SOUND -OFF 35

The Nazi breeding program that resurrected an extinct species

By George Dvorsky

An indelible characteristic of fascist ideology is the celebration of a mythic past, an over-the-top nostalgic fixation often accompanied by attempts to restore things to the way they used to be "back in the good ol' days". For the Nazis, this meant a return to Old Germania — the old Germany of the Nibelungenlied — a time of (supposed) unparalleled prosperity, happiness, and pride.

The Nazis, of course, took this imperative to extremes, including a little known attempt to restore its forests back to their original medieval splendor. But in order to do so, they would have to bring back an animal that went extinct in 1672 — a problem that two German zoologists tackled with a curious breeding program.

Writing in Cabinet Magazine, Michael Wang describes the lengths the Nazis went to to bring back the ancient auroch, a large oxen-like creature. Once found "everywhere in Germany," the absence of the species riled the Nazis who in turn recruited two scientists to help, Heinz and Lutz Heck. Undaunted by the challenge, the brothers set upon the task of "recreating" the auroch by interbreeding similar creatures from around the world. Wang describes the Nazi rationale behind the project:

This conflation of biological and aesthetic destiny coincided with a strain of Nazi thought that sought to apply pseudo-Darwinian theories in support of a racialized conception of the state. In this mode, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz identified parallels between the changes he observed in animals as the result of their domestication and what he saw as the deleterious genetic effects of civilization.

By referring to centuries-old accounts and preserved illustrations of the aurochs, the Heck brothers crossed several modern breeds of cattle, including Corsican breeds, Hungarian grey cattle, Scottish Highland cattle, and others. The end result was a creature that bore a startling resemblance to the auroch.

But not content to have the neo-aurochs locked inside of zoos, the Nazis set about the recreation of its "natural" environment. Wang writes:

In Lorenz's conception, however, biological unity extended beyond the physical and behavioral attributes of the animal itself. Following on the work of the Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll, Lorenz understood an organism as essentially linked to its environment. Together, organism and environment formed a "unified functional cycle," a phenomenon that Lorenz observed exclusively in relation to wild animals. Just as Lorenz saw the effects of domestication as deleterious fragmentation (the modification of discrete traits), the original act of domestication was itself a kind of fragmentation. Domestication severed an organism from its natural place within an environmental whole.

According to this system, then, the recreation of the aurochs would be incomplete were this animal to be confined to the artificial sphere of a zoological garden. To restore the biological unity of the aurochs would require the restoration of its original environs. In the imagination of the Hecks and their research patron-Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring-this environment was not in fact entirely lost to time. The ideal site for the introduction of the Heck aurochs would be the primeval forest of Bialowiez˙a, one of the last old-growth forests remaining in Europe. At the border of Poland and Belarus, the forest had been historically protected as the privileged hunting grounds of Polish kings and Russian tsars.

In addition to the reconstructed aurochs, the Nazis also worked to restore all natural game to the forest, including bison, boar, elk, and deer. The bison were a particular challenge, leading them to interbreed European bison with Canadian wood bison to return the dwindling stock to larger numbers.

All these efforts, however, were largely thwarted on account of the war — but not before the new aurochs were set loose on the forest. Wang explains what happened next:

As the Hecks had envisioned, their regenerated aurochs persisted in a semi-wild state in the Bialowiez˙a forest. When Lutz Heck heard that some of the animals had survived the war, he proudly cited this fact as evidence of their suitability to the natural environs. To the Polish forestry service, however, the stray cattle were profoundly unnatural: they had no place in the forest as it had been known for hundreds of years. At Karpin'ski's request, a provisional corral was built with the intention of capturing the Heck animals, which, forestry officials correctly assumed, would not survive on their own. The post–World War II revision of Poland's borders hindered this task. Bialowiez˙a forest had been carved in two, with the eastern side under Soviet jurisdiction. By crossing the border into Belarus for increasingly long periods, the Heck aurochs evaded the Polish foresters, and most likely soon perished. "It seems that nothing can be done at this point," Karpin'ski lamented, "to save the remaining animals from extinction."

