Project Nim Anthropology

Introduction

The movie ‘Project Nim’ tells the story of the life of a chimpanzee named Nim, after being taken from his mother’s hands in the 1970’s, by Herb, a researcher at the university of Columbia. The movie thoroughly depicts Herbs controversial attempt the teach Nim sign language to break the language barrier between humans and other species, naming the experiment Project Nim. The movie details aspects of Nim treacherous life as he is faced with many challenges throughout the experiment such as adapting into a human lifestyle, moving from owner to owner, being taken away from familiarities ect. The aspects of the film that connect to social sciences were Nim firstly being moved from a chimpanzee environment to a human one, followed

by interacting with them and not chimps, also settling into the culture of human kind and developing our traditions such as sign language, smoking, drinking, playing ect and living in a house in a room rather than out in the open outside. The branch of social science that Nim’s life fell under and connected to the movie best was Anthropology, under the specialization of primatology. My reasoning for this is because anthropology, the study of what makes humans, humans, goes into different specializations, one of them being primatology. Primatology focuses on the study of the life of primates, their traditions, cultures and beings. Moving Nim into a human lifestyle forced him to adjust to human culture culture and learn our traditions. Whilst Nim was doing this, everyone else involved in the experiment was analyzing Nim’s and chimpanzees in generals, culture, traditions, aspects and ways. Making this a two-way stream of Anthropology, primatology.

Reflection

From the perspective of a social scientist, I do think that this was a good film.

My reasoning for this is because they focused on both the human and chimp’s perspective of things, showing us what every one was thinking as things progressed. This made it very easy to understand the anthropology aspect of the film and you saw growth in Nim and the doubts of the humans. It also showed how important every species’ habit is to them and what taking away its familiarities does to them. The strengths of the film from an anthropological perspective was the initial idea of project Nim. This was trying to see if an animal can adapt to human adjustments and eventually learn sign language and say a sentence. This was a strength because if the hypothesis proved right it would have change social sciences forever. Another strength of the movie form an anthropological perspective was when Laura moved Nim to an estate in Riverdale that had a huge outdoors with trees, a tire swing, and fields. This was an anthropological strength in the movies because it was suited what a chimpanzee’s surroundings should be like. It helped Nim to feel more like an animal rather than a human. A weakness of the film from an anthropological standpoint trumping nature with nurture. This was a weakness because it took away what a chimpanzee should be exposed to in its life. Instead, they were impractical and brought Nim up as a child and opened him to various aspects of a human life such as child love. This was emotionally distressful and confusing for Nim because this was not what a chimpanzee should be exposed

to.

Conclusion

Based on this movie, yes I would recommend it to an HSP3U class. My reasoning for this is the movie shows its audiences the complexity and important of each species lifestyle. The movie allows its viewers to be touched, appalled, interested and judgmental on the ethical and unethical aspects of the film. The movie teaches its audience the importance of a species’ culture and upbringing to its behavior and how trying to alter that can bring more bad than good. It addition, although focusing on Anthropology, it does encore-operate all 3 of the social sciences in small but important ways which is the basis of an HSP3U class. It allows viewers to form opinions and alternatives and to build upon knowledge shown.