After 22 years of raising chickens for Perdue, one brave factory farmer Craig Watts was at his breaking point and did something no one has done before. This video raises a bunch of issues we discussed in both in class and in our readings. This video does a oddly good job of giving the animals personal identities through close up shots, which shift into larger shots of the inhumane living conditions. These stylistic qualities give the video a sense of melancholy and sadness, aid the viewer to sympathize with the animals and their abusive situations.
We as humans have spread our influence to just about every corner of the world, regardless of the implications. The Kruger National Park in Africa is 19,633 square miles, containing 350 black and roughly 8,500 white rhinoceros. Armoured skin, a fierce horn and weighing as much as a car, a rhino is an animal you may never see in the wild unless you seek it out. The sheer size of a rhino along with it’s signature horn make it almost prehistoric, and as a result, not fully understood. The video is short in length, totalling only forty seconds. Within that short time frame we see an intruder and the resulting reaction of the rhino trying to protect itself. The car halts as a rhino appears, as it slowly moves towards the vehicle. It’s worth noting that at around :13 seconds, the rhino makes a charging gesture, as a warning of it’s intentions.
The man in the car that recorded the video seems to be both unaware, and poorly educated about rhino behavior, and attempts to calm the animal by saying “Easy! No! Easy now easy!” This attempt to get through to the animal is futile and representative of a misconception, our domesticated approach and attitude towards animals isn’t universally applicable. In more common terms, how we treat our dog and cat shouldn’t be projected upon a wild rhino. It’s a poorly understood natural world outside of our cushy lives, but it still abides to laws of nature and it’s rules. Nature preserves are examples of what I consider to be glorified zoos, due to the both the sparse human interaction, along with our evident presence. A rhino charging your car will not be stopped by a simple request, but is based on the idea of domestication and it’s consequences. The interaction in this video is short and poorly represents a false ideology of our relationship with the natural world, especially when uneducated. An unrelated but relevant point is even the format of the video attempts to label the animal as dangerous, when in reality it was responding to a threat in it’s own domain. The word CHARGES in the title is capitalized in an attempt to label the rhino as dangerous.
“The spectator’s position is circumscribed by paradox: the zoo promises it will allow them to see everything, but they really are seeing nothing.” This quote from Zoo Spectatorship demonstrates the paradox with our influence in our natural world. The idea of a zoo denies animals their defining qualities, such as a cheetah’s speed to hunt the impala, or the rhino’s horn to protect it’s family and charge through predators. We often become spectators for human enforced entertainment, following Malamud’s idea of voyeurism. Humans as spectators enforce the idea that humans are superior, along with enforcing low interaction animal relationships. Voyeurism is defined by Malamud best through the following quote, “The voyeur seeks a spectacle, the revelation of the object of his interest, that something or someone should be open to his inspection and contemplation; but no reciprocal revelation or openness is conceded” (Malamud 230). Another paradox is as follows: how do we, in a continually intertwined world, influence and remain present in nature in a mutually beneficial manner. Are we supposed to totally remove ourselves and let natural selection persist, or rather control the entire entity that is nature? Nature preserves are examples of conservative approaches towards our relationships with animals. They are human influenced, but nature focused, limiting out interaction. The focus of these preserves are to protect the biodiversity, and are non for profit. The nature focus and no profit definitely are better than a zoo, but still raise moral issues.
Many of these thoughts draw from a similar starting question, are we able to have genuine, and mutually recognized interactions with wild animals, and if so, why? Malamud raises the issue of animals and their media portrayals, which aid in developing a poor identity for wild animals. He argues that media often uses animals due to their inherent relatability, and our perceived mutual interaction. Drawing off a previous point, the title of this video is capitalized and formatted in such a way to draw our attention, but it demonstrates a stupid human overstepping his boundaries. The truth is, the rhino clearly was both defending itself from a foreign object, along with protecting it’s home regardless of the title of the video. This video raises a final issue at the end with the slogan, SHOOT, SHARE, SELL. This simple alliteration forces the animal into being a commodity, a forced instrumental view, which neglects looking at the rhino through an intrinsic lens.
Works Cited:
Malamud, Randy. Zoo Spectatorship. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Print.