But the Heck aurochs did not disappear altogether. Now known as Heck cattle, these animals can be found in various farms in Germany and Europe. There have even been attempts in the Netherlands and elsewhere to introduce the breed into state nature reserves to replace the missing megafauna there. Wang concludes his piece rather nicely,

The realization of the Hecks' wild ideal proved unsustainable. Their vision of biological reunification continually sought to expand its borders: from the regeneration of a single animal to the violent reshaping of an entire landscape. No curve of a horn, or shade of an eel-striped coat could satisfy this totalizing vision. Ultimately, the Hecks' biological methods were inadequate to their task-for the aurochs was not a species, but a symbol.

Be sure to read Michael Wang's entire article as there's lots more to this fascinating story.

GAME OF THRONES JOURNAL

Is Game of Thrones' gratuitous sex worse than the gratuitous violence?

By Charlie Jane Anders

One of the biggest things people noticed about Sunday's episode of Game of Throneswas something that wasn't there: nudity and explicit sex. The show totally failed to meet whatever quota you might imagine it would have for naked skin and heaving bosominess.

This was especially noticeable because in the past week or so, we've seen lots of people discussing the especial gratuitousness of Game of Thrones' pornitude. In fact, we're left wondering: Is the show's gratuitous sex more upsetting than the gratuitous violence? Spoilers for already-aired episodes below...

Maybe it was the brutal "Joffrey's birthday present" sequence the week before, or the random scenes of Sartrean voyeurism and fellatio in Littlefinger's brothel a couple weeks earlier. But people have been getting noticeably restive about the amount of pointless nastiness in Game of Thrones this year.

In the Washington Post, Jezebel founder Anna Holmes writes that the show's "often outlandish" eroticism "often overshadows or distracts from the actual story." She notes that the men hardly ever disrobe fully on this show, while women are frequently naked, and that any time you see a woman wearing a dress with buttons, you know it's coming off soon. And they all seem to have waxed: "I call the pubic hair pattern so often seen on Westerosi women 'the King's Landing Strip,'" North adds.

And North quotes the Huffington Post's Mo Ryan as saying, "Sometimes Game of Thrones uses sexual scenes to shed light on character. But quite often, it shows naked women because it can."

Meanwhile, over in the New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum writes, "Game of Thrones is unusually lurid, even within the arms race of pay cable: the show is so graphic that it was parodied on Saturday Night Live, with a "behind-the-scenes" skit in which a horny thirteen-year-old boy acted as a consultant."

Is sex more upsetting than decapitations?

It's a truism that Americans are more upset by explicit sex than explicit violence. It's also true, though, that in American pop culture, explicit sex is largely about women's bodies, while explicit violence is about men's bodies. (This is slowly changing, as Michael Fassbender's frequently uncovered body and The Hunger Games attest.) Also, in most American pop culture, sex is something done to women, while violence is something men do to each other. (And to women.)

But in the case of Game of Thrones, the complaints seem to be that the sex is both outlandish and extraneous to the story. But so, frequently, is the violence. And the balance has shifted somewhat this year, in favor of totally non-essential brutality. The season opener and last night's episode had plenty of random violence, but little or no sex. (The opening scene of the second season: Two knights battling, until one of them ends up a wet smear on the paving stones. Then another knight is almost forced to drink himself to death.)

And the depiction of sex seems to have changed this season. Instead of last year's "sexposition," where a character stands around and rattles off backstory while surrounded by hot nudes, this year's flavor seems to be random bawdry with little informational content. And the depictions of sex are getting nastier — not in the Janet Jackson sense but in the Thomas Hobbes sense.

