In France during the 1700s there was a considerable interest in discovering the character of mankind in its natural state. That is, what would we be like without the benefits of society? Some philosophers, like Hobbes, argued that we'd be pretty rotten to one another without the control of some central authority over our animal passions. ("The war of all against all.")
Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that human would be rather nice, that we were born with compassion for others. ("The Noble Savage," which is a misrepresentation of Rousseau's anfractuous argument.) After all, even animals showed nurturance for each other. (He should have seen a herd of elephants coming across a skeletonized specimen. The herd goes ape, picking up the bones and running this way and that in confusion. You get the feeling they'd like to give the deceased a proper funeral and bury him.)
Well, when the wild child of Aveyron came out of the wilderness in a state as close to nature as it was possible to get -- no clothing, no speech, no table manners, no religion, no nothing -- what an opportunity to test the theories of people like Hobbes and Rousseau.
The boy was about eleven or twelve when he was brought to Jean Itard, a scientist who ran a school for deaf mutes near Paris. Itard brought him into his own house and raised him with the help of a housekeeper.
The film is a kind of docudrama describing Itard's attempts to instill some social and linguistic skills in the child -- after they cut his hair, scrub him down, and put some clothes on him. Francois Truffaut, the director, is Itard. Jean-Pierre Cargol is the child, who is named Victor, and he's not bad for a kid his age.
Now, the approach to the subject that Truffaut uses is likely to be off-putting for some viewers. If you had to choose a single word to describe it, "clinical" might do the job. Truffeau the director does not elicit any pity for the churlish Victor. He could be pretty bratty when he wanted to be.
And Truffaut the actor is detached throughout. His narration, which sounds as if it had been taken directly from Itard's notes, is cold and almost Listerian. Itard rarely shows any warmth towards Victor -- and vice versa. Victor isn't much more than the subject of a longitudinal case study. What drama there is, is built around small incidents, like Victor's learning to drink milk from a bowl instead of lapping it up with his tongue. Compared to this, "The Elephant Man" is a blatant tear jerker.
However, the script gives the story something of a happy ending. It ends after Victor learns to say "lait" and to spell it, too. The implication is that the kid will go one to master language and become a full-fledged adult human.
It didn't happen. In Victor's case he never got much beyond "lait" and a couple of grunts, and that was apparently the state in which he died. There are other cases of children growing up in isolation. Probably the best known is that of Genie, a Los Angeles girl who was confined to an attic room by her father for twelve years, strapped to a potty. She didn't acquire more than the most fundamental of social skills. And she didn't learn to speak any better than Victor, though both were probably of normal intelligence. There seems to be a kind of launch window when it comes to learning a language. Once that critical period is past, it's gone for good.
As for Hobbes and Rousseau, their theories were interesting thought experiments but in the few authenticated cases of real childhood isolation, the kids don't seem either warlike or compassionate. Mostly they're uninterested in adult activities. They lack curiosity and aren't eager to learn. As Rousseau might have put it, plus ca change, plus ca meme-chose, eh?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that human would be rather nice, that we were born with compassion for others. ("The Noble Savage," which is a misrepresentation of Rousseau's anfractuous argument.) After all, even animals showed nurturance for each other. (He should have seen a herd of elephants coming across a skeletonized specimen. The herd goes ape, picking up the bones and running this way and that in confusion. You get the feeling they'd like to give the deceased a proper funeral and bury him.)
Well, when the wild child of Aveyron came out of the wilderness in a state as close to nature as it was possible to get -- no clothing, no speech, no table manners, no religion, no nothing -- what an opportunity to test the theories of people like Hobbes and Rousseau.
The boy was about eleven or twelve when he was brought to Jean Itard, a scientist who ran a school for deaf mutes near Paris. Itard brought him into his own house and raised him with the help of a housekeeper.
The film is a kind of docudrama describing Itard's attempts to instill some social and linguistic skills in the child -- after they cut his hair, scrub him down, and put some clothes on him. Francois Truffaut, the director, is Itard. Jean-Pierre Cargol is the child, who is named Victor, and he's not bad for a kid his age.
Now, the approach to the subject that Truffaut uses is likely to be off-putting for some viewers. If you had to choose a single word to describe it, "clinical" might do the job. Truffeau the director does not elicit any pity for the churlish Victor. He could be pretty bratty when he wanted to be.
And Truffaut the actor is detached throughout. His narration, which sounds as if it had been taken directly from Itard's notes, is cold and almost Listerian. Itard rarely shows any warmth towards Victor -- and vice versa. Victor isn't much more than the subject of a longitudinal case study. What drama there is, is built around small incidents, like Victor's learning to drink milk from a bowl instead of lapping it up with his tongue. Compared to this, "The Elephant Man" is a blatant tear jerker.
However, the script gives the story something of a happy ending. It ends after Victor learns to say "lait" and to spell it, too. The implication is that the kid will go one to master language and become a full-fledged adult human.
It didn't happen. In Victor's case he never got much beyond "lait" and a couple of grunts, and that was apparently the state in which he died. There are other cases of children growing up in isolation. Probably the best known is that of Genie, a Los Angeles girl who was confined to an attic room by her father for twelve years, strapped to a potty. She didn't acquire more than the most fundamental of social skills. And she didn't learn to speak any better than Victor, though both were probably of normal intelligence. There seems to be a kind of launch window when it comes to learning a language. Once that critical period is past, it's gone for good.
As for Hobbes and Rousseau, their theories were interesting thought experiments but in the few authenticated cases of real childhood isolation, the kids don't seem either warlike or compassionate. Mostly they're uninterested in adult activities. They lack curiosity and aren't eager to learn. As Rousseau might have put it, plus ca change, plus ca meme-chose, eh?