"The Planet of the Apes" and Popularity

Paper Summary:

Audience reaction to the first of a series of five films derived from Pierre Boulle's novel, "La Planete des Singes", was a solid indicator of a new kind of consciousness among viewers. It terrified and repelled, but stretched their imagination as to what the future could be. The threat of nuclear destruction, the implications of the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, and the consequences of the Vietnam War were the torrents and setting when Boulle wrote his novel, and by the time the first film was produced and shown in 1968, there were other threats to human security. This paper analyzes all five films in the series, showing the messages relating to mankind that each one attempts to get across. The paper concludes that history shows that the majority of the human race has not used its rational functions as intelligently or positively as it should have, and thus, this novel rang a wake-up call: Man could have lost the right to rule over creation and thus, been dethroned by beasts to enjoy supremacy.

From the Paper:

"The novel awakened something deep within us that made the series this fascinating. It must be the desire to find a race or species that is superior or better than today's man. A species that would not need to make slaves out of apes or other forms of life deemed lower or inferior, so that no novel like Boulle's has to be written in rebellion.
But his novel still tells us a lot of things. The human race limited itself not only with the use of only two instead of four limbs, which apes make use of out of their intelligence. It also tells us that apes exercise more options than humans do: it is believed that they can speak and reason like man, but have no inclination or desire to do so.. This seeming position of advantage implies still another form of "superiority.""

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