Documenting Ethics: Respecting the Nonhuman in Kedi

“Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” is both the title of and the central ethical question that frames Frans de Waal’s 2016 book on animal studies. In his writing, de Waal details how primatology and ethology have evolved from approaching their living subjects as crude objects of scientific inquiry to communal beings with complex, immeasurable interior lives. While ambitious and well-intentioned, there is one disconcerting element found in de Waal’s argument: As the title of his book alludes, it is only through recognizing a specific species’ expression of intelligence that we are able to gauge to what degree that species might demand our respect. Respect, it is held, must be earned through the exhibition of intelligence. We can certainly live in a healthier, more moralistic world in which we care for animals and thus the environment, but it first requires our ability to locate the distinct intelligence of each animal. Why do we need proof of intelligence at all in order to respect another species?

For a more constructive approach to animal studies we might turn to Ceyda Torun’s recent documentary Kedi (2016), a poetic, revelatory film about street cats in Istanbul. Kedi contains no interviews with lab coat-wearing doctors explaining the different breeds of cats. There are no titles informing us of the average lifespan of a cat. There are no voice-over monologues telling us how to treat cats properly. Instead, we receive stories from individuals who consider specific cats (or groups of cats) to be actors in their everyday life, if only in a cursory, indirect way. Cats are therefore not the objects of study in Kedi. The object of study is how our relationship with cats forms a fabric of Istanbul.

The approachable, human dimension of the film offers a differing perspective than that of a pure, scientific framework. The documentarian does not pin moments down for examination as an anatomist might or construct environments with artificial lights that might help us access hidden details as in a laboratory; rather, Kedi seeks to capture a slice of the city as it lives. For example, the storytellers/cat observers featured in the film are too busy cooking, cleaning, or smoking a cigarette to even provide the cameraman with their whole attention. This technique produces a stronger sense of trust from the viewer because we feel we are intimately observing Istanbul when it is unguarded. The overall effect of this informality is to assure us that we are directly perceiving human and feline inhabitants the way they truly interact.

The city itself is presented as an ecosystem with its own streams of communal life. Humans are revealed to be perpetually “becoming-with” rather than merely living alongside the street cats. Like Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), Kedi is a documentary about how our relation to nonhumans informs our relations to fellow humans. Jiro presents a direct link between how renowned sushi chef Jiro Ono prepares his plates as a sign of respect for both the dead, soon-to-be-consumed fish and the person who will digest it. As a sushi chef he not only prepares and consumes fish, he also exhibits a strong concern for their decaying ecosystems. His disciplined, arduous method for preparing his plates reveals a religious admiration for these nonhumans, an appreciation for their rich life-giving nourishment, and a duty to care for the health of the potential consumer. The act of digestion thus takes the form of sacred ritual that honors a scene of great relational complexity between human, nonhuman, and ecosystem. Refusing human exceptionalism and shaping what Donna Haraway calls “response-abilities” provide the moral posture of films like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Kedi. They reveal solidarity between humans and nonhumans without reverting to explanatory discourse.

Kedi is an example of ethical documentary filmmaking because it attempts to capture Istanbul as the city continues its daily life. It maintains the integrity of the space between curious documentarian and fascinating object of study. This gesture is duly reflected in the relations between the people in the film and the cats they encounter. Respect is defined as distance. Close physical proximity, meanwhile, demands an understanding of shared space. Kedi therefore performs a constructive reframing of de Waal’s question: We should not be asking if we are smart enough to know how smart animals are; rather, we should be asking if we are we smart enough to recognize that respect is the greatest expression of intelligence.

Reaching for Wax: Ruminations on an Elusive Thing, an Object Lesson

One of the folk etymologies of the word “sincerity” tells us that the term originated from the Latin sine cera, or, “without wax.” The story behind this etymon is fascinating: When a sculptor came upon a flaw or chink in the marble, he or she would blend wax into the surface of the sculpture, fooling their audience into believing they were looking at an honest and pure work of art. We might now point to Madame Tussaud’s famous wax effigies as an example of the substance’s ability to deceive; it is the perfect simulacrum for human flesh.

A history of wax reveals that it has long aided, mystified, and perplexed humans. Indeed, was it not the elusive essence of wax that lead Descartes to conclude that his senses were deceiving him? The anxiety that wax’s profundity caused in the 16^th century philosopher provided an entry point for modern science and its ensuing skepticism of the sensible world – all that surrounds us insincere. But wax’s ontological uncertainty is not necessarily the ruse of some deceiving God, as Descartes might have argued; it has also signified the warmth of a loving God in the form of a lit candle. Wax as a substance has therefore found itself curiously caught between signifying purity and malice, divinity and deception. 

An attempt to understanding wax’s multifarious associations might profitably begin with the question, from where does the substance derive? The most common types of wax include: beeswax, which is secreted from the glans on the underside of a bee’s abdomen; plant wax, such as Carnauba and Candelilla; animal wax, most commonly as the spermaceti obtained by crystallizing sperm whale oil; and petroleum, which includes the cost-effective paraffin and microcrystalline wax. No matter the source of the substance, wax has always been vital to the survival of humans because of its lubricating and anti-bacterial properties. Beyond home remedies and medicinal uses, it was the development of the wax candle that brought to the substance its mystical aura.

