Are We Not Men?

On 14 April 2010, I posted a comment on the film, Island of Lost Souls. The "happy" paradise built by Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) begins to fall apart when his man-animal hybrids begin to ask, "Are we not men?"

Island of Lost Souls is a very perverse film which can be uncomfortable to watch even today. Many considered it to be a frontal assault on the prevalent political and religious order. The film was banned in some places and in Australia it received the N.E.N. designation: "not to be exhibited to natives;" the aborigines or "Bushmen."

The motivation for the N.E.N. designation was the same as that which produced laws in the pre-Civil War American South which made it illegal to teach slaves to read. Many especially did not want the slaves to read the book of Philemon.

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You can read more about this film and others which stretched moral, political, sexual, social, religious, and ethical boundaries in:

Doherty, Thomas, Pre-Code Hollywood. Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934 (NY: Columbia University Press, ca. 1999)