Reproduce wild children as realistically as possible
Reporter/Hossie
Photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten
Published in China News Weekly on June 1, 2020, No. 949
When night comes, there is a creepy silence in the forest.
Marina was frightened, she kept crying, and gradually several capuchin monkeys approached her, and they silently slid through the tree trunks in the distance. Marina sniffed the monkeys and stopped crying. 60 years later, when she recalls this scene, there is a kind of alienation and nostalgia in her calm.
In 1954, 5-year-old Marina was kidnapped and left behind in a tropical rainforest in Colombia, where she lived with capuchin monkeys for 5 years, eating berries, roots, and bananas left to her by the monkeys, sleeping in tree holes, and learning to crawl on all fours like these agile animals, jumping between branches. Once, when she was poisoned by eating spoiled food, an elderly monkey took her to a waterhole and forced her to drink a lot of water, spitting out the toxin. Before being spotted by hunters, she sat quietly in the trees most of the time, playing with the monkeys and grooming them. After being discovered, she was sold to a brothel, escaped and wandered the streets, then was adopted by a well-wisher and taken to England, where she married, had children, and wrote "The Girl Without a Name" based on her own experiences. Initially, no publisher was willing to publish her book because people didn't believe it was true, but there was plenty of evidence and detail to support her self-description.
Marina is lucky. Some of these behaviors behave like "wild children" of animals, some are abandoned in the wilderness and raised by animals, and some are abandoned by their parents or locked up in chicken coops, kennels, or even pigsty, and have to become animals in order to survive. From a scientific point of view, "wild children" are samples that linguists and behaviorists are competing to study. Humans study them to try to answer: What is the difference between humans and animals? If it weren't for human upbringing, would it still be "human"?
British art photographer Julia Barton was captured by Marina's tragic power when she first read her story, and in 2015 she created 15 photographs based on collected "wild child" stories. Based on the records and the plot in her mind, she found real capuchin monkeys, dogs, chickens, birds, and even a leopard, and filmed them with the little actor who played the "wild child".
In 1954, at the age of 5, Marina was abandoned in the jungle by her kidnappers. Before being spotted by hunters, she lived with a small family of capuchin monkeys for five years. Marina had completely lost its language when humans discovered it. However, she is by far the most successful "wild child" who has integrated into human society.
He thought he was a bird
Oxana, discovered in 1991, has lived with dogs for 6 years. Her parents, both alcoholics, were abandoned on the streets one day, and in search of heat, 3-year-old Oxana climbed into a kennel on a nearby farm. When she was spotted, she behaved exactly like a dog, walking on all fours, sticking out her tongue to gasp, licking water on the ground, showing her teeth when she tore food, and having humans approaching bark like dogs. Now 33 years old, still being cared for in a nursing home, she returned to human society and learned only simple words, without the ability to use grammar to organize sentences.
Ivan, a Russian boy who was abused by his family since childhood, fled at the age of four and begged in the streets. He lives with a group of wild dogs and shares with them the food he begs for. He lived this way for two years, and in 1998 he was placed in a children's home. Ivan benefited from his language skills maintained through begging. This helped his recovery. Now, he lives a normal life.
Prava, discovered in Russia in 2008, is known as the "Birdman," and the 7-year-old was not abandoned by his mother, but was locked up in a room full of birdcages from birth. His mother kept dozens of parrots here and treated her son like another parrot. She had never hurt him physically or failed to give him food, but never spoke to him. So Prava thought she was a bird. He doesn't speak human language, but he makes bird songs, and when he's happy or confused, he flaps his arms excitedly, as if a bird were vibrating its wings.
Prava, a seven-year-old boy, was found in 2008 living in a small two-bedroom apartment in Russia with his 31-year-old mother, but he was kept in a room by a single person and dozens of her mother's pet birds, whom she treated as another pet. Later, Prava was transferred to a mental health center, where doctors were trying to get him back.
Patton said it's hard to say which is worse, a "wild child" who grows up with an animal after being abandoned, or a "wild child" raised by his parents as an animal. Although the children in the jungle are not short of food, no one cares about them and there is no place to sleep. Other children, on the other hand, grow up at home are neglected, abused, unloved, and treated like animals. These children don't talk, don't go to school, just live day in and day out, and they feel more comfortable with animals than humans. Some children die in unknown corners, and some children are alive but completely lost.
Barton also found that children who grew up in the jungle were more likely to survive than "wild children" who were raised as animals by their families.
A Fijian boy, Sugit, showed a dysfunction as a child. He grew up locked in a chicken coop. In 1978, when he was discovered, he was eight years old, pecking like a chicken, squatting and resting, and making a chick-like cacking sound in his mouth when communicating with people. Due to the long-term use of his hands to pick the ground, his fingers are bent inward. He was taken to a welfare home, but workers did not know how to treat his chick habits and tied him to bed for more than 20 years. Later cared for by a New Zealander, Elizabeth Clayton, she decided to do her best to help Sugit "return to the human world".
"It looks too human"
The casting itself took a long time. In order to present the living conditions of the "wild children" as realistically as possible, Patton tries to find some small actors who look malnourished, they are skinny, a little wild, and sometimes look a little weird.
Patton deliberately made their clothes worn and dirty and unrecognizable. Previously, she cautiously solicited the opinions of children and parents, and also informed the content of the story to be filmed, and began filming when the other party was acceptable. Even so, after the shooting, the young actors will still be shocked by their final appearance, in addition to the scales caused by makeup, shooting in the jungle, their bodies will often appear bruises. "The kids ended up crying." Barton said.
In 1912, a two-year-old Indian boy was abducted by a cheetah. Three years later, a hunter killed the cheetah and found three cubs, one of which was a five-year-old boy, after which he was sent back to his family. At first, he would only squat, his knees covered with hard calluses, his toes bent almost perpendicular to the instep of his feet at right angles, while his palms, toes and thumb pads were covered with hard skin. He warns all approaching people or animals and eats poultry raw. He couldn't speak, only grunts and growls.
In Barton's view, many children are now pampered and raised, as if wrapped in a thick cocoon of safety. But at the same time, in many corners of the world, child abuse still happens every day, and they may happen right next door to you. "A lot of things do happen, it's just that people don't know it." She said.
A 2018 report by the U.S. Department of Health showed that there has been an increase in the number of abused children in the U.S. since 2015. Among them, infants and young children have the highest rate of abuse and neglect, with more than a quarter of victims under the age of 3. About 678 000 child victims were identified in 2018, with 60.8% being neglected, 10.7% being physically abused and 7% being sexually assaulted. More than 15 percent suffered two or more types of abuse.
The rescue of Marina was never a fairy tale. She later repeatedly said that one of the things she regretted most was being found by hunters and leaving the capuchins and the jungle — though now she loves her husband and children.
Barton had the opportunity to visit Marina after the shoot was complete, and when Patton showed her pictures about her, she was calm and simply said, "It looks too human." ”