In the final essay of this series taking an in-depth look at select pieces of our Spring 2023 Animal Feature, Charlie Ng discusses Marcelo Cohen’s unsettling satire, “Ruby and the Dancing Lake”, and its depiction of a world in which animals are truly free from human possession—or so it seems. By acknowledging our reality, in which “natural” alignments between wildness and domesticity no longer fit easily on a moral axis, Cohen’s story probes at the role of love in our relationships with animals, as well as the uncertain ideal of their freedom.
Can we love animals without knowing their real needs?
In Animal Liberation, Peter Singer compares the “tyranny of human over nonhuman animals” to that of racial dominance, stating that the plights of animals caused by human superiority is a moral issue no less significant than the injustice of racial discrimination. Animal vulnerability is one of the primary subjects that underlie bioethics, compelling us to respect nonhuman animals as individual beings who have an embodied existence, susceptible to suffering equal to that of human beings. While this suffering cannot be ended overnight, can literature take on the active role of imagining a world where animals live free from captivity and exploitation?
With its exploration of imagined possibilities and alternative realities, speculative fiction can be a meaningful genre that challenges readers to think more thoroughly about animal welfare and to re-examine ways of bettering human-animal relationships. “Ruby and the Dancing Lake” by Argentine novelist Marcelo Cohen, presented in Asymptote’s Spring 2023 issue, is one such example. With its strangeness and playfulness, the short story can be read as a thought experiment of animal liberation, taking place in a parallel universe where any ownership of animals is banned. However, in this realm, both animal cruelty and labour have only become more clandestine, while compassionate humans are left bereft, longing for the happiness brought by animals and their companionship. With its satirical representation, the story is not only critical of animal exploitation, but also recognises the inhumanity of attempting to sever all human-animal bonds, which may not entirely foster any deep awareness for cherishing animal lives.
“Ruby and the Dancing Lake” is amongst a series of stories written by Cohen in his later career, which describe fictional films produced on the Panoramic Delta, a futuristic archipelago where people live in a new world of advanced technology—the same setting as Cohen’s novel, Melodrome. The story offers a seemingly ideal future of species liberation, in which the law decrees that “animals must be released from all forms of bondage to humans”. This perfect ban, however, is immediately undercut by a satiric remark on the liberation of “electronic animals from the obligation to help cyborgs”, inciting the reader to doubt the potential bizarreness of ending “tyranny” over animals through coercive means of the state—which may well be another “tyranny” of absolute power. As Munruf, the young protagonist of the story, saves a female puppy from the stalking of a lynx and takes it home regardless of the ban against pets, the family’s concerns regarding a potential future inspection from the state agency, Biodiversity Custodians, offers another biting glimpse into the oppressive nature of absolute animal liberation.
The dilemma of Munruf’s intention of saving the puppy and the illegality of pet keeping foregrounds ethical questions over companion animals. Ruby, as a canine, represents a species that has been domesticated for tens of thousands of years—bred and evolved in adaptation with human environments. When companion species are left alone to live an equal life with species commonly considered “wild”, is it truly a fair and desirable situation? As pointed out by Martha Nussbaum in her essay, “A Peopled Wilderness”, the categories of wild and domesticity can be idealised and reductive, as is the assumption that nature is beneficial for nonhuman animals. While Ruby’s threatened state reflects the inherent mercilessness of nature, the idea of setting “restricted areas” for animals to live without human intervention is also itself an irony that results from the impossibility of absolutely leaving animals alone. This critical implication is conveyed in “Ruby and the Dancing Lake” through the narrator’s satiric tone, that such areas are “set aside for beasts to devour each other at their leisure”.
In contrast to the dangers of nature, Ruby is able to live safely under Munruf’s protection and care, and a “mutual affection” also develops between them. The correspondence of need and love is manifested through separation and reunion; as Munruf’s father decides to give up Ruby twice for the good of the family, Munruf and all the family members experience despair and loneliness: “The absence has upset the previously warm family routine, which feels as hollow as the hole that has mysteriously appeared in their tiny garden: it has no visible bottom. . . The cavity would appear to symbolize that the home is missing something”. The family’s emotional attachment to Ruby embodies the affective significance of animals to human life, as Ruby turns gradually from a “strange body locked up inside” the house to an integral member of the home, who is missed deeply. Even though Ruby is not anthropomorphised or given any lines in the text, Cohen inserts perceptible evidence to the affection the dog holds for Munruf, notably in a scene where they nuzzle, reunited at an animal performance ring.
