Animals in Contemporary Culture - English 380
Monday, May 7, 2012
Death at the Nonhuman Turn Conference: Exploring the Usefulness of Death
My favorite lecture was the second of the series, titled "The Corpse and Other Posthuman Non-Objects" given by Sarah Juliet Lauro. She focuses on the theories of objects and broken objects, relating it to the way we see and give meaning to corpses. She talked about both Graham Harman's and Martin Heidegger 's ideas about broken objects, Harman saying that all beings are broken equipment whereas Heidegger outlines what makes an object broken or unhandy. Next she tied this into Bill Brown's theory that objects comes to represent human-subject relationships therefore when an object is broken, it proceeds to change that relationship.
By making sure to outline the difference being the corpse as object and the being of the corpse, Lauro emphasized the way which we must view the physical body as simple as object, and not a representation of the death of that person. This ultimately led up to her final point, and the one that really stuck with me; the fact that the living viewer makes the corpse, something inherently unhandy, handy again through its subject-human relationship. She justified this by showing up paintings, mummies, and other representations of death in which humans represent the corpse in symbolic or meaningful ways. Therefore, she concluded that the corpse is only unhandy when out of the reach of human eyes because we constantly are finding ways to make death and the corpse meaningful, finding ways to make it useful again.
Her final point really stuck with me in light of my research on taxidermy because I've been really interested in the relationship humans have with the death of animals and the reasons that the recreation and representation of animals comes to hold so much meaning. I was also thinking about the way in which taxidermy becomes uncanny, presenting something that is familiar to us, but at the same time it is never quite right. I think that taxidermy definitely draws upon Lauro's point that humans always find a way to make the corpse handy because through the taxidermic process, we are giving meaning to animal bodies and using them as a tool to understand something about not only the animal, but our own human nature.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Think Twice About Your Food
Monday, March 12, 2012
Entertaining Fake Animals or Boring Live Ones?
The entire article on taxidermy by Desmond was interesting to me, I’ve always found taxidermy to be a peculiar subject and so I was happy to read a bit more about it. I also was intrigued by the prompt to relate this subject to contemporary zoos because that definitely wasn’t my first thought while reading. Desmond describes taxidermy as aiming to “capture and preserve the vitality and living energy of the animal” (160). It seems odd that we would use the death and even purposeful killing of an animal for the means of a lifelike display, especially in light of the fact that we do have zoos which also aim to present a natural animal vivacity. What’s more is that taxidermy tries to depict a “typical,” or rather what we perceive as typical, pose. Near the end of the essay Desmond talks about how our depiction of animals often lies not in natural fact, but in our imagined stereotype of some unseen wild animal. I found this connection to be the most interesting statement in the article because it seems to eradicate any trace of the actual animal in favor of how humans choose to identify the animal.
Animatronics and animal special effects are obviously an offshoot of taxidermist practices; however they relate more closely the modern zoo because they share a goal of entertainment. Curiously, animatronics aims to create realistic animals only to act our unrealistic, animal fictions. I would assume the goal in the strange recreation is to humanize the animal, yet it also seems to me that this practice distances us from the actuality qualities of the animal. Zoos on the other hand, do depict real animals however it is common for zoo spectators to taunt the animals in order for them to be more entertaining. When we see animals on screen or in other fictional displays, we suspend the disbelief that these creatures are somewhat humanized because in our everyday lives we mainly encounter fictionalized animals instead of real ones. Yet I think this is problematic for zoos because when we see animals in real life they are often sleeping or doing other mundane behavior. But humans want to see the animals act out, we are so entertained by these fake animals that we expect real animals to act the same. So the question I arrive at is will fictional representations of animals replace zoos in favor of entertainment? Do we need real animals if we can see convincing, life-like animatronic ones?
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Concrete Jungle
Monday, February 27, 2012
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 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.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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: