Screening the Nonhuman Representations of Animal Others in the Media

About this book

Screening the Nonhuman draws connections between how animals represented on screen translate into reality. In doing so, the book demonstrates that consuming media is not a neutral act but rather a political one. The images humans consume have real-world consequences for how animals are treated as actors, as pets, and in nature. The contributors propose that altering the representations of animals can change the way humans relate to non/humans. Our hope is for humans to generate more ethical relationships with non/humans, ultimately mediating reality both in terms of fiction and non-fiction. To achieve this end, film, television, advertisements, and social media are analyzed through an intersectional lens. But the book doesn't stop here. Each author creates counter-representational strategies that promise to unweave the assumptions that have led to the mistreatment of humans and non/humans alike.

Contents

Introduction: Critical Media Studies and Critical Animal Studies at the Crossroads / Amber George and J.L. Schatz

Part I
Chapter 1. The Brown Wizard’s Unexpected Politics: Speciesist Fiction and the Ethics of The Hobbit / J.L. Schatz
Chapter 2. The Passing Faerie and the Transforming Raven: Animalized Compulsory Re-covery, Endurance, and Dis/ability in Maleficent / Jennifer Polish
Chapter 3. Jabbering Jaws: Reimagining Representations of Sharks Post-Jaws / Matthew Lerberg
Chapter 4. Horseplay: Beastly Cinematic Performances in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse / Stella Hockenhull
Chapter 5 .Would Bugs Bunny Have Diabetes?: The Realistic Consequences of Cartoons for Non/Human Animals / Amber E. George

Part II
Chapter 6. I Am Legend (2007), U.S. Imperialism, and the Liminal Animality of The Last Man / Carter Soles
Chapter 7. Ape Anxiety: Intelligence, Human Supremacy, and Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes / Sean Parson
Chapter 8. The Vicious Cycle of Disnification and Audience Demands: Representations of the Non/Human in Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978) and The Plague Dogs (1982) / Anja Höing & Harald Husemann
Chapter 9. The “Nature-Run-Amok” Cinema of the 1970s: Representation of Non/human Animals in Frogs and Orca / Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and César Alfonso Marino

Part III
Chapter 10. Cyberbeasts: Substitution and Trivialization of the Non/Human Animal in Home Movies, Memes, and Video Games / Joseph Anderton
Chapter 11. Pet-Animals in the Concrete Jungle: Tales of Abandonment, Failures, and Sentimentality in San Hua and Twelve Nights / Fiona Yuk-wa Law
Chapter 12. In Defense of Non/Humans: Mystification and Oppression in the Sports Mascoting Process / Guilherme Nothen and Michael Atkinson
Chapter 13. On Empathy, Anthropocentrism, and Rhetorical Tropes: An Analysis of Online “Save the Bees!” Campaign Images / Christina Victoria Cedillo

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Biography

Amber E. George is the program coordinator for the Intergroup Dialogue Project at Cornell University. J.L. Schatz is an instructor at Binghamton University.


Contributors:
- Joseph Anderton
- Michael Atkinson
- Fernando Pagnoni Berns
- Christina Victoria Cedillo
- Amber E. George
- Stella Hockenhull
- Anja Höing
- am Husemann
- Fiona Yuk-wa Law
- Matthew Lerberg
- César Marino
- Guilherme Nothen
- Sean Parson
- Jennifer Polish
- J.L. Schatz
- Carter Soles