Aiming to explore issues of animal rights and welfare, Cohen is unsparing towards the cruelty caused to animals by people. The persistence of animal exploitation is sharply portrayed through the maltreatment of animals by the hypocritical “animal-loving brotherhood”, who put on shows where “semi-organic cherpies” peck at each other and beast puppies fight for a betting audience. The narrative also makes fun of people’s reliance and exploitation of alternative beliefs in indigenous cultures, when claiming that they are trying to “learn from the inner calm of animals”. Even though the people of this parallel world attempt to create “an era of absolute mercy for all living creatures”, the authority and the law fail to curb the multivarious forms of human cruelty, which instead turn underground and take up misleading disguises.
One cannot help but be amused by the story’s ironic humour. On the one hand, this anonymous island of the Panoramic Delta is a utopia of animal liberation, while on the other hand, it is a dystopia that does not allow intimate relationships with animals—thereby not only reinforcing otherness, but facilitating an increased intensity for spectatorship under illegality. As such, “Ruby and the Dancing Lake” can be perceived as a “critical utopia”, a term conceptualised by Tom Moylan; it does not simply condemn human exploitation of animals in their bondage, but also probes into possible problems of animal liberation policies, the paradoxes behind animal liberation presuppositions, as well as offering a critical reflection on the psychology of our desire for animal entertainment and human-animal affection.
If the fat man from the “animal-loving brotherhood” is simply a ruthless businessman disguised as an expert who exploits rhetoric of animal knowledge, the old man Dun Aires is a more complex character whose true intentions are hard to pin down—as is the nature of the circus he runs. The circus claims to provide an alternative to “aimless wandering or servitude”, corresponding both to the cruelty of natural law, and the cruelty of animal slavery that human law tries to end. However, the circus cannot avoid operating according to the rulings of capitalism; its mysterious appeal and profitability are comparable to that of the “animal-loving brotherhood”, illustrating the difficulty of reconciling the instrumental functions of animals in the circus to generate income and provide amusement, and the rights of the animals kept and trained in the circus. The narration, rendered by Kit Maude’s subtle and sophisticated translation in an aptly ambiguous manner, portrays Dun Aires as “a salesman” and renders his rhetoric to be as dazzling as the stunts that his circus offers; but at the same time, it is sympathetic towards the young boy’s attention on Ruby and his admiration towards the level of professionalism of the Pups of Dancing Lake:
His eyes are gleaming, either with tears or amazement, and from the rhythmic pacing of the little dog, his unblinking gaze rises to the roof of the tent, then up to the sky. It follows the curve of the heavens and then plunges downward back into the earth while the image of Ruby fades into the darkness of an underground tunnel.
Dun Aires’s argument to justify the operation of his circus, as well as the family’s conclusion that the circus is “brilliant” despite instances of animal humiliation, present an apt portrait of human complacency while “the real needs of the respective species” remains in an epistemological impasse—as after all, animals cannot communicate themselves to humans in any language we know.
Between staying in the circus or being set free in the wild, staying with Munruf might not be a worse option for Ruby, but in Cohen’s world, such a solution is impossible. In modern human society, it is hard to imagine how animal liberation can be realised without governmental intervention, but relying dominantly on the law to protect animal rights and ensure animal welfare is not a satisfactory option either. What the law discredits is the necessity of experiential relationships between humans and animals for us to truly feel for other species and be empathetic to them. As Ruby’s mother comforts Munruf by saying: “Ruby has taught [us] about life, green fields, the desert and, at the end of the desert, trees again”, her natural metaphors reflect the organic nature of life. The understanding of vitality, of what it means in the processions of living, can only be gained through experience, and the experience of relating to animals affectively is not only enriching, but essential to human-animal coexistence—which, in the end, can be more effective than the law in promoting care for animals. Being not able to stay with Ruby may leave feelings of regret in Munruf’s heart, but the experience has already enhanced his capacity to understanding the world around him, including the knowledge that it is, after all, best to let the mole stay in the ground, where it belongs—something that could have only been learned through having interfered with animal affairs in the first place.
Charlie Ng is currently an assistant professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She obtained her BA in English and MPhil in English (Literary Studies) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and graduated with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. This article is part of her research project, supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project Reference Number: UGC/FDS16/H18/22).
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