Endlings: Przewalski's horse and Genghis Khan - Nov 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about BB ‘Endlings’ once more. This week’s animal – the Przewalski’s horse.

Now, last week’s episode, about the Thylacine, (aka the Tasmanian wolf), was rather lacklustre; this week’s episode is something else because of two points. One is that the Thylacine and the Przewalski’s wild horseserve as foils to each other – both were captured for the zoos, but while that served just as an extra cause of extinction for the Thylacine, for the Przewalski’s horse it was a salvation – the species was able to survive its’ extinction in the wild In the zoos, and those zoo animals served as the initial breeding stock for the rewilding program. Only, as BB points out, returning a formerly extinct (in the wild) animal into the wild is only the beginning, much more management lies ahead. This just might be a subtle criticism to such programs, as Colossal, who appear to do exactly that… once they get to it, of course. When that happens is another question, but BB is gearing up to be prepared already.

That said, the point that BB brings up in this week’s episode is a good one – humans are still the dominant force on the planet, many things happen on Earth with their involvement, and living space is one of them. Namely: to survive in the wild, the Przewalski’s horses need a certain ecosystem, and without human help that would be impossible. Moreover, to achieve this ecosystem, to accommodate the Przewalski’s wild horses, a certain amount of land had to be given up to them, land that could be used otherwise, by other species, including humans. In Mongolia, In case of the Przewalski’s horse, this came true. In other cases, it might not have, and as BB point out, PR and aesthetics (and national pride) were very important, if not crucial, in achieving this – and we come to the second point.

Genghis Khan. One of Earth history’s lynchpins. In this week’s historical anecdote, he, supposedly, saw some of the wild Przewalski’s horses in his day and age, but his horse was spooked by them, and did not approach them. Good for the horses! GK was one of the most formidable and ruthless leaders in human history, and his take on nature was to organize giant, organized (sorry about the repetition), hunts, that took their toll on nature, including wild horses, most likely. Yes, the scale with modern hunting is not comparable, but hunting alone does not cover all of the extinctions on this planet…

Back to Przewalski’s horses and Thylacines, another reason why the latter perished while the former did not… yes, because an Australian marsupial had a worse time surviving in old time zoos than an Asian placental mammal. However, the fact that horses have an entirely different PR than wolves (or anything wolf-related) do, also served a fact. Humans – especially those of the West, of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (initial) origin wanted to save Przewalski’s horses, and so they did, while the Thylacine… while with the Thylacine, it was the other way, and so the Thylacine is gone, extinct, at least officially… Real life sucks, remember?

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Endlings: Thylacine (and the Gorgon) - Nov 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Ms. Haynes’ Medusa-based novel? Pause

In truth, I wanted to talk about BB/Endlings ‘Thylacine’ episode, but not unlike what we had with the Florida panther last month, BB/Endlings found their stride: it is dutiful retelling of Wikipedia articles, including the Thylacine one. When the ‘Wild Kratts’ cartoon series had the titular characters travel back in time to see the Thylacine and its’ extinction, it was actually a more derived take – and ‘Wild Kratts’ is a children’s cartoon!.. Where were we?

Here is the thing. Ms. Haynes positions herself as a progressive person, she talks about the Greek myths from a more feminist/feminine P.O.V., but…

…but these days (mid-2020s) it might not be enough. Obviously, kudos to her for not talking smack about other mythological writers, but it does make her essays – about Helen, Medusa, the Amazons – feel rather flat and one-dimensional: they are dutiful retellings of the depictions of the mythical women in the modern or post-Medieval art, writing and sometimes in other media, such as TV series. There also dutiful retellings of the myths of the mythical women in question; they are broken by sarcastic comments (that do not amount to anything and serve to better depict Ms. Haynes as a person), by rhetorical questions (that are not usually followed up), and by the like. One can imagine Ms. Haynes as, say, a university or a college teacher, who is delivering lectures to her class, engaging them in discussion and conversation, trying to make them think about her subject, and largely forgetting about them once they graduate and leave her class behind. There will always be exceptions, of course, but usually the effort behind those exceptions will come from the other people, not her. Ms. Haynes non-fiction book, ‘Pandora’s Jar’, has the same feeling. It is quite informative, of course, but not particularly progressive – or ‘progressive’; in a Protestant/post-Protestant world of the modern Western culture, this can make the difference between eternity (remembrance) and oblivion…

As for her fiction books… ‘A Thousand Ships’ is based on various Greek (and Roman?) plays about what happened during the last days of the Trojan War and what happened after, including the Odyssey and a few other chapters. Here, Ms. Haynes tries something different, such as Penelope’s personal development, but-

-but what can you do, if you are writing a novel (or another piece) based on someone else’s story, such as the Greek literary works and folk myths, and not your own? Most often, one out of the three: you can dutifully retell the myth such as it is, (Mr. Pullman did in his book of the Greek myths), you can write something that is entirely your own, (aka your own work, which can be argued pro and contra, but it’s yours), or you can re-tell the original story (for example Perseus’ and Medusa’s) with just a few different tweaks ‘behind the scenes’, a sort of crypto-history, put otherwise. In addition, this is how Ms. Haynes’ novels feel like – dutiful re-telling of the traditional myths, with a few comments – sarcastic, poignant, etc., it doesn’t matter – scattered here and there; they don’t amount to anything but to make her novels stand out from the rest and make them more sellable. It is not a bad strategy, it certainly is sensible, but, again, it makes her books, novels and otherwise, a one-hit wonder, forgettable quite easily.

… ‘Stone Blind’ is the telling of Medusa, Perseus, and Athena; Ms. Haynes is being sympathetic towards Medusa, making Perseus a coward, and the decapitated head of the Gorgon eventually petrify Athena, who thus finds peace in death. This is actually quite clever, but the mild, respectful, (and sometimes sarcastic) language of the novel wears away any controversial bits, making the readers of ‘Stone Blind’ feel stone cold towards the novel’s characters. The Gorgons are not bad. Athena is cold. Perseus is a coward, apparently. So on, but currently there is plenty of fan works that drive the same point home; in ‘Thousand Ships’ Ms. Haynes made Penny the Amazon queen suicidal – that is something else, but we’ll talk about it some other time. What about ‘Endlings’?

Same thing that goes down with Ms. Haynes, really. The first episode, about the passenger pigeons was intriguing and thought provoking because there was talk about bringing the avian back (and we talked about it). The second was also interesting, because of the silphium’s ambiguity, (and we talked about it too). However, the next episode – the Florida panther – and this episode – the Thylacine – are straightforward: the pumas are dying out in Florida because (insert your reason here), and the Thylacine is gone because (insert your reason here II). Maybe it disappeared in the second half of the 20^th century, not the first, but it is still gone, and it cannot be brought back (because humans don’t want to, apparently – is it so much harder to bring back the Thylacine than the dire wolf or the giant moa?). Aye, ‘Endlings’ are supposed to be sad – but sad because of the inevitable extinction, not because they are just that depressive and simply-made… Ah well, this is real life. It sucks, remember?

…Well, this is it for now, see you all soon!