Pet Architecture: Human's Best Friend

Characters like Animal from the Muppet show (a creation by Jim Hen-son) are often illustrations through which we can talk about the quali-ties of the wild, the feral and the natural, in contrast to that which is artificial or built, the man-made. This article, however, would like to focus on the chain.‘Animal,’ the character, offers the comic emerging out of the usual play between sophistication and calling, which can define the figure of the invited wild. The sophistication of the chained animal (who is a great musician) plays with the figure of drummers and their often cli-ched position in a band—there are jokes in the music world that refer to the drummer as that member who can have less ‘musical educa-tion’ than the other players (unfair, surely). Obsession with playing often puts Animal in trances that ultimately reveal all dimensions at once, including narratives that are confusing about their actual spe-cies—quite often that Animal’s solos end up with two mental health nurses catching him with a butterfly net to take him off stage, and suggestively, to some kind of ‘other place.’ Animal, however, is glad to be in his chain and this way be able to play the drums in the com-panion of the other ‘more human’ animals. The unused chain, surely, contains a wilder Animal than his behavior can ever become.