History Film / ProjectNim

* CourtroomAntics: In an attempt to get Nim out of LEMSIP, Henry Herrmann suggests to summon Nim as a "witness" in his own case, and have him make the sign "out" while in a cage in the courtroom. This isn't allowed, but the threat is apparently enough to make LEMSIP sell Nim to the Black Beauty Ranch animal refuge.

* AllAnimalsAreDomesticated: Naturally averted. Nim exhibits behavior typical of a male chimpanzee since a very young age despite not seeing other chimpanzee since birth, such as being hostile to his adoptive "father" and testing his authority as the lead male of the group.

* BittersweetEnding: Nim's FromBadToWorse life is cut short when he dies of a heart attack at the Black Beauty Ranch animal refuge at the age of 25 (chimps can live thrice that in captivity). However, he lived his last years in a more spacious residence, without experimentation, in the company of a chimp troupe (three of which were rescued from LEMSIP, counting Nim), had a mate and likely fathered a baby, and was visited regularly by his "friend", Bob Ingersoll. Additionally, while the project was deemed unsuccessful in teaching Nim true language, Nim learned 125 different signs, and LEMSIP was closed in 1995.

%%* IgnoredExpert
%%* ItsAllAboutMe

%%* MeetCute
* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: Nim Chimpsky is a play on the name of famous MIT linguist Noam Chomsky.
%%* TheNineties

* RaisedByHumans: the premise of the documentary is do this to a chimpanzee and see if it can develop language like a human.

%%* ScienceIsBad

* DevilInPlainSight: Dr. James Mahoney is literally called "The Devil" by Ingersoll. A thin, wrinkled, bald figure in both the [=70s=] and 2011 segments, he is tasked with acquiring chimpanzees for vaccine experimentation at LEMSIP and sees no difference between Nim and other chimpanzees, despite knowing that he was RaisedByHumans and knows sign language.

%%* ValuesDissonance

* AdultFear: Nim was the sixth baby of his mother that was taken from her. She knew they would take him from her and tried to protect him with her body. The standard procedure was to tranquilize her with a dart and take the baby from her before she fell unconscious and involuntarily crushed it under her body.

[[folder:A-H]]

* TheEighties: Roughly coincident with the time Nim is held in solitary at Black Beauty, during which he destroyed two TV sets given to him in an attempt to entertain him. The doc reenacts one of these with the TV showing a speech by UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:I-Z]]

* HellholePrison: The IPS and specially the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), which keep their chimps in small, cramped, and humid cages, make them work or serve as lab rats, and control them with cattle prods and tranquilizers.

* BittersweetEnding: Nim's FromBadToWorse life is cut short when he dies of a heart attack at the Black Beauty Ranch animal refuge at the age of 25 (chimps can live thrice that in captivity). However, he lived his last years in a more spacious residence, without experimentation, in the company of a chimp troupe (three of which were rescued from LEMPSIP, counting Nim), had a mate and likely fathered a baby, and was visited regularly by his "friend", Bob Ingersoll. Additionally, the project was concluded to not be successful in teaching Nim true language, though Nim did learn 125 different signs.

* DevilInPlainSight: Dr. James Mahoney is literally called "The Devil" by Ingersoll. A thin, wrinkled, bald figure in both the [=70s=] and 2011 segments, he is tasked with acquiring chimpanzees for vaccine experimentation at LEMPSIP and sees no difference between Nim and other chimpanzees, despite knowing that he was RaisedByHumans and knows sign language.

* HellholePrison: The IPS and specially LEMSIP keep their chimps in small, cramped, and humid cages, make them work or serve as lab rats, and control them with cattle prods and tranquilizers.

[[folder:A-I]]

* InformedFlaw: Despite deeming it promising for several years, Herbert suddenly declares the project a failure and defends that Nim is not using language but just ponying a few gestures he has learned for his benefit. Yet Nim is shown to know dozens of words in sign language, use them in correct combinations, and even create new ones.

[[folder:J-Z]]
* GoneHorriblyWrong: The entire project and Nim's life (if there ever was a plan for him beyond the project), particularly while under the [=LaFarges=]. It isn't until he is moved to the second house when there is an actual record keeping and planning of the experiment, and he learns most of his signs.

* ApatheticCitizens: When Nim is sold to LEMSIP, Bob Ingersoll and another student-keeper at the Institute for Primate Studies try to raise awareness and oppose the move, but they meet indifference from the populace and educators alike; only some journalists show interest.

* FantasticallyIndifferent: The workers at LEMSIP know that Nim knows sign language, but treat him like any other subject. Furthermore, they know that ''other chimps'' from the IPS also know signs (which means either Nim taught them or they copied him), but this only spurs them to teach staff a few signs so they can order the chimps easily. Nobody seems to give any importance to this, nor does it make anyone think about giving the chimps better living conditions than being cramped in small individual cages.
%%* FromBadToWorse
%%* HellholePrison
%%* HenpeckedHusband
%%* HippyParents
%%* InformedFlaw

%%* GoneHorriblyWrong

* BestialityIsDepraved: The doc touches on the physical relationship between Nim and his first adoptive "mother", Stephanie [=LaFarge=] for several minutes but doesn't comment on it. [=LaFarge=] admits to breastfeeding Nim (it was part of the plan and she didn't think it was wrong), but also to touch Nim's genitals and to let him "explore" her body as he grew up. When Herbert Terrace learns of this, he immediately takes Nim from Stephanie and moves him to a new home in New York. In there, Nim is given cats to pet, but when he puts them against his groin, they are taken from him and he is told not to do that.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: The Black Beauty Ranch, at least in the beginning. People and animals are received with a corny sign about how their problems have ended, and while orders of magnitude better in comfort than either the IPS or LEMPSIP, it is still a refuge originally built for ''horses'' and similar animals, to the point that there isn't any other chimpanzee there until many years later. Making things worse, the first manager Cleveland Amory doesn't allow Bob Ingersoll to visit.

