Chapter 17 - Must Love Animals?

Summary

Introduction

Animals and their relations to humans, whether of differences or similarities, have become a major topic in biology (Bekoff and Pierce 2009; Bekoff 2010; De Waal and de Waal 1996; De Waal and Tyack 2009; De Waal 2016; Safina 2015; Safina 2020) but also in film studies, ethics and philosophy (Brunel 2018; Burt 2002; Derrida 2008; Haraway 2013; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Lorimer 2015). Intriguing as they are, most of these discussions draw their conclusions from domestic animals or wild animals in captivity and so have a limited value and validity in understanding and critiquing wildlife films. A brief discussion of anthropomorphism, speciesism and the affective turn will lead to what seem to me more fruitful topics for the films in this study: adoption, re-wilding and touch.

Anthropomorphism

As several earlier comments in this study have shown, the critique of wildlife films or sections of them as anthropomorphic is often based on superficial pejorative analysis – as in Bousé’s critique of Kearton’s penguins or Chris’s comments on Jamie Uys’s warthogs. Given the ways in which recent studies have complicated earlier notions of species differences, what would be the correction of anthropomorphism if not a denial of our links to other mammals or our ability to make sense of their behaviour from our viewpoint as fellow creatures? (Daston and Mitman 2005; Serpell 2003).

One area where wildlife films surely had a very different effect from what most American critics have argued is about accusations of anthropomorphizing and particularly anthropomorphizing about gender roles. Whenever I try to analyse this, I think of the embarrassing episode of my African Jacana interpretation. At Lake Panic near Skukuza in the Kruger National Park, there are usually African Jacanas and often they are nesting. I took photos of a nest with the beautiful eggs and the male in attendance but when I came back a day or two later, the water level seemed to have risen and the nest and eggs were gone. I looked indignantly at the resident hippos but was comforted by the sight of a Jacana male and female mating vigorously. They are not letting those hippos win, I thought.