animals tell stories better than humans

 

Although Week 7’s lecture was cancelled, I still had a quick skim through the reading “Why Look at Animals?” by Gilles Aillaud. Through his discussion of the use of animals in stories, it never really occurred to me how we, as storytellers, assign attributes, symbols and metaphors to these animals even though they may not be capable of such moral qualities. It is their innocence and simplicity of the animals’ attributes that have become integral to storytelling, and I’ve noticed they appear as characters and symbols everywhere from children’s bedtime stories of Peter the Rabbit to DC Comics’ Batman and Robin superheroes. The storytelling platform that stood out to me the most was Pixar and especially their short films, where they even bring life inanimate objects like umbrellas. My dad recently showed me one of Pixar’s 2016 short films called ‘Piper‘, directed by Alan Barillaro. The heart-warming story tells of a little sandpiper content with staying in her nest to be fed, but is then traumatised by her first experience finally stepping out of her comfort zone to find food at the shore. Left hungry and terrified of failure, she musters up her courage once more after following a group of hermit crabs to the shore and is then taught to embrace the ocean and use it as a tool to not only find food for herself, but for the rest of her family. In addition, coinciding with the main story, there were comedic scenes of the sandpipers moving and fleeing with the tide, her adorably flustered state after caught in the ocean, her little fight in the sand with the baby hermit crab, and many more to leave you feeling cheesy and giggly. Along with these animated comedic gags, ‘Piper‘ had a very clear, simple story that successfully left me, and I’m sure many others, sympathising with the protagonist and encouraging her to overcome her fears. Typical of Pixar to leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, I don’t think Barillaro would have made me and many other audiences feel such a way if he hadn’t chosen the characters to be animals. If the story was portrayed through humans, there’s a lack of that pure innocence that wouldn’t communicate the story’s powerful, yet simple moral message.