One day, Lila and Nathan, in their little journey back to nature (with the persuasion of Lila, of course) come across an untamed man, tarzan-like, Puff. Puff was raised by his father who believed himself to be an ape trapped in human body, just like a transvestite is a woman trapped in the body of a man. Puff’s father tried to fit in human society; he got married, had Puff, but after Kennedy’s assignation, he broke lose in his office, shouting “Apes don’t kill their own presidents!.” He then stole little Puff and went to live in the jungle with the apes and raise Puff as an ape. After he died, Puff just lived happily with another apes in the jungle, having no clue that his physical appearance belong to another specie.
The moment Lila saw Puff, she knew he is her own kind, but she could not do or say anything to stop Nathan to take Puff as the perfect subject of his new civilization experiment subject as it would only reveal her true self. Their conversation at this point in the movie is worth quoting.
Lila: I won't allow you. It's wrong. He's happy here.
Nathan: Is he, Lila? Is he happy living filthy and naked alone in this tickinfested wilderness? Never to know the love of a good woman, never to revel in the pitter-patter of little feet, never to read Moby Dick, or marvel at a Monet, or just sit back after a day of hard but rewarding work, smoke a pipe, and wonder about the nature of reality.
Lila: You'd be taking away his freedom, Nathan.
Nathan: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, Lila, to quote Janet Jackson. Belonging to something, a person or a society, is a basic human craving. We are communal creatures. This poor soul has no one, nothing ...
However, there is no secret in this world, the day Nathan put Puff into the laboratory, he accidentally found out Lila’s secret by plunging in the toilet to see Lila, covered all over with shaving cream, trying to do her everyday all body-shave before bed. He was so shocked with this brutal fact that he slept with his irresistibly sexy assistance, Gabrielle (who fake French accent in order to be sexier in eyes of other men), in front of Puff’s cage. Puff, a virgin, watched the whole sexual act with amazement; now he got the answer of what has been missing from his life, and in order to satisfy to this most basic desire of him, as an animal, he is willing to do anything to get some of ‘it’, even it means he will have to forget being an ape, become a human, and play their games.
Lila, on the other hand, was heart-broken. She went crazy and shaved every hair in her body including her head and eye brows. She realized that she loved Nathan so much, too much that she is willing to sell her soul, to become the woman Nathan wants her to be, and conceal her true ape nature. She bought a long blond curly wig, wore make up, dress in a very feminine way, and practiced table manner until it became robotic. She then came back for Nathan for another chance. Nathan, on the other hand, was confused which way to choose; to give in to his animal instinct and choose the hairless, young, and extremely seductive Gabrielle, or be civilized and “do not abandon somebody just because they have physical problems” and stick with Lila. Nathan took a look at the still-wild Puff in the cage, jerking off at Gabrielle, and he decided that he must be different and fired Gabrielle.
Lila, with her funny big blond wig, turned to be Nathan’s assistance so that she can be closer to him. Even though Puff’s training to become civilized human progressed with astonishing speed, Nathan was restless. He still dreamt of Gabrielle every time he had sex with Lila, and Lila herself was so tired having to be what she is not. Lila then decided that having a baby would solve everything, but that proposal pushed Nathan off the hook, he went back to Gabrielle, in fear that his baby will be an ape, on the day that he let Puff free from his electrical shock neck ring. Puff, having fully trained to be an English gentleman, found it hard to control his sexual desire and be a gentleman. In a very amusing scene, Nathan put Puff in front of the slide of porn, trying to train Puff to control himself from not running into the picture of the naked women and masturbate. It took numerous electric shocks before Puff could constrain himself. However, the results proved to be a failure as the first thing Puff did after he got his freedom was to buy the motivation of all his efforts, sex, from a prostitute. Even though he is, in the surface, a full gentleman traveling with his teacher, Nathan, around the US as a result of Nathan’s accurate assumption that civilization is the way for happiness, Puff was not happy. His only happy moment was when he sneaked from Nathan to have sex; he started to miss the wilderness and the nature.
Just like Lila heard Puff’s request, she came back with a truly hairless and sexy body, as a result of extreme electrolysis course and workout, this time not to have Nathan back but to revenge him. She broke in the lab with a gun and stole Puff from Nathan saying, “I am going to retrain him to be an ape in order to prove that your civilization sucks. He will be better and happier with fresh air, freedom, and most of all, free of human’s eyes to judge him. Fuck humanity! ”. And she did what she said. She used the very same method, electronic shock every time Puff speak human’s word or act like human, to get back his memory as an ape. She and Puff then went to live in the forest, once again, this time with a mate, in her old kind, free and happy world.
