Animal and human displays in Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles and the 1931 Colonial Exposition at Vincennes illustrate societal changes and ideological orientations through the evolution of “zoological exhibitionism.” Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles demonstrates a shift in the spectator experience and breaks away from the king’s first menagerie at Vincennes meant for animal combats, while Madeleine de Scudéry’s and Claude Denis’s literary accounts of the menagerie at Versailles show how animals serve as an allegory for the world of Louis XIV and serve as extensions of the members of Louis XIV’s court. That Jean de La Fontaine’s Les Amours de Psyché et Cupidon reflects a new social code is clear in the broader context of his retelling of the myth of Psyche and Cupid, which helps to understand Psyche as an ecological heroine. The zoological garden and the ethnological exhibitions of the Colonial Exposition of 1931 illustrate how animal and human displays in a colonial context infiltrate the lives of average citizens and serve as propaganda for the organizers’ colonial doctrine, an agenda that is criticized by poet Louis Aragon and other major surrealist figures and sadly normalizes the practice not only of viewing animals in captivity but also of displaying humans in zoo-like settings.