The concept of human zoos has been a long standing one, with cities such as Paris, Hamburg, Barcelona, London, Warsaw and many more American cities featuring actual human exhibits; as strange oddities that people came to gawk at. We may live in more enlightened times today, but a more politically correct form of this phenomenon born out of a deep seated racism and atavistic voyeurism still exists.
The concept of human zoos
Through the 1800 and the 1900 human zoos consisted of African people, kidnapped from their homeland, being placed in cages or behind gates, much like animals in a zoo for “spectators” to come and see these “exhibitions”. Sometimes the people exhibited were forced to carry around primates such as chimpanzees. In one Paris human zoo, some African women were exhibited without clothes because some of their physical characteristics were considered to be curiosities. There were “negro villages” in France’s World Fair that displayed human beings along with animals.
In Cincinnati, the zoo authorities invited Sioux Native Americans to the zoo to establish their village which remained an exhibit for several months during the end of the 19th century. In St Louis, there is an event the “Savage Olympics Exhibition” was organised in 1904 where Africans were shown to participate in archery and similar events. The Nubian people and the Pygmy people were often the more popular exhibits and were made to dance or perform to entertain spectators. The Parisian Colonial Exhibition of 1931 was a six month long exhibition meant to display different cultures and also to portray the French colonial might and riches.
Human zoos were the result of racism
It was the physical characteristics, the skin colour, language and the entire way of life that Europeans considered inferior and primitive and therefore something to be gawked at; that resulted in human zoos. Wrestling with apes and comparing human characteristics with those of primates was a part of the exhibitions.
In the Bronx zoo in New York a Congolese pygmy man called Ota Benga was put on display along with apes and called the Missing Link. Though these were called “ethnological exhibitions” the demonstrated a deep and as yet unacknowledged racism.
Human Zoos still exist
In 2005, London, eight people won an online contest to become a part of a zoo exhibit. The exhibit was meant to display humans in their natural environment and to recall attention to the fact that homo sapiens are primates too. In Adelaide, auditions took place in 2006 and 2007 to choose people to be part of such a Human Zoo exhibit where they would be locked in for a period of one week. Live streaming and visitors followed the activities of the zoo inmates.
And why talk about zoos with animals in them? Reality TV shows such as Bigg Boss, which millions watch in voyeuristic glee are not much different are they?
