And what on earth (I assume it’s earth) was this dude talking about?
Had this incoherent ramble appeared in a comment on 1389 Blog, we normally would have deleted it, as per our comment policy. As a rule, if we can’t figure out what something means, we don’t post it. But because these remarks were uttered in public by a head of state with Muslim Brotherhood connections…here they are.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi holds forth on ‘Planet of the Apes’
Mohamed Morsi, the engineer and Muslim Brotherhood ally who became Egypt’s first-ever democratically elected president this year and who last week sent his country’s political system into chaos by granting himself sweeping new powers, appears to hold strong views on the 1968 science fiction film “Planet of the Apes.”
Morsi, in a lengthy interview with Time magazine, the transcript of which Time just posted online, abruptly transitioned from discussing the U.S.-Egypt relationship to the “Planet of the Apes” movie franchise. Morsi’s point seems to be about Egypt’s need to take responsibility for its own problems. Or maybe it’s about economic self-sufficiency. Or “the role of the art.” It’s really not clear. Here’s the leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation:
I remember a movie. Which one? Planet of the Apes. The old version, not the new one. There is new one. Which is different. Not so good. It’s not expressing the reality as it was the first one. But at the end, I still remember, this is the conclusion: When the big monkey, he was head of the supreme court, I think — in the movie! — and there was a big scientist working for him, cleaning things, has been chained there. And it was the planet of the apes after the destructive act of a big war, and atomic bombs and whatever in the movie. And the scientist was asking him to do something, this was 30 years ago: “Don’t forget you are a monkey.” He tells him, “Don’t ask me about this dirty work.” What did the big ape, the monkey say? He said, “You’re human, you did it [to] yourself.” That’s the conclusion. Can we do something better for ourselves?
I saw it 30 years ago. That is the role of the art. This is the very important role of art. Gone with the Wind has been treating social problems. Five in Hell. That was the Arabic title. Five Americans working behind German lines and they were using primitive military devices. I think it was Charles Bronson or something like that. My hard disk still carries a few things!
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Update: New York Times Lede blogger Robert Mackey digs in to the Planet of the Apes script to try to untangle Morsi’s metaphor. Two important findings: First, as Mackey writes, it’s “difficult to say which scene, in particular, the president was misremembering.” Second, Morsi’s identification of “the big monkey” as a supreme court chief is even more ironic given that no such character exists in the film. Morsi, it appears, just has judges on the brain.
