Critical Animal and Media Studies

Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy

Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman, Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138842267
• eBook ISBN: 9781317552680
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Communication Studies

This book aims to put the speciesism debate and the treatment of non-human animals on the agenda of critical media studies and to put media studies on the agenda of animal ethics researchers. Contributors examine the convergence of media and animal ethics from theoretical, philosophical, discursive, social constructionist, and political economic perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: foundations, representation, and responsibility, outlining the different disciplinary approaches' application to media studies and covering how non-human animals, and the relationship between humans and non-humans, are represented by the mass media, concluding with suggestions for how the media, as a major producer of cultural norms and values related to non-human animals and how we treat them, might improve such representations.

Part I
Foundations

1 Media Theories and the Crossroads of Critical Animal and Media Studies

Debra Merskin

In an Orangina commercial, a scantily clad animated doe/woman hybrid dances suggestively with a bear (who wears a fig leaf). In an advertisement for Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium fragrance, Emily Blunt slinks through an opulent apartment. She enters a room in which a lounging leopard rises—they meet, eye to eye. Chimpanzees are so common in commercials that people think they are less endangered than they really are (Schroepfer et al., 2011). Disney movies such as 101 Dalmatians trigger the production and adoptions of hundreds of puppies who are later abandoned because they don’t behave the same ways as their on-screen peers. Other media effects include demand (and resultant over breeding of) collies after the Lassie movies and TV shows became popular, Old English Sheepdogs after the release of The Shaggy Dog (Ghirlanda, Acerbi, & Herzog, 2014), Chihuahuas by the hundreds pursuant to the popularity of the Taco Bell dog, media coverage of Paris Hilton’s accessory dog, and films such as Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Lewis, 2009). Many of the dogs are purposefully ‘produced’ in response to consumer demand and find long-term loving homes, but thousands of others are bred, adopted, and abandoned once the fad fades and people are left with a being who requires many years of care. “Animal shelters brace for unwanted effects of new Ninja Turtles movie,” was the headline when ill-informed viewers rushed to adopt ‘pet’ turtles and tortoises (Smith, 2014). The result is lack of knowledge in how to properly care for the animals who can live more than 50 years, as well as abandonment and even mistreatment. This is a media effect that’s rarely spoken of or written about. Are media theories only meant to apply to humans? What do media theories predict that would be useful to understanding other animals and our relationship to them? What is the connection between studying media and thinking about nonhuman animals? This chapter explores these questions and presents a media studies perspective for thinking about how critiques of human use of other animals are consistent with those applied to similar analyses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, age, and other markers of difference. The first section provides a brief background on the moral, ethical, and activist perspectives that inform Critical Animal Media Studies (CAMS). This is followed by a discussion of the nature of power and how the power to re-present another species is an act of domination. The nature of symbolizing and symbols follows. This chapter concludes with consideration of the impact of thinking of animals only as Others has had not only on our experiences of them, but also on their experiences of us. The connections, which are sometimes uncomfortable, become clear when one unpacks the process and function of Otherizing.

Crossroads

CAMS draws on several traditions, most particularly critical/cultural studies and feminist studies. Critical/cultural studies focuses on unpacking the power dynamic in communications. Scholars with this perspective conduct research designed to reveal how meaning is generated with an eye to the power dynamics and the epistemological framework that creates it. Akin to the intersectional social justice approach of feminist studies, CAMS scholars ask questions such as: how do animals figure in human identity? How do humans figure in animal worlds? Why the consistent insistence on a boundary? How do deeply entrenched stereotypes figure in to the treatment of real animals?

Unlike animal studies, CAMS does not focus on animal behavior (per se), biology, or morphology. Nor is it a study of human-animal interactions per se (except for symbolic). Rather, CAMS is a critical cultural studies-based field that draws on the knowledge of disciplines such as environmental studies, ethnic studies, women and gender studies, and media and cultural studies to interrogate questions such as how do representations of animals other than humans impact the lives of real animals? And what can we learn about ourselves by looking through the lens with which we look at other animals?

