The Upside Down – Monkey Magic

What is it about monkeys that
makes them so compelling?

I recently recorded a podcast about the late 16th Century Chinese classic novel by Wu Cheng’en, usually translated into English as Monkey King: Journey to the West. The new Penguin translation by Julia Lovell is lively and action-packed and was clearly written with an eye on the cult Japanese TV show Monkey, which appeared in the UK in a dubbed version in the early 1980s and led to an epidemic of children leaping around and hitting one another with poles. As the series voiceover solemnly intones, “the nature of monkey was irrepressible!”

What is it about us and monkeys?

Anyone who’s taken children to a zoo will know the tractor beam-like attraction they exert. A monkey enclosure is like a 12A movie – scenes of mild peril with some sexual content.

Children like monkeys because they feel a direct connection with them, and they are right to: only the apes are closer relatives. It’s interesting that, within a few decades of the word ‘monkey’ first being used (1530, although its origin is obscure), we had already begun to use it as an affectionate nickname for children.