Alpha and Ella: How Animal Antagonists Reflect Human Violence and Exceed Human Projections

What is it about?

The films, Slotherhouse (2023) and Monkey Shines (1988) feature threatening animal antagonists that draw on humans' primitive fear of animal others, yet also turn a mirror back on human violence to non-human companions. The films' animal antagonists, Alpha (sloth) and Ella (capuchin monkey) respectively, teach us something about ourselves as humans and our relation to nonhumans. In these films, the violence of Alpha and Ella stem from their relationships with humans and human environments - they are not just reflections or analogies for human violence, but a demonstration of agency that has the potential to exceed human projections. Eco-horror grapples with the troubled relationship between humanity and the natural world, utilizing horror to promote ecological awareness, represent ecological crises, and/or blur human and nonhuman distinctions. Slotherhouse and Monkey Shines both deal with humans' contentious relationships with nonhumans and respectively demonstrate the horrific consequences of the wild animal pet trade and the use of animals in biomedical research. These films depict obscene violence at the hands of the nonhuman animal, yet in doing so force the viewer to confront the violence of placing exotic animals in captive conditions - either as pets or as objects of biomedical research. The real eco-horror here is not about animal violence, but about human violence against animals.

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Photo by Kleber Varejão Filho on Unsplash

Photo by Kleber Varejão Filho on Unsplash