Well, just when you think it is going to be a happy ending, Kaufman just punches you in the face with another plot twist. Nathan, having took a peek at the new hairless and sexier than ever Lila, is once again restless, and started fantasizing Lila when he slept with Gabrielle. He went so far that he searched through the forest for the sign of Lila and Puff. When he found them, he told Lila that he realized that civilization really sucks and that he is ready to be trained to be an ape, just for another chance to be with Lila. When both apes ignored him, Nathan put out the gun, ordering both to take him into their world. Puff, however, seized the gun and spoke in human-tongue the first time since he got into the forest, “You did create me in your image, Nathan. Before you I was a simple, happy, complete being, in harmony with the world around me. After you I became duplicitous, cynical, angry, anal, totally out of touch with my surroundings. In a word, Nathan, I became you. Lila has reintroduced me to myself. And, incidentally, what I'm about to do, kill you, is something that would never have occurred to me to do as a creature of the Earth. Before when I killed, it was for food or in self-defense. Now I will kill for revenge. Revenge is an abstract concept, Nathan. And I learned abstract thinking from you”. Then he shot Nathan in the head.
However, it was Lila to take the responsibility and this is the way Lila laid her argument for what she will do.
LILA: No. This is the end of the road. There's a dead human being here. For all of his faults, he was a human being, and certainly a victim of his culture as much as anybody.
PUFF: Forget him, Lila. We'll disappear. We'll never talk about it again. We'll never talk again period. I love you.
LILA: Puff, what happened to you is as much my fault as Nathan's. Maybe more so, because I knew it was wrong and I went along with it anyway. I'm taking responsibility for the murder. I want you to go back to your old life.
PUFF: I won't let you do that. I shot the bastard. And I'm glad.
LILA: No. Go back to the woods. This is a sacrifice I need to make. In my world we have something called penance. It's another abstraction, but I had the concept drummed into my head during my years in the convent. It doesn't exist for you, and it shouldn't. See, I could never be free again anyway, so I might as well be in jail.
PUFF: Then I'll live for both of us, Lila. I'll be the most free, truest animal in the whole forest. For both of us.
LILA: That's what I'm counting on.
PUFF: But first I'll live among them, just long enough to testify before congress about the waywardness of humankind.
LILA: Okay. If you think it will help.
Puff then told the whole story to the congress, and the congress promised to pass the legislation addressing this problem. Lila cried with happiness for their victory in jail. In the ending scene, the television broadcast Puff’s return to forest nationally. Puff made dramatic scene in gradually taking one cloth of after the other before he went into the forest. Just when we think the film will end, there was a car parking that the side of that forest. In the car, it was Gabrielle who came to pick Puff up. In turned out that the whole thing was a set up. Puff always fantasized Gabrielle, someone he never had the chance to lay hand on, and he missed all the comfortable, away from mosquitoes and rainy nights, in the city, and Gabrielle needed someone to replace Nathan, and who could be better than Puff, who was trained to be just like Nathan but also with more touches from the wild.
(End of the story)
In the end, in my view, it seems that Kaufman tried to say that there is no answer to the question whether civilization, the development in science to make us more comfortable is worthy for the loss of our touches and harmony with nature; that it is immeasurable which is happier, being a civilized human in the society full of rules, or being a wild animal in the forest with nothing to think about other than living day-by-day. We can never know what really suits human nature more, being with nature or being in society. However, one thing we can be sure of is that Kaufman agrees with Freud that it is the most basic drive of human, the sex drive, that designates our action. However, with the little touch from Venus and Mars, Kaufman then broadened this assumption but saying man are in search of sex and women are in search for love. Lila decided to sell her soul as an ape for the love of Nathan. Gabrielle also faked scent accent to be more attractive. The search for love is more powerful than one’s own identity. In the same way, Puff decided to leave his life as an ape to be human for sex, and conversely, Nathan wanted to become an ape just to have another sex with Lila. For men, the urge for sex is utmost powerful.
The second assumption that Kaufman made is that insatiability is in human nature. In every situation, the grass is always greener at the other side. Nathan’s indecisiveness between Lila and Gabrielle is the first proof, but the satire and much more painful one is the fact that in the end, Puff chose comfort from science, and sophistication from civilization, over the chance of being with nature, even though he knew in his heart that he used to long for nature when he was in human society.
I believe that, even “Human Nature” is just a movie, it did provide a good portrait of the drive behind human’s choices. And also that it is in vain to find the answer towards the question of whether what science brought us is worthy for what we lost. Science brought us comfort under the cost of nature’s destruction. We live under numerous self-produced rule in order not to be alone. We produced rules to prohibit our basic needs, and judge those who violate these rules to follow their natural needs as uncivilized. We told ourselves to judge people from their heart, but even those we deem smartest cannot stop their natural sex drive from judging people based on outlook.
In the end, the only way for human to be happy is not to seek for the extreme, but to except things as it is. If the insatiability in human nature can be rid, as every religion preaches us too, we can find peace no matter where we are. The possibility of getting rid of this nature, however, seems to be low in this world of science, technology, civilization, and blooming capitalism, as we are taught that to be successful, we have to pursue our needs aggressively. However, Miyazaki’s animations seem to try to answer the question of how to live happily in the right balance between technology development and nature. I will try to cover some of the interesting ideas from his work next week, if possible.
”