Mike Rowe in this short 2:50 minute video clip discusses how we view pain and suffering in animals, in this case sheep. The video isn’t necessarily saying experts are wrong, but rather when personal experience and personalized human knowledge can contribute to how we understand animals and our sometimes projected emotions of pain and suffering. It’s worth watching to understand the disparity between conventional knowledge and personalized experience.
Chester Cheetah seems to be another case of large, predatory cats, that are marketed to snack food and kids. Your first impression of the packaging is it’s eye attracting color scheme, focusing on vivid orange red and yellows. Chester is riding a skateboard and of course, eating a Cheeto. An anthropomorphic cheetah, Chester is savvy and smooth with a deep voice, with a memorable signature phrase. In a market filled with animals as mascots, a cheetah is still memorable and unique. You don’t buy Cheetos to be healthy and feel good about where they were processed and made. The false marketing scheme of labeling something as organic or grass fed isn’t possible with a snack food, which is good as it is marketing them without trying to forge a false clientele. I assume that other students in the class with right about dairy products with happy cows, which is a more twisted marketing scheme due to the cows falsely being associated with qualities such as happiness and freedom, which is ironic and misleading. I picked this product for another, more subtle reason. In the early 2000’s as CGI became relevant, Chester underwent a transformation from being a cool, sporty cat, to a more intellectual creature, often phrasing questions and philosophical debates in his ads. This further developed human-like cheetah is a staple in many households due to both crispy cheesy goodness and an identifiable mascot that is present in cupboards everywhere. It’s not directly false marketing, but it’s still as Foer describes, bullshit.
Instances of using animals as symbols for food is a long used tactic to appeal to younger demographics and draw upon customers natural tendency to like animals. Liking animals doesn’t make you buy Cheetos, but it certainly does make you look at Chester and ponder why they picked a Cheetah for their mascot. Is it because a cheetah is beloved in Western Culture? I do respect the marketing tactics employed by Cheetos as they don’t attempt to fit into a niche that they don’t occupy, it’s not healthy food and has never been marketed as healthy. Many products in a similar market such as Baked Lays and Pirates Booty attempt to reshape a snack-food into a more appealing, healthy alternative. The bag of Cheeto’s doesn’t say no trans fat or low sodium, but rather is says crunchy and cheesy. Of course variants of the original flavor exist, but Chester is omnipresent on every bag of crisps.
Chester is also smiling on the packaging, as he’s intended to be “fun” and sort of a pseudo pink panther. Cheeto’s is owned by Pepsi Co, and it’s evidenced through his changing slogans that their targeted demographic has slightly been altered over time. Firstly the slogan in the 1990’s was “It ain’t easy being cheesy,” to “The cheese with a crunch,” finally to “Dangerously Cheesy.” The terms Foer describes in detail such as Cruelty, and Desperation do not initially link to Chester, but looking deeper we can see their application. Negligence toward animals isn’t encouraged through Cheetos by any means, but it’s worth noting the hypothetical prison of a large predatory cat portraying cheesy, human junk food. The junk food market and cheetah’s truly have no overlap, but it’s a connection that gets kids excited to see a familiar face and character alike. I don’t think Cheeto’s does a bad job of marketing, it’s rather tame in comparison to other animals abused for young demographics. The fun loving Cheetah is both the fastest animal in the world, along with a symbol for popularized snack food, the two are distinctly separated but inherently linked together through modern marketing.
This video is something I watched when I was studying animal behavior back in high school. The video displays two Capuchin Monkeys, both being fed a different food. The monkey on the left is given cucumber, while the monkey on the right is given grapes. As the video progresses you begin to see a sense of jealousy develop in the monkey on the left. He hits his hands against the floor, shakes the cage, and throws his food back our of his cage. The questions raised by this video address the implications of emotions we generally assume to be human. Mating in nature exists and causes conflicts, based on primal urges and physical instincts, but this example displays a sense of true jealousy. He wants what he cannot have and that in turn angers the monkey, causing him to physically display his distress. It gets you wondering, if monkeys can conceive of ideas such as desire based on observation, what other instances is this mechanism evidenced in? Besides all of the interesting thoughts that this video raises, it’s also a human controlled environment, and has artificial influence. In nature I wonder if this same scenario would unfold, or does the human interaction drive this animistic representation of “jealousy.”