Until the Middle Ages, candles in Western cultures were made of tallow (animal fat). Beeswax grew in popularity because, contrary to tallow, it burned without a smoky flame and emitted a pleasant smell. The Roman Catholic Church also contributed to the growing popularity of beeswax candles. Because the honey worker bee that produces the beeswax is a virgin, the Church looked upon the beeswax that she produced as a symbol of the flesh of baby Jesus. The oldest surviving beeswax candles were found in Germany, and date to 6^th or beginning 7^th century A.D. However, the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, which centers on the lighting of candles, dates to 165 B.C. 

If candles established wax as an ethereal and divine substance, then the advent of wax death masks in the 17^th century returned it to the physical and mortal world of which it came. Instead of guarding the deceased’s spirit as the death masks of stone or gold once did for the Egyptians, death masks made of wax were kept in communal places to preserve the collective memory of certain historical figures. While wax was not as durable as stone or gold, it could more accurately represent the details of human flesh, and was thus valued for its fidelity to the dead. These masks functioned as an intimate, if not surreal, form of portraiture for political figures, poets, artists, and philosophers such as Blaise Pascal and Voltaire.  

In the mid 18^th century, artist Marie Tussaud turned away from producing death masks and began making full human effigies, for they more accurately reproduced their subjects and fostered a more potent sense of realism. Tussaud’s work adds an interesting layer to our understanding of wax as presented in the etymon of sincerity. If the sincere statue is one “without wax,” what then are we to think of the statue that is made wholly out of wax? 

Wax’s ability to replicate the look and texture of a human being in exquisite detail allows Tussaud to faithfully represent her subjects. But this uncanny ability also evokes a lifeless ferocity in them; wax effigies conjure an eerie, corporal presence. One cannot help but think that at any moment the wax statue can act as a vessel for the soul of its subject should it be granted a return to life. Albert Einstein need not haunt the halls of the Institute of Advanced Study as a mere ghost because there is a wax structure made in his image that he can embody. 

The 1953 film House of Wax locates the strange appeal of wax effigies in its attempt to turn the movie theatre itself into a “chamber of horrors” through the use of 3D photography. Both the film’s theatrical trailer and the promoter of the House of Wax use such hyperbolic quips as: “It is like nothing that has ever happened to you before!” “It is a new wonder of the entertainment world!” Despite Warner Brothers’ attempt, the film fails to translate the macabre experience of encountering a wax effigy to the viewing of a three-dimensional film. While the film’s images may jump out from the screen toward the spectator, the wax effigy’s ability to draw the spectator in with its boundless aura and haunting realism produces a more chilling, otherworldly effect.

 

Wax sculptures are still more often found in places of thrills and amusement than of fine art—Tussaud’s “House of Wax” is typically advertised alongside Ripley’s “Believe it or Not Museum,” which also integrates wax sculptures into its exhibitions. Through foregrounding the medium’s haptic properties, Italian artist Medardo Rosso’s wax sculptures foster contemplation rather than shock. 

In her essay on Rosso’s work, Sharan Hecker observes that we do not know whether the infant in Rosso’s Behold the Child is fading into or emerging from the background material. Stone, marble, or ivory’s weighty materiality reflect a desire for durability and infinitude, whereas wax’s constantly shifting identity reflects ambiguity, mortality, and a heightened sense of fragility—it is more human and ephemeral. Instead of valuing permanence, Rosso accepts continual change. If Tussaud popularized wax as a deceiving substance through its likeness to purely transient phenomenon, then Rosso demonstrated how wax can reveal pathological truths through its likeness to the process of life: birth, transformation, and eventual disintegration. 

But wax’s connotation with life is not only a product of its fragile physical properties; it is also a product of the way that the artist interacts with it. The sculptor who works with wax does not attack matter as he would with stone, but instead presses gently and transmogrifies the substance with the warmth of their own hands. According to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, through intimate relations with matter, “one becomes aware of oneself as human becoming rather than as human being;” it is “an experience of positive change within the self.” Indeed, to wax means to grow or to become. One waxes philosophical to become a philosopher; the gibbous moon waxes to become more visible in the night sky. Shakespeare’s Romeo is described as “a man of wax” because he is proper and fully-grown. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “waxing” could mean to be changeable or manipulable, as Theseus says to Hermia, “To whom you are but as a form in wax.” Perhaps the sincere statue is not without wax; rather, it is the statue that highlights its waxness, that is, its ambiguity, fragility, and incompleteness. 

In his essay “The Cult of Sincerity,” Herbert Read wisely affirms, “To ask ‘What is sincerity?’ is in effect to ask ‘What is man?” I propose a reconfiguration: to ask “What is wax?” is in effect to ask “What is an object?” So that we might not suffer the same fate as curious Icarus, let us not neglect the substance out of which our wings are made. In thinking about wax, we are not only reminded of the warmth of our hands but also the fallibility of our eyes.