Talk:Victor of Aveyron
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Does anyone know what parts of the movie diverge in important ways from Victor's real life? Here are a few conflicts:
- In the movie, Victor never managed to escape captivity until he'd been in training with Itard for several months.
- In the movie, Victor has a much greater mastry over the spelling L-A-I-T than the pronunciation of lait. (He can pronounce it very strangely, but tends to do so only after he gets milk; he never uses it to request milk.)
- This article implies that people were, in general, nice to Victor. The movie implies that, though Itard and a few others cared for him, most people thought of him as a kind of circus freak, and refused to let him be.
- In the movie, Victor emerged from the woods and had to walk on all fours, and had to be taught to "walk upright". Did this really happen?
- Do the journal entries that Itard reads in the movie correspond to a real journal he kept? If so, how faithful are the journal entries we see the Itard character write during the film?
--Ryguasu 02:20 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)
- Yes, to the best of my knowledge, Victor was inclined to walk low to the ground, rather than upright. I've never seen the movie, and am not an avid study of Victor, so I couldn't say whether the movie's portrayal is accurate. It was considered 'disappointing' at the time, as walking on 2 legs, upright, was seen as something uniquely human. Between Victor's behaviour, and the discovery of Orangutans, that hypothesis was completely blown out of the water.
- As for Lait, Victor was never much of a speaker. Itard demonstrated that Victor was learning to listen and understand, to recognise and to read, but Victor never said more than a few words, and those were infrequent. It's somewhat common for individuals without a primary language to have difficulty expressing anything more than the information about the present, or the very recent past. Language tends to be more reactive than proactive when learned late, initially, though as Genie taught us, the information and desires are always there. Genie is particularly notorious for, despite speaking significantly more than Victor, communicating her wants non-verbally.
- Itard kept regular journal entries, and used them to write one, then another report. I could say 2 reports, but it's important to note that each was distinct, and spaced apart. The movie is, to my understanding, based wholly, and fairly accurately, on the information contained within the first report. The ending is still criticised somewhat, but at the time, things seemed pretty optimistic about Victor. Shortly afterwards, though, Victor's progress rapidly dwindled, and Itard's second report is much more negative, and he recommends ending the study. One of the key bits of information to remember is that at this point, Victor had just hit puberty. 14 perhaps? I can't remember, but in any case, this is something he has in common with Genie. Inappropriate public masturbation. Itard would bleed Victor to 'help' deal with the sexual furor. That's the most striking example, but just keep in mind, as with Genie, there are many more associated changes with adolescence that can make a youth challenging.
- The above is based on recalled information from the documentary about feral children covering Victor and Genie, and Genie: A Scientific Tragedy by Russ Rymer, and some bits and pieces from Psychology textbooks. Again, I've never even read Itard's reports, so I'd take the above with a grain of salt. Hope this helps, for all that it's about statements over 4 years old. Im-Mersion
[edit] Name
Please note who named him Victor 06:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Content Lifting From The Secret of the Wild Child
A lot of this page's content sounds very similar to how it is presented in The Secret of the Wild Child, a NOVA documentary on Genie. A transcript of the documentary is available here: [1]
To skip to the section about Victor, one may copy/paste "STACY KEACH: For the first time in her life" in their browser's find function. -Martinman 03:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