In its first season, the sex inGame of Thrones was mostly pretty jolly — but this year, the show seems to have been doing its best to blur the lines between sexuality and violence. Take the aforementioned "Joffrey's threesome" scene, which pushes the envelope of what even a subscription cable channel can get away with. Even when the sex is more or less consensual, as in the case of Theon Greyjoy's frolic with a girl on a boat, it's still shown to be exploitative and dehumanizing. Theon shows utter contempt for the girl who's sleeping with him in the hopes of getting off the boat she's trapped on.

Meanwhile, there's the ultra-squicky business of Stannis Baratheon having sex with his priestess on top of a map of the upcoming battle, while promising him a son — and then giving birth to a weird oily ooze-assassin instead.

The sex in this show has become downright distasteful. But is it worse than the foot-sawing and rat-torture? This is one of those questions that's down to the individual to answer, probably.

It's also true that both the sex and the violence have both been more gratuitous lately — in the sense that they seldom move the story forward. An example of non-gratuitous sex would be Cersei and Jaime hooking up, in the show's first ever episode. An example of non-gratuitous violence would be the decapitation of Ned Stark.

On the other hand, something can have other purposes besides moving the story forward. Theon's scene with the boat wench tells us a lot about him as a person. There's world-building, in which a gratutious scene can illustrate "the kind of things that happen a lot in this world." And finally, there's the notion — which is a very important theme in the books — that during wartime, a lot of social constraints get loosened or shredded, and the result is a non-stop parade of atrocities. Also, the powerful destroy the regular people with zero consequences.

Sex work is the leading industry in Westeros

But that doesn't explain all of it — there's also the fact that this show explores the sex industry in fetishistic detail, while the rest of Westeros' economy is kept as vague as possible. Even, you could argue, the institution of knighthood is less comprehensively fleshed out (no pun intended) than the skin trade. This is partly a consequence of the fact that the show has made a concerted effort to beef up the screen time of brothel-owner Littlefinger, a sleazy rascal who is just one of a few schemers in King's Landing. And thus we've spent a lot of time in Littlefinger's brothels, so we can learn just how much of a sleazy rascal he really is. (Answer: very.)

On the plus side, the show has given us three distinct sex-worker characters: Ros, Shae and Doreah (Daenerys' right-hand woman.) And they bring vastly different perspectives to their trade, which are changing over time. Ros is transforming from "saucy independent woman seeking her fortune" to "traumatized prisoner of Littlefinger, who's seen terrible things" — and we can only hope that her storyline has an actual pay-off, since she's a new addition to the story.

Shae also seems fiercely independent, and resistant to Tyrion's efforts to control her because she's a liability. And even though she's going along with him for now, she seems ready to bail if things get too complicated — there's no Littlefinger in her life, so she can leave any time she wants. Doreah was bought by Viserys, but seems to have become genuinely happy to use her sexuality on Daenerys' behalf — judging from the way she volunteers to perform "sexpionage" in Qarth.

So at least, we're not being told that all sex workers are the same, or that sex-work is a uniform occupation. Three different women have strikingly different situations and attitudes, and hopefully actual story-arcs to go with them. That's definitely a good thing, if this show is going to focus on sex-work as much as it does.

More female perspectives

Meanwhile, another plus is the fact that this show has vastly increased the number of female characters who can carry a scene.

In the books, George R.R. Martin has two types of characters: there are viewpoint characters, through whose eyes we see all the action. And then there are non-viewpoint characters, who are innately less sympathetic. (And even within those two classes, there appear to be strata.)

Martin only has four female viewpoint characters in the first three books,According to A Wiki of Ice and Fire: Catelyn Stark and her two daughters, plus Daenerys. It's not until the fourth book that we get more female POV characters.

So the only female viewpoint character who has any kind of notable sexuality in the first three books is Daenerys Targaryen, whose embrace of her sexual power is a huge part of her success as Khaleesi. We see plenty of sex in those first three books, but it's almost always through the eyes of men.

And the show largely follows suit, treating us to the male gaze over and over — but at least with characters like Ros, you are getting a window into how they feel about what's going on.

