Okay, I’m adding the show “Primal” to my Expanding Moral Cinematic Universe headcanon – movies or shows that feature characters in a harsh, bloody world who inch their little corner of the universe forward as a place where friendship and cooperation can form. Less a sea of blood an violence and mindless replication.
So far I have three pieces in the canon:
1. Primal
2. The Fox and the Hound
3. Princess Mononoke
in roughly ascending order of “how much latent spirit of cooperation exists in the background for the protagonists.”
(“Walking Dead” is sort of in the same genre but is more about the moral circle crumbling and characters struggling to hang onto it)
The Fox and the Hound each have a teeny ingroup of 2-3 people, and enough safety net that the characters can begin a friendship purely of play. There is death, predation, tribal conflict. The characters face an uphill battle to maintain their friendship and connection. But they are not alone. Their friendship is built on sedimentary layers of empathy, and trade. The protagonist’s allies warn them “foxes and hounds can’t be friends”, but notably, those allies *know what friendship is and why it’s desirable*.
Princess Mononoke’s world is one of medium-scale tribes, each of which has complex coordination going on within it, and many of whom have some ability to trade with other trades, a sense of honor and reputation. Awakening consciousness to the fact that
Primal is about about cave man and a t-rex (named “Spear” and “Fang”) who become allies, and then friends.
The Primal world *includes* tribes who coordinate within each other, but they are remote pockets in a brutish, dino-eat-dino world. The protagonists climb out of a background-state of bloodshed, isolation, and meager survival.
The characters first become allies by necessity. They are bad at being allies. But they learn how to be good allies, and as they come to trust each other they learn to be friends.
Their friendship… isn’t _completely_ built out of nothing. The cave man was raised among a small tribe, and in slightly different circumstances his story might have been more similar to the Fox and the Hound. He has some sense of what it can mean to have a safety net, and love, and companionship. But it is so precious little – teeny scraps and glimpses of what it can mean to have connection. The whispers of familyship in this world are so close to being snuffed out at any given moment.
The show is very slow and meditative. There is not much going on this world. Sleep. Hunt. Spend hours walking to get places or watching silently as you prepare to strike, alone in the wilderness. There is only the next kill, and avoiding being someone’s next kill.
I’m only a few episodes in and not sure where this is going, but I doubt that Spear and Fang will have much luxury of trusting or cooperating with almost anything else they meet. Their circle of concern only gets to grow by the tiniest inches to include each other.
But in that world, two creatures reach across species lines, and kindle the beginnings of friendship.
Okay, I’m adding the show “Primal” to my Expanding Moral Cinematic Universe headcanon – movies or shows that feature characters in a harsh, bloody world who inch their little corner of the universe forward as a place where friendship and cooperation can form. Less a sea of blood an violence and mindless replication.
So far I have three pieces in the canon:
1. Primal
2. The Fox and the Hound
3. Princess Mononoke
in roughly ascending order of “how much latent spirit of cooperation exists in the background for the protagonists.”
(“Walking Dead” is sort of in the same genre but is more about the moral circle crumbling and characters struggling to hang onto it)
The Fox and the Hound each have a teeny ingroup of 2-3 people, and enough safety net that the characters can begin a friendship purely of play. There is death, predation, tribal conflict. The characters face an uphill battle to maintain their friendship and connection. But they are not alone. Their friendship is built on sedimentary layers of empathy, and trade. The protagonist’s allies warn them “foxes and hounds can’t be friends”, but notably, those allies *know what friendship is and why it’s desirable*.
Princess Mononoke’s world is one of medium-scale tribes, each of which has complex coordination going on within it, and many of whom have some ability to trade with other trades, a sense of honor and reputation. Awakening consciousness to the fact that
Primal is about about cave man and a t-rex (named “Spear” and “Fang”) who become allies, and then friends.
The Primal world *includes* tribes who coordinate within each other, but they are remote pockets in a brutish, dino-eat-dino world. The protagonists climb out of a background-state of bloodshed, isolation, and meager survival.
The characters first become allies by necessity. They are bad at being allies. But they learn how to be good allies, and as they come to trust each other they learn to be friends.
Their friendship… isn’t _completely_ built out of nothing. The cave man was raised among a small tribe, and in slightly different circumstances his story might have been more similar to the Fox and the Hound. He has some sense of what it can mean to have a safety net, and love, and companionship. But it is so precious little – teeny scraps and glimpses of what it can mean to have connection. The whispers of familyship in this world are so close to being snuffed out at any given moment.
The show is very slow and meditative. There is not much going on this world. Sleep. Hunt. Spend hours walking to get places or watching silently as you prepare to strike, alone in the wilderness. There is only the next kill, and avoiding being someone’s next kill.
I’m only a few episodes in and not sure where this is going, but I doubt that Spear and Fang will have much luxury of trusting or cooperating with almost anything else they meet. Their circle of concern only gets to grow by the tiniest inches to include each other.
But in that world, two creatures reach across species lines, and kindle the beginnings of friendship.