As I glanced at the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, I noticed a blurb on the bottom of the page advising that an opinion piece by a "Pamela Anderson" could be found on page A14. I smiled and shook my head thinking, "Surely, it couldn't be THAT Pamela Anderson. The woman known for starring in such cinematic classics as "Barbed Wire" and the Tommy Lee sex tape could not POSSIBLY have a piece in the august and well-respected opinion section of my precious Wall Street Journal. It's probably an economist at Stanford who happens to share the same name."
But lo and behold, proving that indeed ANYTHING is possible, it is that Pamela Anderson who has penned a piece about chimpanzees called No Way to Treat a Relative :
King Kong is my hero. He's big, muscular, sensitive, a terrific actor--and he's not real. The use of computer-generated imagery has really taken off in Hollywood. So why has Madison Avenue suddenly gone bananas for real apes? Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, with at least 95% of the same DNA. We're closer to them than they are to gorillas, so when I see chimpanzees being used as on-screen comedians, dressed up in silly costumes to sell credit cards, I think, Is this any way to treat a relative?
This issue has been on my mind a lot lately. It started when my kids went on a field trip to what was billed as an exotic animal refuge in Malibu. I excitedly tagged along only to find that it was like a shabby petting zoo that rents lions, tigers and a fascinating pair of chimpanzees to productions like "The Gong Show" to perform pathetic tricks under lights in front of loud crowds--conditions that are very stressful. I chose to have that kind of life; these animals didn't.
She does have a point. No animal should be forced to live the kind of life that Pamela Anderson has.
I've vowed never to be involved with a production that uses live apes because I don't want to be a part of this cruelty, and I bet you don't either. Let's drop the curtain on ape "actors" by sticking to animatronic animals or willing human performers for our ads. It's not like there's a shortage of struggling starlets willing to embarrass themselves if it means getting on TV.
No more working with live apes? I guess that puts the kibosh on the rumored "Baywatch" reunion show with David Hasselhoff.
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