Meanwhile, the show has also followed the books in giving us several female characters who are leaders or fighters. We just met Yara Greyjoy, who commands 30 ships and seems more or less to be one of the guys among the Ironborn. And the most moving and powerful scenes in this week's episode both involved someone expressing loyalty and devotion to a female leader: Ser Jorah explaining why Daenerys would be a great ruler, and Brienne of Tarth pledging herself to the courageous Cat Stark.

At the same time, these powerful women are largely portrayed as asexual — Cat Stark is a widow with no interest in finding another man, Brienne of Tarth projects an air of sexless devotion to swordplay, and it's hinted that Daenerys will lose much of her status and power if she takes Xaro Xoan Daxos (or anyone else) into her bed. The only characters who are really defined by their sexuality (rather than its absence) are the three sex workers.

Let's hope we get to see Yara Greyjoy take a lover soon, for her own pleasure rather than expedience.

Rape and babies are two major tools of statecraft

And finally, there's the fact that this show is depicting a pretty ugly patriarchy, in which rape is a legitimate tactic and male rulers need male heirs to cement their reign. As Nussbaum writes, this show fits squarely into the "the sophisticated cable drama about a patriarchal subculture" genre.

The Ironborn culture that Theon Greyjoy so desperately wants to belong to is one that involves not just piracy, but woman-stealing. Trying to win over the loyalty of his new crew, Theon promises they'll seize lots of women. And Daenerys causes huge political problems for her husband Khal Drogo when she tries to put a stop to casual rape among the Dothraki — a crisis which leads, more or less directly, to Drogo's death.

Meanwhile, lots of sex that appears to be consensual at first glance turns out to be a lot more coercive and horrible the moment you take a closer look — just look at Craster and his daughter-wives. Or Theon and his wannabe salt-wife. If Sansa Stark actually marries King Joffrey, will their wedding-night sex really be consensual?

Which brings us to the other point — the importance of a male line of descent means that women are sold into marriage, the way Tyrion has just sold Princess Myrcella. And once married, their sex life with their husbands is a matter of public interest, as Margaery Tyrell discovered in her sexless marriage to Renly. (And if people begin to suspect that your children are not your husband's, it can create huge political crises, as Queen Cersei is discovering.)

So to some extent, this show is following the books in depicting a world where rape is one of the spoils (and tools) of war, and the sex lives of powerful people are the building blocks of governance.

So is the gratuitous sex too gratuitious lately? Is it more button-pushing than the gratuitous violence? I don't really have a cut-and-dried answer, since it really is an individual quesiton. I do, however, have a few random thoughts:

1) This could be the thin end of the wedge, and this show could degenerate into the kind of incoherent pornfest that certain other shows have turned into. That would be especially bad in the case of Game of Thrones, which really does have important stuff to say about governance, politics and society.

2) There is another benefit to gratuitousness, besides world-building — sometimes, it's better if the plot doesn't revolve around sex and especially sexual violence. That is to say, if we're going to witness horrible sex acts, maybe it's better that they be gratuitous.

The fact that we see distasteful and abhorrent sex acts, and they aren't a major turning point for a leading female character, is in itself a good thing in a way. Because it, in turn, means there are female characters whose storylines are based on things other than sex and rape. (See last week's interview with Brit Marlingfor a great critique of the notion that female characters' main obstacle to overcome is sexual assault.) If you're going to have sexual direness, maybe it should be gratuitous rather than crucial.

3) This show's willingness to take insane chances has consistently blown me away — even if the outcome of those chances hasn't, always. Just trying to put George R.R. Martin's fucked-up vision on television was an insane gamble, and most shows would have patted themselves on the back and stopped there. But in addition to keeping the crucial elements of the Martinverse intact, this show has gone further, taking more risks with a lot of the minor characters and making the already gruesome world of Westeros just a bit weirder and more lurid. In a world where so much of our entertainment is purposely bland and dumbed down, it's a good thing that at least a few creators are letting their freak flag soar a bit.