respect traditions. Mind you, each adobe hut will have running water, air conditioning, and central heating; it will only appear to be primitive, from the outside. Visitors will not be allowed to peek inside them.

-      Ah, isn’t that a relief.  

-      Yes, of course. Oh, you were being sarcastic again. 

-      Won’t it get boring for the residents to do the same thing, day in, day out, without being able to roam to pastures new as they do in the life from which they would have been plucked?

-      Oh, definitely not. They can switch between making body paste, making cornmeal, weaving, killing and skinning animals, churning butter, sewing, making jewellery, removing body hair… the list of activities is endless.

-      I am beginning to feel sick. You’re serious, aren’t you? I thought you were kind of having me on, to gauge my reaction. This is nothing but slavery, albeit in a polite form. Sing for your supper, refined.

-      You’ll do.

-      What?

-      Based on your reactions during this interview, you have been selected to head the next mission to Valida XI. You leave tomorrow. The alternative is a quick dip in the Piranha Pond.