Travis Clark
Sam Woodruff
Morgan Akana
We originally wrote this script as light, fun, humorous, spy story about a double-agent chimp. We were researching historical facts about the early stages of the space race and found funny facts and cool espionage gadgets. But as our research continued we found devastating catastrophes from both sides of the space race. One we chose to use was a devastating accident known as The Nedelin Catastrophe, the worst rocket related accident in history. We also found reports of the mistreatment of the chimps, Ham and Enos. Accordingly our story was changed to fit more closely with real events. Our light comedic story of a chimp being a double agent suddenly became a dark, only slightly humorous look into the past. The maturation of the story was indicative of our actual development in understanding this historical event. Through the process our empathy towards those involved increased. Looking at these events from a personal perspective changed them completely.
Along similar lines of thought, reading Satrapi’s “The Veil” shows that any news story heard on the television, read on the internet, or paper are accompanied and built upon thousands of micro stories. Simply reading a news story at face value is an injustice to all the people affected by it. How people react, or don’t react, says more about society than maybe the story itself. It’s not just a wild fire, robbery, political scandal, or a school shooting. The events are details in a bigger narrative. As we created this historical piece, it was important that although it was contrived, it made us think about how the people and, for our narrative especially, chimps may have reacted or felt in this moment in human history. Before we never thought about these individuals only the big events. The forces of Red vs Blue locked in an epic struggle of technological dominance, not the individuals involved, the lives they led, or the burdens they carried.
We have a tendency to overlook the individual in a broad context. Robert Burn’s poem To A Mouse, in an incredibly moving way, helps us to gain some of that perspective of the importance of the individual back. In the poem he discusses a time, when plowing his field, he turns up a mouse and it’s winter burrow. By doing so he leaves the mouse for dead with no winter home. Addressing the mouse, Burn’s says:
“I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!”
Burn’s sympathy for this mouse is touching. Many of us probably wouldn’t even notice this event or would react negatively toward a mouse in our field. Burn instead, stops to talk to this mouse. That is what writing this historical fiction piece did for us, and does in general. It helped us to realize more than just the event, but the effects upon those involved down to the smallest creature and “fellow-mortal” in this case chimpanzees.
Legit historical sources:
The Nedelin Catastrophe (Soviet Rocket Explosion)
Rockets and People: Creating a Rocket Industry by Boris Chertok http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4110/vol2.pdf pg. 597-633
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