The King of the jungle, and a human. A relationship a human shares with a lion is vastly rarer than that of a horse or a dog. Lions are cats, large cats with incredibly strong jaws and hunting prowess, but at the core, still a cat. Animals that were once powerful and primal hunters, have now become the many breeds we see today in species such as cats and dogs. The image shows a man kissing and hugging a lion whom he considers to be a friend of his. The story is that this individual spent years researching and playing with the lions, so they became familiarized with him and could recognize him. The embrace is oddly human as a hug is generally something we do when we love or care for another. A lion could bite a man twice and kill him, but the man trusts his relationship with the animal so much that he is defenseless and vulnerable. Species such as lions, panthers, wolves and other large predatory mammals are ancestors of the cute animals many of us call pets. It’s ironic to see species such as the Black Panther and Bengal Tiger nearing extinction as they are the remnant of a rich animal history that precede human existence. The saber-tooth tiger was more or less a larger lion with some tusks, but was a primary threat to early age men. Our discussions in class oftentimes force me to ponder how I look at my pets because it blows my mind that in a span of 2,000 years, we have domesticated and controlled a range of breeds and species to the point where many of us forget their evolutionary roots. Considering the teachings of Berger, applying the concept of dualism to animals is already putting ourselves above them in a sense. In areas such as Africa, large preserves and national parks have rare species in a large, but slightly maintained area of land. Natural selection and processes would injury these species, but humans would intervene to save them and tend to their injuries. At first consideration it doesn’t seem like a bad thing to do, but now factor in that these last few species are out of place.
The intrusion of man into these predators’ environments demonstrates that we cannot respect the boundary between man and nature at times. We recognize ourselves as individuals, and humans have a perception that supports the claim that humans are in our own eyes, superior. Whether it’s an anthropomorphism animals out of sympathy or miss-identifying lions as entertainment in zoos rather than hunting in the safari, humans are overly engrossed and invested in attempting to satisfy ourselves as more intelligent beings. Berger and Walker have advanced my knowledge of the multitude of perspectives on animals and our relationships, but I have been firm in my views prior to reading their work. Swimming with White Sharks and seeing them hunt from a young age solidified my desire to see nature as it should be, without human interaction. I knew that as I got older I would learn more about factors such as the economic benefits of animals and their instrumental value, but it often times is touch to gauge how I feel about my relationships with animals I encounter. Berger’s claim that our communication with animals is hindered by a lack of language, which is true. What about a hug from a lion? Where does that fall on a scale of physical representation of emotions? I don’t know exactly what is going through the lion’s mind, but it’s evident that it’s a personalized relationship between a man and a 500 pound cat. Other behavioral qualities of lions can be read at the following URL: Lion Behavioral Traits and Qualities.
I am Nicholas Gurzynski, a GOV/LAW and Geology double major from a small town on Long Island named Locust Valley. I have had the opportunity to have some really cool pets and hang with some rare and endangered animals in my life so far! I am fascinated by the unknown, whether its behavioral traits in whales or migration patterns of turtles. I am an avid fishermen but I always throw what I catch back, hopefully to catch it again another day.
I am involved in the Marquis Steering Committee and am a Marquis Scholar here on campus. My hobbies include coral reef research and sailing, both of which I was able to do this summer while interning in Australia. I am pursuing a career in intellectual law, more specifically a focus in patents and inventions. I am always down to go for a hike or fly fish down on the Delaware. My dad and grandpa both attended Lafayette and I am proud to be on a third generation on this campus.
I am an avid writer, mostly personally, but I have been a research associate on some published works titled, “Crassotrea Virginica, the use of an electrical stimulus as a means of population enhancement and heightened growth.” I look forward to learning more about animals and our varied perceptions of them through this course! My writing and research papers are published on http://coral.org/, a non-for profit organization I work for called the National Coral Reef Alliance. The picture I attached is one of my cats Blizzard, in my suitcase which happens regularly. Blizzard has a twin sister named Comet and I nicknamed them respectively Dot.Com and the Blitz.
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