Animals, Society and Culture

1. Animals, Society and Culture Lecture 13: Visual representation of animals 2012-13

2. Lecture outline • How the genre has changed and developed • Anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in wildlife films • The relation between scientific study of animals and their media representation – using Meerkat Manor as an example

3. Two types • Quests or expedition travelogue • Coming of age narratives • Shift from animals as objects, through anthropomorphism to zoomorphism • Spectacle and melodrama as well as science and education • Chris, C (2006) Watching Wildlife, University of Minnesota Press

4. Early years • Difference between human and animal emphasised • Animals were objects • Humans in control • Men hunters, women their helpers • Animals and non-white people seen as resources to be exploited

5. Post-second world war • Disney’s True Life Adventures • Anthropomorphising, individualism, family values • Nature pristine, humans have no place in nature • Focus on predatory and reproductive behaviour • Coming of age stories • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3k-fkOtTDo

6. Expedition type of film • Jaques Cousteau (1950s) • Adventure engaged in by men • David Attenborough also – collecting specimens or searching for the exotic • Quest for a particular animal • Animals objects of camera’s gaze • Masculinist genre with few women

7. Animals as symbol • ‘the stories the genre tends to tell are ones reflecting particular, frequently conservative social values, with implications for our understanding not only of the environment, and of animal life, but also human racial, sexual and cultural difference. What is projected onto nature reveals the most urgent struggles of human culture’ (Chris, 2006:209).

8. Zoomorphism • Explaining human behaviour through apparently homologous animal behaviours • Sociobiology – emerged in 1970s • Focus on mating, reproduction and rearing of young

9. Sociobiology • Men naturally promiscuous and protective of their mates • Women naturally nurturing and monogamous • Behaviour genetically programmed not culturally constructed • Wilson, E O (1975) Sociobiology • Dworkin, R (1976) The Selfish Gene

10. 1990s • Theories of behavioural and evolutionary genetics • Genetically determined inequality between the sexes • The sociobiological discourse privileges ‘the male sex drive and celebrates male aggression; naturalises the female who is choosy in her mate selection, fiercely devoted to offspring and otherwise subordinate; and assumes that heterosexual sexual behaviour is the only kind that counts. The wildlife genre embraced these assumptions.’ (Chris, 2006:166).

11. Rape • Explained as strategy to maximise chances of genes being reproduced • A male reproductive strategy developed to overcome female choosiness • This idea taken up in wildlife programmes

12. ‘Gay’ animals • Wildlife programmes rarely feature non-heterosexual behaviour • Same sex pair bonds and homosexual activity amongst animals fairly widespread • Prevailing generic formulas don’t permit non-procreative sexual behaviour

13. Use of animals • Vehicle for understanding human behaviour • Model for how humans ought to behave • Politics removed from films • Animals and nature exist apart from humans • Representation of animals under human control, animals used as symbols

14. Meerkat Manor • M. Candea (2010) ‘I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat’: engagement and detachment in human-animal relations’ in American Ethnologist, 37 (2): 241-258 • Explores forms of sociality between humans and meerkats • Combination of detachment and involvement – inter-patience • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0_-VIJtLyw

15. Assemblage • scientists observing and charting the meerkat behaviour • programmers interpreting and creating a ‘true fiction’ on the basis of what the scientists tell them and what they see • meerkats themselves, going about their daily business but also interacting with scientists and programme makers

16. How did it come about? • Collaboration between Cambridge University scientists, Discovery channel personnel, meerkats • Studied cooperation amongst meerkats • Meerkat Manor uses ‘docu-soap’ genre • Adventures of Whiskers, one of the groups, and Flower, the group’s dominant female

17. Entertainment and education • Fostered popular interest in natural history • Imparted factual information about the animals • Drew on soap opera genre – heroes and villains, developed characters

18. Active participants • Meerkats are subjects who can be included in social relations rather than as objects, either actual or symbolic. • Puts animals, people and objects on the same level – Bruno Latour. • The idea of the social as an association of different entities in networks.

19. Detachment and engagement • Detachment characteristic of science • Engagement associated with anthropomorphism, also with hunter-gatherer ontologies (Ingold) • Two forms of human-animal relations: • Scientific study of animals striving for objectivity • Lighthearted soap opera like animal documentary • Combine detachment and engagement

20. Habituation • Meerkats habituated to presence of humans • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnfK7nlY9AM • Meerkats and scientists maintain a proper distance • Similar forms of sociality amongst meerkats and researchers • Inter-patience

21. Creation of Meerkat Manor • Scientists • Named meerkats • Programme mixed up facts and stories, knowledge and emotions, animals and people, was anthropomorphic • Producer of programme • Enabled audience to empathise with meerkats • Not anthropomorphism, presenting real behaviour

22. The animals’ contribution • Representation of what the meerkats were doing • ‘It was the meerkats themselves who were, in a literal sense, ‘anthropomorphic’ (human shaped) and …their anthropomorphism elicited the egomorphism of the viewers. The filmmakers’ role was not to manufacture this effect but to step back and allow this to ‘come across’’ (Candea, 2010:252) • Egomorphism – understanding an animal on the basis that it’s like ‘me’ rather than ‘human-like’

23. True fiction • Meerkats delivered stories • Somewhere in between the meerkats and the producers the behaviour turned into story and animals into characters (253) • They were factual, scientifically accurate, but also made, they were true fiction

24. Meerkat agency • Not just symbols • ‘The hard-won, inter-patient work of habituation allows the researchers to produce accounts of meerkat behaviour that inform the programme, but it also lays the basis for the camera operators to get up close and personal with the furry stars, who, in turn, get a chance to captivate audiences through their own scenarios.’ (254)

25. Summary • Wildlife film two forms – expedition/quest and coming of age tale • Devoid of politics – seen as culturally universal – but actually quite specific as promote certain forms of sexual relations, gender relations, race relations and particular views of nature – timeless and/or to be controlled. • Indicate changes in how we understand human-animal relations and in how animals are treated. • Now an increasing recognition that animals are active participants in creating these programmes – not simply symbolic and acted upon by humans.