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

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

6. The Living Desert 1953

7. 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

8. 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).

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

10. 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

11. 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).

12. "Arriving“ "Growing Up“ "Finding Food“ “Living Together" "Friends and Rivals" "Talking to Strangers" "Courting“ "Continuing the Line"

13. 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

14. ‘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

15. 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

16. 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):
Explores forms of sociality between humans and meerkats
Combination of detachment and involvement – inter-patience

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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

22. Habituation Meerkats habituated to presence of humans
Meerkats and scientists maintain a proper distance
Similar forms of sociality amongst meerkats and researchers
Inter-patience

23. 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

24. 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’

25. 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

26. 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)

27. 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.