Violence and Morality in Animal Imagery

One theme that I’ve found really interesting so far in Burt’s book is the connection he makes between animals in the media and issues of morality. He brings up the tendency of early natural history films to enforce moral values which occurred in conjunction with an overall modernizing of the cinema. This makes sense in the early 20^th century, first because more and more people started going to movies and second because of the inherent draw of humans to animal subjects.

At the end of Chapter 2 he expands upon this by bringing up cruelty and violence in animal films. Obviously, animal films became more and more regulated so as to lessen the harm done to stunt animals. However, even after these heightened rules, cinema goers still had problems with seeing this violence, despite the fact that it was often staged. Burt explains this by saying that animal films have the power to “collapse the boundary of representation and reality” (141). He suggests that when we view animal violence, we are accessing some suppressed, uncivilized aspect of ourselves.

While I am not yet sure if I agree with this notion, he brings up a really valid point. It’s curious that we can sit and watch horror movies or war movies but as soon as an animal is harmed on screen we all cringe. What does this reveal about the way we represent cruelty and violence? The way I see it, animal images hit closer to home because we have a harder distinguishing between representation and reality. Why? I’m still sorting that out but perhaps I will have an answer in class on Tuesday.

Man and Nature

Unfortunately I am still waiting for Grizzly Man to arrive in my mailbox from Netflix but it should arrive today, however, I will connect what I know about the film from class to our recent readings.

First of all, I think the connection between the film and American transcendentalism seems really interesting. I was able to find a clip online of the moment when Treadwell interacts with the foxes which had traces of the tone in Thoreau’s journal. The way in which Treadwell talks to the animals reminds me of when Thoreau writes about the own hooting;

“Thus it comes to us an accredited and universal or melodious sound ; is more than the voice of the owl, the voice of the wood as well. The owl only touches the stops, or rather wakes the reverberations. For all Nature is a musical instrument on which her creatures play, celebrating their joy or grief unconsciously often.”

They both have a certain reverent attitude towards wild creatures, personifying the animals but in conjunction with the environment. Yet I think fundamentally Thoreau and Treadwell differ in their motives. Thoreau existed in a time period where humans, animals and nature were still somewhat mutually dependent. And although it was the beginning on a modern era, Thoreau was still able to go to Walden and “live deliberately” with only “the essential facts of life” (Walden). But from what I understand of Treadwell’s mission, he sought to socialize the bears instead of admire from a distance. I think this gets greater questions in the class, such as the fading dualism that we see in Berger’s article as well as the way in which humans and animals mutually define each other.

Here is the clip I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rP5DHbyOwQ&feature=related

Angels and Insects

In Angels and Insects, we see natural science as a metaphor for human behavior, specifically throughout the parallel of the ant farm. It is obvious that the Alabaster family shows as a model for a sort of “natural hierarchy” in the sense that they believe themselves to be pure bred. Edgar especially makes many references to his belief that human hierarchical tendencies are simply a consequence of being “well bred.” Although this is clearly a complicated theme because this belief implies that humans contain some natural sense of superiority to each other.

Another interesting moment I found which exhibits natural science as a human metaphor is when Matty is describing why she adores the ants so much. She says that admires the insects because they have altruistic and socialist tendencies. This is interesting first of all, because she is anthropomorphizing the inherent qualities of the ants, she is imposing human sentiment on a creature that likely has no awareness of these qualities. And secondly, she is using the ants as an ideal model for human behavior. It’s interesting that a creature so simple and seemingly insignificant can have a perfect, idealistic society.

I think the movie simultaneously uses nature as a metaphor to show both the natural tendencies and hierarchical motives of human beings, but also to critique the flaws of these tendencies. For example, incest is obviously immoral and unnatural, which is presented as something that is so abhorred in not only the human world but the animal world.

Anthropomorphism

“Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities.” –Wikipedia Definition of Anthropomorphism

Obviously, our class thus far has largely focused on this concept of anthropomorphism and the projection of human traits onto animals. We first saw this in Painlevé’s documentaries, where he narrates the activities of the animals in human terms. Even the title, “The Love of the Octopus,” implies that there is something more to their mating process than simple biological urges. The idea that an octopus has a romantic sex life or is even capable of feeling an emotion, such as love, is definitely anthropomorphic.

Guest also portrays this possibility of animal emotion in “Best in Show.” What stuck out to me the most in the movie was when the dog owners acted like their pets had some strong desire to win the dog show. This is anthropomorphic in the respect that the dogs are consciously trying to win, that they feel a sense of competition. Although I think the most poignant example of anthropomorphism is the opening scene where the yuppie couple’s dog is in therapy. I found this the most absurd because the dog is literally being treated like their child in the sense that the pet has been “emotionally scarred.”

A last example, that we didn’t discuss in class but is an obvious example of anthropomorphism is Disney’s “The Lion King.” This was, hands down, my favorite movie as a kid and I think everyone is at least familiar with it. One anthropomorphic quality that I see present in this movie is that the lions essentially have a monarchy. If we reference back to the definition above, this would be an example of “governments.” And despite the fact that animals have natural hierarchies, the idea that they have an organized government system is merely an extension of this.

Finally, I think all these example show that anthropomorphism centers on the idea that animals are portrayed with more emotional capacity and agency than they do in real life. Although we respond to this in movies and books because it seems to be extensions of natural animals behavior which in turn causes us to identify with their behavior.