While Peter Singer and Tom Reagan are considered the ‘fathers’ of animal rights and welfare, many ‘mothers’ made the connections long before. In fact, feminism has long recognized intersectionality and its application beyond the human. For example, 1960s and 1970s vegetarian and vegan collectives produced publications about the connections among oppression of all groups. Frances Moore Lappé’s (1971) Diet for a Small Planet and Rosemary Ruether’s (1974) New Woman, New Earth made powerful arguments and provided inspiration for what became known as ecofeminism. In the 1980s, both men and women in the ecofeminist movement elevated the argument that nonhuman animals are sentient beings. Critiques of animal treatment in the wild and as subjects of experimentation and food production became part of the literature for what would become CAMS. In the 1980s, Marti Kheel and in the 1990s, Carol J. Adams, Greta Gaard, Susanne Kappeler, and others brought attention to images and words as a form of discursive violence. New terminology, such as misothery (hatred/contempt and animal) was introduced to accompany existent misogyny (Mason, 1997, p. 215) and speciesism (Ryder, 1970). Speciesism, like other isms (age, hetero, sex, race) is a symptom of oppression, a prejudice that is a “composite of interspecies injustices within material institutions, discursive regimes, and embodied effects” that “systematically, non-criminally sacrifices the lives of and interests of animals” (Weitzenfeld & Joy, 2014, p. 20).

Whereas the humanities and social sciences are often criticized for the lack of real world vision or application, the practical implications of ecofeminism and the interconnectedness of sex, race, gender, sexuality, and species is another important distinction of this work. For example, Adams’s (1990) scholarship on the connection between violence against women and killing of companion species has been used in courts, shelters, law, and policy (Adams & Gruen, 2014). That nonhuman animals are caught in a hierarchical structure that privileges certain species over others becomes increasingly clear. Pattrice Jones (quoted in Adams & Gruen, 2014) writes:

We understand that the currently dominant gender system—which both feminist and trans activists critique, albeit in different ways—is a product of the same European mania for pseudoscientific categorization that brought us the conceptions of race and species that are central to racism and speciesism. We know that taking that diversity into account can lead to new ways of thinking about both gender and sexuality. (p. 24)

With goals consistent with ecofeminism, animal welfare, and in some cases animal rights movements, CAMS as a cross-disciplinary field provides a context within which we can recognize shared histories of oppressions. The classificatory system that dichotomizes in group/out group, insider/outsider, human/animal, has parallels in white/not white, men/women, heterosexual/homosexual visibilities and invisibilities. CAMS also considers nonhuman animals as beings in their own right, with preferences, interests, and purposes beyond those humans assign them. Ultimately, CAMS scholars interrogate the power dynamics that underlie our relationships with other species. In the opening sentence of the classic book, Dominance & Affection: The Making of Pets, Tuan (1984, p. 1) states, “any attempt to account for human reality seems to call for an understanding of the nature of power.” However, he notes, if we only look at domination (whether conscious or subconscious) we miss an important part of what sustains that relationship—that there is someone on the other side of the gaze, who, for whatever reason, is cooperating. Furthermore, the power might in fact be motivated by affection, “affection is not the opposite of dominance; rather it is dominance’s anodyne—it is dominance with a human face” (pp. 1–2). Breaking apart dualisms to reveal the continuum that exists in all human beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors is another shared goal of the many disciplines that are part of CAMS.

Decentering

The use of nonhuman animals as symbols, artifacts, models, commodities, and objects (versus subjects) is among the concerns of CAMS scholars and activists. The bottom line is quality of life and treatment of real animals as a consequence of the disconnect between real and the re-presented and speciesism by transforming social, economic, and political structures that support all forms of animal suffering (physical, psychological, and symbolic). As has been made clear in the long history of scholarship on the representation in media of women and people of color, the symbolic and the real are connected. If we only know other animals based on mediated representations they mostly appear happy and healthy. However, behind these cheerful cows, plump pigs, dancing dogs, and corporate monkeys, billions of nonhuman animals are tortured and killed and served to us as the objects of laboratory experimentation, as laborers, in entertainment, as clothing, as ‘pets’, and as food. The uneven application of dominance/affection in this one-way relationship has a significant impact on the future of our own species as well as theirs. As was noted in a 2013 call for papers related to animal geographies:

[The] ambivalent material-semiotic entanglements between humans and animals are both at stake and implicated in contemporary ecological crises, bringing a critical urgency to the task of rethinking dominant orders (capitalist, species, juridico-political, scientific) that structure human-animal relations. (https://animalvisions.wordpress.com)

To think of speciesism on par with other forms of prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (behaviors) requires de-centering the human as a function of empathy. De-centering, i.e. shifting the focus from the established center/norm among human beings (from white male) is de rigueur in critical race and feminist studies. The importance of unseating whiteness and recognizing identity, difference, and the ethics of subjectivity is one of the best ways to understand someone who is, for whatever reason, different from oneself. Knowledge of the history and culture of others is an important part of the context of developing recognition, as Nussbaum’s capabilities approach argues. Nussbaum’s (2003) Ten Core Entitlements, viewed through a legal and philosophical lens, considers nonhuman animals as primary subjects of justice, as individuals (rather than in aggregate), and to whom humans have responsibility. The Entitlements are:

1 Life

2 Bodily health

3 Bodily integrity

4 Senses, imagination, and thought

5 Emotions

6 Practical reason

7 Affiliation

8 Other species

9 Play

10 Control over one’s environment

For Nussbaum, and many in the CAMS field, these rights are not the end but rather starting points for how other animals ought to be regarded and cared for. Nonhuman animals, as subjective beings, aren’t ‘just like us’ if we think of them only collectively, rather they are individuals, each with their own preferences, particularities, and histories.

