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 20th 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.
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