The Nim Project was a sensational Pygmalion-type experiment developed by Professor Herb Terrace, a primate cognitive specialist at Columbia University in New York. In 1973, he wanted to see if a chimpanzee (named Nim) could be adopted into a human family and taught to communicate in sign language. However, Marsh elegantly shows his audience that this is not exactly what the Nim project is about. Without any of the participating humans recognizing or even realizing it, the Nim project was in fact a manipulative experiment in human sexual behavior and family life.
Terrace was apparently a charismatic and powerful alpha gorilla scientist who simply announced that his former student (with whom he had once had a sexual relationship) would have the honor of being the mother of his chimpanzee student. But the charisma of the professional with his Bobby Charlton hairstyle is something that modern audiences should trust.
The adorable little Nim got into this woman’s bohemian New York family, and instantly began to possess her and be openly aggressive towards her poor bewildered new husband, coming between them. It is easy to see how Terrace uses Nim as a proxy sexual identity, re-establishing his own controlling presence. Terrace then obtains funding to continue Nim’s education elsewhere, in a beautiful mansion in upstate New York. He powerfully removes Nim from his former student’s control and hands him over to a handsome young teenager, and Nim subsequently essentially facilitates Terrace’s affair with her.
At the center of all this is a seductive and lovable chimpanzee to whom everyone is devoted. He seems to learn new sign words every day, and all the teachers in Terrace’s mansion-commune (mostly young women) are increasingly excited about the inevitable new Aquarian period of interspecies communication. However, Nim, who grows to about 5 feet tall and has strength far exceeding human strength, is becoming increasingly threatening. And his alleged linguistic skills look like a dangerous, sentimental, anthropomorphic illusion.
It’s impossible to avoid the feeling that The Nim Project is a story of emotional abuse: I wondered if Marsh might even arrange confrontational interviews, during which former Terrace employees would sharply question him about his behavior. This does not happen – and I would have liked to discuss more about the collapse of his language experiment and what that collapse implied. Furthermore, Marsh’s theatricalized inserts add little. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating documentary. Chimpanzee comes out of it well. Homo sapiens, of course, are lacking.