%%* FantasticallyIndifferent

* AllAnimalsAreDomesticated: [[RealityEnsues Naturally averted]]. Nim exhibits behavior typical of a male chimpanzee since a very young age despite not seeing other chimpanzee since birth, such as being hostile to his adoptive "father" and testing his authority as the lead male of the group.

* TheEighties: Roughly coincident with the time Nim is held in solitary at Black Beauty, during which he destroyed two TV sets given to him in an attempt to entertain him. The doc reenacts one of this destructions with the TV showing a speech of UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan.

%%* KnowNothingKnowItAll

* DevilInPlainSight: Dr. James Mahoney is literally called "The Devil" by Ingersoll. A thin, wrinkled, and bald figure in both the [=70s=] and 2011 segments, he is tasked with purchasing chimpanzees for vaccine experimentation for LEMPSIP and sees no difference between Nim and the other chimpanzees, in spite of him knowing he was RaisedByHumans and knows sign language.
* DidNotThinkThisThrough: The plan is to raise a chimp as a human child and teach him sign language, yet virtually anyone who comes into contact with Nim doesn't know anything about either chimpanzees, sign language, child-rearing, or even how to conduct such a long experiment.
%%* TheEighties
%%* EvilutionaryBiologist

A 2011 {{documentary}} film by James Marsh (Director of the film ''Film/ManOnWire'') that tells the story of Neam "Nim" Chimpsky, a chimpanzee RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to (''de jure'') test if he could learn to communicate like a human if treated as a human child fom birth.

%%* DevilInPlainSight
%%* DidNotThinkThisThrough

* CurbStompBattle: All three times Nim attacks a woman, since he already has the strength of several men even as a subadult. When Nim learns that his second "mother" Laura-Ann Petitto is leaving, he jumps a floor and a half, gets in the room where she is at through a window, and bashed her head against the floor until four men restraint him. He bites another student, Renee Falitz, so hard that the inside of her mouth can be seen from the outside, and Herbert decides to abort the project outright. Finally, he grabs his first "mother" Stephanie by a leg and throws her around like a doll when she enters his cage in Black Beauty.

* AllAnimalsAreDomesticated: [[RealityEnsues Naturally averted]]. Nim exhibits behavior typical of a male chimpanzee since a very young age despite not seeing other chimpanzee since his birth, such as being hostile to his adoptive "father" and testing his authority as the lead male of the group.

* BestialityIsDepraved: The doc touches on the physical relationship between Nim and his first adoptive "mother", Stephanie [=LaFarge=] for several minutes but doesn't comment on it. [=LaFarge=] admits to breastfeeding Nim (it was part of the plan and she didn't think it was wrong), but also to touch Nim's genitals and to let him "explore" her body as he grew up. When Herbert Terrace learned of this, he immdiately took Nim from Stephanie and moved him to a new home. While in there, Nim was given cats to pet, but he would put them against his groin, at which point they would be taken from him and he would be told not to do that.

* CourtroomAntics: In an attempt to get Nim out of LEMSIP, Henry Herrmann suggests to summon Nim as a "witness" in his own case and have him make the sign "out" while in a cage in the courtroom. This isn't allowed, but the threat is apparently enough to make LEMSIP sell Nim to the Black Beauty Ranch animal refuge.
* CrapsaccharineWorld: The Black Beauty Ranch, at least in the beginning. People and animals are received with a corny sign about how their problems have ended, and while orders of magnitude in comfort than either the IPS or LEMPSIP, it is still a refuge originally built for horses and similar animals, to the point that there isn't any other chimpanzee until many years later. To make things worse, the first manager Cleveland Amory doesn't allow Bob Ingersoll to visit.
%%* CurbStompBattle

A 2011 documentary film by James Marsh (Director of the film Film/ManOnWire) that tells the story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to see if Nim could learn to communicate like a human if treated like a human child.

* BittersweetEnding: The project is concluded to not be successful in teaching Nim true langauge, though Nim does learn 125 different signs.

%%* CrapsaccharineWorld

%%* {{Hypocrite}}

A 2011 documentary film by James Marsh (Director of the film Film/ManOnWire) that tells the story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to see if Nim could learn to communicate and act like a human child if treated like a human child.

* BittersweetEnding: The project is concluded to not be successful in teaching Nim true langauge, though Nim does learn 125 different signs.
* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: Nim Chimpsky is a play on the name of famous MIT linguist Noam Chomsky.

* RealityEnsues: A Chimpanzee is much bigger and stronger than an average human, and even if raised like a human and with humans, is still a fundamentally different animal. That some of the research assistants got hurt is unsurprising in this light.

A 2011 documentary film by James Marsh that tells the story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to see if Nim could learn to communicate and act like a human child if treated like a human child.

* RealityEnsues: A Chimpanzee is much bigger and stronger than an average human, even if raised like a human, is still a fundamentally different animal.

* RaisedByHumans: the premise of the documentary is do this to a chimpanzee and see if it can develop language like a human.

A 2011 documentary film by James Marsh that tells the story of a chimpanzee taken from it's mother and RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to see if Nim could learn to communicate and act like a human child if treated like a human child.

* RaisedByHumans: the premise of the documentary is do this to a chimpanzee

A 2011 documentary that tells the story of a chimpanzee taken from it's mother and RaisedByHumans in the 1970s as part of an experiment to see if Nim could learn to communicate and act like a human child if treated like a human child.