Just as decentering Eurocentrism is needed for thinking about all peoples, so is decentering required in order to best empathize with and understand colonial and subjected histories of other species. This brings with it a mistrust of the grand/master narratives that have defined relationships in the past and continue to inform mainstream re-presentations of the present.

Despite Singer’s influence, the fight against speciesism as a parallel oppression had little traction until recently. The under representation and misrepresentations of women and people of color remains a significant problem, yet to not acknowledge species oppression serves neither cause. The question of animal difference is at the center of CAMS. As Weil (2013) points out, “If animal studies have come of age, it is perhaps because nonhuman animals have become a limit case for theories of difference, otherness, and power.” (p.5). Derrida (2002) challenges the animal question in his classic essay; he demands we pull out of the Cartesian legacy that viewed the cries of animals merely as the squeaking of gears in the machine driven by need.

Can we think into the experiences of other animals without overly projecting our own interests, desires, and needs, sprinkling the relationship with the perfect amount of anthropomorphism to carry us closer to, without polluting, the symbolic stew with too much saccharine us-ness (continuum) or the ideology that all other beings’ interests are subordinated to ours (human-animal dualism)? This is not to argue we are the same, but rather that we honor and respect difference. Finding ways of relating to nonhuman animals that take into account their interests, not just ours, could be called “critical anthropomorphism” (Weil, 2013, p. 44). Those whose work focuses on the lived conditions of human beings often argue that with so much human suffering in the world, attentions should be directed there. CAMS scholars don’t deny human disadvantages but argue that by widening the circle of compassion all beings benefit. This is not an either/or situation. Rather, this radical interdisciplinary field argues that all systems of oppression must be confronted, all social and cultural institutions interrogated, including the media.

The Animal Turn in Media Studies

The cultural turn in social sciences and the humanities began in the 1970s. It was a marked redirecting from a positivist epistemological view to an emphasis on meaning. Similar “turns” took place in other disciplines, where lessons learned from the past were revisited and added to, but with new understandings. The linguistic turn “insisted that we have no access to unmediated experience or knowledge but only to representations that are them- selves [sic] fraught with linguistic and ideological baggage” (Weill, 2013, p. 5). As Frederic Jameson (1998) wrote:

The very sphere of culture itself has expanded, becoming coterminous with market society in such a way that the cultural is no longer limited to its earlier, traditional or experimental forms, but it is consumed throughout daily life itself, in shopping, in professional activities, in the various often televisual forms of leisure, in production for the market and in the consumption of those market products, indeed in the most secret folds and corners of the quotidian. Social space is now completely saturated with the image of culture. (p. 111)

The turn in media studies to a multi-cultural way of knowing and locating meaning construction is seen most notably in the work of Stuart Hall (Hall, Evans, & Nixon, 2013) and others who brought terminology and concepts such as power, hegemony, ideology, and agency to light using modern mediated examples. When thinking about representation Hall (1997) noted:

The word representation or representation does sort of carry with it the notion that something was there already and, through the media, has been represented. … What we’re talking about is the fact that in the notion of representations is the idea of giving meaning. So the representation is the way in which meaning is somehow given to the things which are depicted through the images or whatever it is, on screens or the words on a page which stand for what we’re talking about.

Who has control over discourse, how we consent to mainstream ideas that support the status quo, and whether or not we have means of resisting are all key components of this critique. Media studies scholars within the cultural approach typically look at human differences, group processes, audience reception, content creation, and above all the meaning people make, contest, resist, and produce with and from media and how that meaning becomes naturalized. Within this approach scholars investigate not only what media do to us but also what we do to media, the “we” being broadly and deeply defined. Furthermore, the media, as a social institution (akin in power to family, religion, education, economics, and politics) are interrogated as creating, sustaining, and distributing mainstream ways of thinking.

In the midst of the movement to unpack the tropes of race (dominant: white), sex (dominant: male), sexuality (dominant: he...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Foundations
• PART II Representation
• PART III Responsibility
• Conclusion
• Discussion Questions from Chapters
• Contributors
• Index