You ever read a non-fiction book about a particular individual animal you feel torn on? I've had this before with the books about lions like Christian and Elsa, and it's no different here with Ralph Helfer's lion Zamba, though the situation is a little different in this case.
Content warnings for "spoilers" (as far as you can spoil a non-fiction), racism and mentions of animal abuse/death.
In this book, Helfer recounts the life of Zamba, a lion he worked with during his time as a provider and of trained animals for Hollywood movies in the fifties and sixties. Zamba was originally found as a weakened orphaned cub in Africa, but soon transported to Ralph's farm in the USA where he grew up and was trained using a method called "affection training" rather than the standard fear and punishment-based training of the time. Zamba proves to be a real gentle giant and stars in many projects throughout the years, and Helfer tells us about them all.
Like I said before, I'm torn on this. There's some good elements to this story, but at the same time a lot of it wouldn't fly with animal (and actor) safety precautions today. But of course things were different back then and they didn't have things like CGI to replace animals in movies.
I'll first go into the good here. I like the "affection training" Helfer does for his animals. At the time, most animals (especially dangerous wild ones) that were trained for movies, circuses, etc. were trained using punishment and fear, resulting in a lot of stress and mental scarring for the creatures. Helfer absolutely refuses to use this technique and Zamba was one of his first "experiments" of using this "affection training". I'm not sure if his "affection training" is (nearly) the same as today's modern positive reinforcement training, but it may be a precursor version of it. Helfer was clearly effective at training his animals (at least based on his accounts) because he didn't seem to have many bad incidents with them. Particularly Zamba is shown here as a mellow well-trained lion.
Also: the bond between Helfer and Zamba seems genuine. While nowadays most respectable keepers of wild animals (especially dangerous ones like big cats) would not directly interact with their lions, things were different back then. You do feel the bond Helfer has with this lion; he's not just a pet or trained animal to him; he's a part of the family.
But, again, there's also quite a few negatives. Like said before, this way of directly interacting with a dangerous wild animal doesn't really fly in most accredited animal facilities. Doesn't mean that there isn't people who do this, but in stuff like zoos and rescues the reputable ones tend to have as little physical interaction as possible for both the well-being and safety of the animal and the people involved.
There's also a part of the book where Helfer suggests that killing and eating animals is inherently kind of corrupting, even for predator animals such as big cats. He then goes on to "prove" that Zamba and some of his other felines can survive on a vegan diet and just...NO. Look, I have no problem with people being vegetarian/vegan and being against eating meat, but you do not push that diet onto carnivorous animals. Animals like lions are obligate carnivores, meaning they literally will get health issues and eventually die if they're not fed their right (meat-based) diet. Zamba seemed to be doing rather fine on the vegan diet, but that's because Helfer rather quickly switched back to feeding him meat again after only a short time.
It's one thing for a human, an omnivore, to choose to stop eating meat, but big cats like Zamba need a meat-based diet. No matter how many supplements and vitamins you add to his vegan diet, it's still very unhealthy and bad for the animal. If feeding an carnivorous animal meat is really that difficult for you, don't get a carnivorous pet. I'm super glad that Helfer eventually switched back to giving Zamba meat again before his health got worse, though he did seem to insist that it'd be possible for Zamba to survive properly on the vegan diet. Again, Helfer can be vegan/vegetarian all he wants and I don't mind that in the slightest, but to push that onto an animal that literally cannot survive without meat is just plain bad.
Also, something even the book itself brings up: Helfer is throughout Zamba's life continuously essentially using or even exploiting the animal to make a profit, even putting him in uncomfortable situations (though Zamba seems to take them all right) or situations where he could end up hurting someone. There's a certain project they shoot where Zamba has to interact with a girl and believe me, no matter how well-trained and gentle the lion is they were going to use for that movie, I wouldn't have wanted to be that girl or even a part of that movie. Accidents happen even with gentle giants and it probably wouldn't fly in today's movie-making industry. If anyone gets hurt by the lion that doesn't just mean bad news for the person hurt involved, but also the lion and of course Helfer himself.
And even with Zamba accepting all this, should a wild animal really have to live a life of being exploited like this? If he can't be wild at least put him in a good big cat sanctuary or zoo or something. I know that in the sixties those probably still weren't what they are today, but at the same time he won't be forced to constantly work and be put in dangerous (for both parties) and humiliating situations. The author even brings up feeling kinda bad about exploiting Zamba himself in the book, but never really follows through on it with an afterthought. Just a brief "oh this is kinda humiliating for him and I'm putting him through all of this" and then no further continuation of that train of thought.
A really sad scene in the book is the one where the author has to feed his recently deceased horses to Zamba and the other big cats at Nature's Haven. This part of the book wasn't bad or anything, but it sure was depressing and heart-wrenching. These weren't just any horses, either, but literally the horses owned by his own family and friends; animals they had actual bonds with. But due to a storm and being out of meat they were forced to skin the horses and feed them to the big cats and it wasn't pretty.
Now, for the most egregious parts of the book: the author's, um, treatment of the people in Africa. So for some context: for one film project, Zamba and Helfer travel to a location in Africa in order to film a movie there (the same project involving the girl interacting with the lion). Throughout the time they spend there they mostly act decent, but there were also a few moments that made me raise my eyebrows. One, the author generally doesn't seem to like calling the African locals by their actual names, instead using nicknames for them. Come on, man, at least bother to learn their names even if they are more difficult than the standard American names you're used to. It's kind of basic respect, especially if they're people you're going to interact with for a longer time.
Second, there's literally a scene where he partakes in blackface for a movie scene. Well, blackbody actually, since they dye his entire body. And I mean... I get why, there's a scene they have to film with Zamba "mauling" (aka playing with) a black actor, and since Helfer is Zamba's trainer he was the only one they felt comfortable shooting the scene with. Since Zamba would be acting pretty darn rough with him for the scene (even if it is just playing) and they didn't want to endanger the actual actor. But like...blackface is still racism. And racism is bad, can't believe I have to spell this out. I mean, this is once again where the whole thing of us considering things bad in modern times applies. But it was still really uncomfortable to read and I really wish they could've found some other non-racist workaround.
Overall this was a decently-written book but I just have too many moral hangups with it. If you like reading about how animals were used in film in the mid-1900s and the bond between a wild animal and his person, here you go, but I don't really recommend it because it just doesn't really fly today both with the racism and the way the animal was treated sometimes, even if Zamba took all of it willingly and never acted out. I'm just glad I can say in modern times: thank God we have CGI.
Rating: 3/5
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