Evolution in the Bible Belt

Of course this film is no biology lesson, nevertheless there are some playful evolutionary references that might put a new complexion on some of its characters generous, occasionally frowned upon, use of the f-word as well as on inside man Gawain's bunkie junkie urges.
In the course of evolutionary selection genetic variations are "tried and found wanting" (Marva Munson in the beginning) and get extinct, or found to be effective and survive. The Professor pictures the latter alternative for the gang members passing their genes on: "I suggest that we shall look back upon this little caper one day, one distant day, grandchildren dandled upon our knee ..."
A gene is found to be effective if the trait it controls enables the organism to fit in its environment. Such a trait as well as the process of passing it on to next generations is called adaptation. A rather adventurous display of adaptation, of course not in the evolutionary but in a tactical sense, occurs when the Professor swiftly produces and changes stories, as a chameleon colors, explaining to Marva Munson what happened, trying to keep her from consulting the authorities after she saw the money in the cellar.
The Professor before ascending the tree to retrieve mischievous little Pickles: "I did this often as a child. I was a positive lemur." Evolutionary, lemurs are humans' relatives, resembling early primates.
During Garth Pancake's introduction we witness Otto the dog's literal struggle for existence in the making of a World-War-I-themed dog food commercial. The dog, first domesticated animal, resulted, in its various breedings, from artificial selection controlled by man.
There's a hint at some kind of possibly genetic deviation with the Professor when he points out how his father, distinguished inmate of a mental institution, once told him: "Goldthwaite, you are not formed as other boys." But evolution is blind and the element of chance is involved. Despite all your special skills, anytime you could be hit by a loose stone head, as the Professor is, or by an asteroid, as the dinosaurs were.
The morning after the gang, so to say, got removed from the gene pool, Marva Munson gets the newspaper: "The Saucier Scimitar" which, on account of the applied font, can easily be misread as "The Saurier Scimitar".
Dinosaurs, scimitar-toothed cat and now (local edition!) the gang: extinct.
The money goes to Bob Jones University teaching (young earth) creationism.
Evolution's blindness as metaphor for life's uncertainty, like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in The Man Who Wasn't There or Schrödinger's cat in A Serious Man.
PS:
- Where did man's ancestors survive the asteroid's impact with the changed environmental conditions that killed the dinosaurs?
"And what, to flog a horse that if not dead is at this point in mortal danger of expiring, does this little square represent?"
"Offices. Underground."
"Ha! Underground!"
- The Professor when ascending the tree to catch Pickles: "Harmless little felix domesticus." Again domestication, artificial evolution. So to say man's attempt to tame chance. But Pickles keeps on escaping and causing disorder. A metaphor for the untamability of chance.
PPS:
Not necessarily evolution related, but a nice play on words / pun.
Garth and Mountain Girl met in the Catskills.
"I'm thinking, though, that since I lost a finger, and I mean literally lost it cause of that *beep*in cat, maybe I should be excused from this thing. Hard for me to squeeze a trigger anyway."
The cat's skills.
PPPS:
The Coen Brothers are supposed to cite Kubrick in each of their films. What Kubrick film would that be here?
"I did this often as a child. I was a positive lemur." "Harmless little felix domesticus."
The Professor struggles with the cat, as the ape-man does with the leopard in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He falls off the tree and hence during the free fall finds himself briefly in the state of weightlessness. After that we see Marva Munson serving him a cup of tea, the image spinning counterclockwise like in 2001 when the stewardess serves the pilots liquid food in space. One of 2001's themes is human evolution. *)
A thing occasionally critized about the remake is the resoluteness of the old lady in contrast to her frailty in the original, concluding that there's no reason for being concerned about her in the remake. But in fact Marva Munson is pretty much in danger of being finished off when the General, "at last the right man for the job", approaches her. Is it pure chance that the cuckoo clock goes off? Or is it divine intervention, like the extraterrestrial intervention in 2001? Remember a Jesus statue comes out of the clock's door.
PPPPS:
- Charles Darwin (* 12. Februar 1809) was born in the same year as Edgar Allan Poe (* 19. Januar 1809).
Both are implicitly linked by the newspaper on Marva Munson's porch.
The newspaper's (misread) name "The Saurier Scimitar" establishes a link to Darwin (dinosaurs, scimitar cat: two extinct species; extinction as part of Darwin's theory of evolution).
The newspaper's headline "$1.6 million disappears from local casino - authorities perplexed" establishes a link to Poe (G.H. Dorr: "the conundrum of the undisturbed yet empty vault, the unsolvable riddle of the sealed yet violated sanctum"; a reference to the detective fiction subgenre of the "locked room mystery" already present in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", commonly considered as first modern detective story).
- One of the biblical/theological arguments against evolution is mentioned by Marva Munson: "nothing new under the sun", summarizing Ecclesiastes 1:9 and 3:14-15.
- The Professor describes the casino's insurance company as "financial behemoth". Some young earth creationists identify behemoth (Job 40:15-24) as possibly a dinosaur.
*)
One could consider "2001: A Space Odyssey" as archeology of violence. There's a funny twist on this notion when G.H. Dorr elaborates on the chain of events leading to the second explosion in Marva Munson's cellar: "Lump here is an avid collector of Indian arrowheads, and having found one simply lying on your cellar floor - a particularly rare artifact of the Natchez tribe? - he enlisted the entire ensemble in an all-out effort to sift through the subsoil in search of others. And apparently in doing so we hit a mother lode of natural gas. I myself became acutely aware of the smell of "rotten eggs". And it was just at this inopportune moment that the General here violated the cardinal rule of this house and lit himself a cigarette." The Indian arrowhead as artifact of violence, like the bone in 2001. The fact that the whole story is a lie also suits 2001: language not as tool to impart knowledge but as means of deception.