Promotional image for Netflix’s “Chimp Crazy” featuring Tonia Haddix. (IMDB)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were all locked up in our homes, television came to the rescue with “Tiger King,” the multipart saga of Joe Exotic and his empire of captive tigers.
It had heroes and villains, depending on which side of the tiger enclosure you were standing on, and it offered an escape from the continual drumbeat of COVID news.
Yes, it was a rather trashy show, but the convergence of pandemic mania and the ensuing societal lockdown proved it was the kind of surreal entertainment the alternative universe we were living through demanded.
Now comes “Chimp Crazy” on HBO. Instead of tigers and lions, this series deals with eccentric people with an unhealthy infatuation for chimpanzees. How unhealthy? When we first meet the protagonist — or antagonist of the series, again, based on which side of the animal-rights fence you stand on — Tonia Haddix, she explains the nature of her devotion to chimpanzees by equating it with the love she has for her own children. She quickly adds an addendum of “only deeper.”
The documentarian describes Haddix as a nurse turned exotic animal broker, while she describes herself as the Dolly Parton of chimps. If you watch the show, you’ll know why.
Like so many people who bend this way toward their dogs and cats, Haddix transfers all manner of human emotions and human psychology onto these primates. She is certain every hand gesture, every turn of their mouth, and every showing of their dangerous-looking teeth is an expression of some human emotion.
The story’s other protagonist, or antagonist, is the organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The group took Haddix to court over what it claimed were the horrendous conditions in which the chimps she was caring for were being kept.
It would be easy to dismiss this show and do something more constructive with the 45-50 minutes of precious time each episode consumes. I get the nagging feeling Haddix and the producers of this documentary may be in on the joke, and this is all a massive stunt or some kind of guerilla theater commentary on American culture. Sorry for that gorilla pun, but the presence of PETA brings me back to thinking this is real.
When the representatives from PETA appear on camera — a lawyer who handles their litigations and a British actor/spokesman — they resonate with sincerity. There are no tells they might be pretending. They are intent on rescuing these chimpanzees from Haddix and safely transporting them to a refuge that is more in line with their natural environment.
Laudatory as that sounds, PETA, like Haddix, has a long history of skewing the relationship between humans and the animal kingdom. Just how far afield this organization is from a biblical view of creation can be found in numerous quotes from its founder, Ingrid Newkirk. This is just one of them: “The extinction of Homo sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth — social and environmental.”
Besides sounding very “Homo sapiens phobic,” it is based on the bedrock foundation of PETA that animals and humans are equal in every sense of the word. So, if all parties concerned in this series are indeed legitimate, I think the creators of this show are making a fundamental error. They believe they are pitting two opposing forces and the predictable conflict turns into good television. But Haddix and PETA have more in common than either side is willing to see.
They both see moral equivalency between humans and animals, and that is just not the way God made this world. Pope Francis is the most environmentally conscious pontiff in the history of the Church, as his encyclical, Laudato Si (“Praise Be to You”), demonstrates. And as thoughtful and embracing of our fellow “creatures” as the pope’s letter is, it is done within the context of the Creator.
Nature is a great gift from God and all the creatures that inhabit it have a basic dignity that deserves respect. Putting top hats on monkeys, or teaching them to ride bikes and smoke cigarettes probably does not fit that bill. But neither does the anthropomorphizing of animals that PETA does de facto and the likes of Haddix more overtly. If PETA and its nemesis Haddix are correct, a primate is the moral equivalent of a child, and if that is the case, the story of Genesis is wrong.
Francis was not speaking about the disordered view of nature on an American TV show when addressing the Italian Biblical Conference in 2016, but he could have been. “It is essential to reflect on how we were created, formed in the image and likeness of the Creator, which is what makes us different from other creatures and from the whole of Creation.”