Elephant Rebellion (with Reference to the Case of Tyke)

Tyke the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus ...

Photo: Honolulu Star (1994)

Perhaps the most (in)famous recent case of so-called elephant rebellion involved a large, 20-year-old African she-elephant called Tyke, who regularly performed with a circus, before one day deciding that enough was enough.

During a show in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 20, 1994, Tyke killed her trainer, Allen Campbell, and seriously injured a co-worker. She then bolted from the arena and rampaged through the streets of the Kakaako central business district for more than thirty minutes with a trumpety-trump, trump, trump, trump!

Fearing for the safety of the public and of damage to private property - though seemingly unconcerned about Tyke's obvious distress (not to mention the years of abuse and humiliation she'd suffered leading up to the incident) - the authorities immediately issued a shoot to kill policy.

After firing almost a hundred rounds of ammunition at the poor beast, the cops eventually stopped Tyke dead in her tracks; traumatizing many spectators to the event in the process.

The attack on her human captors, her escape, her brief moments running free (if never, alas, running wild), and, finally, her bloody execution, were all captured on video and this shocking footage is central to the excellent if harrowing documentary made by Jumping Dog Productions entitled Tyke: Elephant Outlaw (dir. Susan Lambert and Stefan Moore, 2015).

Anyone moved by the plight of Tilikum in Blackfish (2013) - and you'd have to be heartless and inhuman (in the bad sense of the term) not to be - will rightly be angered and upset by the story of Tyke as well.

Having said that, it's mistaken to think of elephants as gentle giants, or spiritual creatures; even in a natural environment they can display aggressive and destructive behaviour. Hardcore animal rights activists may like to think that man is the only violent and vindictive animal, but that's clearly not the case.

Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that even the most kindly and intelligent elephants can only ever be virtuous in a herd manner or Christian sense; they can display pity and forgiveness, for example, but because they can never forget they're likely to be prone to some form of ressentiment and thus never truly noble.

Tilikum

amberhawkswanson.com

The fascinating and tragic tale of Tilikum, the male killer whale held captive at SeaWorld (Orlando Florida), is brilliantly told in the documentary Blackfish (2013), directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

The film focuses on the cruelty and stupidity of keeping such a large and intelligent mammal in what is essentially a fish tank and obliging him to perform like a seal and act as a living sperm bank for SeaWorld's lucrative breeding programme. 

If he enjoys doing tricks for the trainers who, when not throwing him food from a bucket, are masturbating him with a cow's vagina in order to gather his semen, it hasn't stopped him from being actively involved in the deaths of two of them (Keltie Byrne and Dawn Brancheau); as well as a Sea World visitor, Daniel P. Dukes, who made the fatal mistake of hiding in the park until after closing time and then getting into Tilikum's pool. His naked and mutilated body was found the next morning draped over Tilikum's back.

    

Inasmuch as Tilly has undeniably been objectified by owners who believe him to exist solely to generate profits and sire young and spectators who think his duty is to entertain them and their children, then the above deaths might well be described as the brutal and bloody revenge of the object. 

Undoubtedly, the person who best appreciates this aspect of Tilikum's tale is the very wonderful video and performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson, for whom issues of power, violence, sex and objectification are clearly of great import. She is probably best known for her Amber Doll project (2007-10) in which she married a RealDoll made in her own image and jointly explored the distinction between fantasy and reality. 

Predictably, Amber Doll, and Ms Swanson's relationship with her, solicited some extreme reactions and they were involved in strange and disturbing situations. But who would have guessed that the severely damaged sex doll, with her silicone flesh and plastic skeleton, would one day resurrect and be transformed into ... Tilikum!

This, however, in December 2011, is precisely what happened and, I have to say, it's a brilliant move by the artist; as one pure object is turned into another, by a woman who is herself the object of her own work. The critic and blogger, Megan Milks, describes this best:

"With the transformation of Amber Doll into Tilikum, Swanson’s exploration of compound female subjectivity becomes an exploration of human-doll-animal intersubjectivity. Swanson figures Tilikum in the pose of the entertainer, with tail raised, greeting his spectators, with the collapsed dorsal fin characteristic of orcas in captivity; meanwhile his upward, unflinching gaze, communicates his enforced submission and his history of and potential for violence, inscribed back onto the female-gendered doll body that forms his own. Swanson as doll as Tilikum: the art object flickers with the radical passivity of these co-mingled subjects."

- Megan Milks: Free Tilikum, or the Transfiguration of Amber Doll: Radical Passivity in Amber Hawk Swanson's Doll Projects, posted on the multi-authored blog montevidayo.com (Oct 11, 2012)