BLIND MEN AND AN ELEPHANT How We Speak and Think Animals in Documentary Film (original) (raw)

2017, Blind Men and An Elephant

Most of us see and learn about animals not by means of encounters with real ones but mediated through computer or television screens, zoos or museums, school books and other informative prints. At the same time we meet animal inspired commodities in every part of our daily lives; be it an elephant in a children's comic book , the tiger as corporate logo of a fuel station or a smiling cannibal pig comic promoting special meat offers. Although images or figurative reproductions of animals signify and carry meaning they do not necessarily narrate about and relate to real-life situations of the animals used as model. Other than commodities due to their stylistic conventions, imagery and narratives of animal documentaries suggest a representation of the Real to us. In latter film genre very specific meanings are given to animal presentations often and foremost trough textual explanations, whether by an off-screen narrator, a presenter, human protagonist(s) or captions on screen. Paradoxically, now, the number of wildlife films annually increases with images representing intact natural landscapes while real wildlife vanishes at a high rate. Conservationists termed the present age the era of the great 6th extinction. Thus, seemingly those films are becoming postmodern natural history museums. In opposite direction annual numbers of human-bred pet and industrial animal individuals are growing. Some of latter animals we treat like family members, others like metal cars created, manufactured and de-fractured by our latest technologies. Interestingly but the since WWII exponentially increasing overall number of domestic and wild animals being physically exploited by humans for purposes of consumption, science, and entertainment is rarely displayed. How do filmic animal representations of 'reality' affect our behavior and attitudes outside filmic experiences? In an age where we are surrounded by factual content created to narrate about animals and their relationship with us how come we prefer not being informed about the fate of most of them in the real world? How come a majority of humans rejects animal abuse and commodification but disconnects itself from the same practices undertaken for their benefit in consumption and welfare - regardless whether in animal factories, laboratories, by means of environmental destruction or in entertainment?