A Forsley Feuilleton: I Can’t Watch Another Ape Shit Without Going Ape Shit

The seventh and newest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), has been rotting, unwatched, at the bottom of a duffle bag filled with a year’s worth of my dirty underwear. There are two reasons I hid the flick, immediately after the Capitalist Hype-Machine brainwashed me into buying it, beneath layers and layers of my stench. This is the first reason: since reading that news story about the pet ape that went ape shit- gouging out its owner’s eyes, eating up his testicles, plucking off each of his fingers, and munching on his ass cheeks- I’ve been terrified of apes. And this is the second reason: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes takes place in San Francisco, where I live, and I fear that the visual of apes going ape shit on the very streets I walk would force me to stay inside, forever, never to walk those streets again.

But I’m a hermit and rarely walk the streets anyway. Instead, I stay in my little roof-top apartment drinking coffee, smoking weed, and giving my dog belly rubs while indulging in books and flicks. And last Sunday- probably because I was too ambitious from too much coffee and too delusional from too much weed- I decided it was time to face my fears and indulge in the seventh and newest Planet of the Apes installment. In preparation, I spent that sunny San Francisco Sunday watching the first five flicks in the franchise- Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Then, as the sun went down, I watched the Marky Mark remake of the original, Planet of the Apes (2001), with a plan to watch The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) just before falling asleep.

Some may say that watching the fall of mankind and the rise of intelligent apes with the shades pulled is a wasteful way to spend a sunny San Francisco Sunday. . . and I agree. All the Planet of the Apes flicks- even the first one in which Charlton Heston screams, “It’s a mad house! A mad house!” with more passion than the Christ- are pieces of shit and my time would have been better spent on the can creating my own. But some pieces of shit are entertaining to look at. A piece of shit shaped like an unbelievable actor in an unrealistic ape mask will have you laughing for days, and all the piece of shit flicks that make up the Planet of the Apes franchise showcase hundreds of unbelievable actors in unrealistic ape masks.  So, before ending the night with The Rise of the Planet of Apes, I watched the franchise’s first five flicks, including the remake of the original, and laughed.

I laughed until the childish and trite political commentary steaming off those piece of shit flicks knocked me out with a smell so disturbingly thought provoking that I couldn’t help but ask questions about the state of American culture- questions like this: When did our nation regress to the point that our intellectual cravings are satisfied by generic, diluted, substance-lacking yarns like the Planet of the Apes flicks?

The answer, I think, lays somewhere between the Ford Motor Company’s invention of the assembly line in 1913 and the launch of the science-fiction pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926. The Planet of the Apes franchise, like the assembly line and Amazing Stories, exists for one purpose: to encourage the metabolism of the American public by pumping out high fructose soaked and rusty machine processed bags of chips and soda pop cans cheaply and proficiently, year after year, in the form of ape shit after ape shit. Inspired by the assembly line and the pulp rags that preceded it, the Planet of the Apes franchise now includes the five first flicks, several comic book serials, two television spin-offs, an animated series, a re-make of the original, and, most recently, this seventh ‘reboot’ flick, The Rise of the Planet of Apes, that has been rotting under a year’s worth of my dirty underwear.

Although I’m no longer scared of this newest piece of ape shit and even-“ with the help of a gas mask- dug it up from the bottom of my duffle bag, I fell asleep before watching it and didn’t want to write this Forsley Feuilleton until I had. But watching the first five flicks plus the remake of the original where Marky Mark- that baby-faced underwear modeling midget- tries and fails to replace Charlton Heston- that hairy-chested machinegun shooting badass- was enough. I can’t watch another ape shit without going ape shit.