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Visual Studies Commons

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Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Visual Studies

It’S About Us: Extinction, Contradiction, And The Mourning Of Modernity In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Alex Ventimilla Jan 2023

It’S About Us: Extinction, Contradiction, And The Mourning Of Modernity In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Alex Ventimilla

Animal Studies Journal

Despite their worldwide viewership, popular eco-documentary treatments of biodiversity loss and the ecological grief they evoke have received scarce attention from critics. Addressing this gap in scholarship, this article posits that understanding the grief and mourning affected by these cultural texts requires attention to the numerous contradictions inherent to the form. More concretely, this paper argues that a thorough exploration of the contradictory nature of the eco-documentary, as a media genre that is imbricated in the modernity whose impact on the natural world it critiques, renders the genre into a critical junction at which to interrogate the cultural meanings of …


Breed(Ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values In Industrial Farming, Camille Bellet, Emily Morgan Jan 2022

Breed(Ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values In Industrial Farming, Camille Bellet, Emily Morgan

Animal Studies Journal

In this study, we consider how farmed animals, specifically pigs and chickens, are visualised in literature designed for circulation within animal production industries. The way breeding companies create and circulate images of industrial animals tells us a lot about their visions of what industrial animals are and how they believe animals should be treated. Drawing upon a wide range of material designed for circulation within animal production industries, from the 1880s to the 2010s, this paper examines how representations of pigs and chickens contribute to stories of perfection and advance ideals of power, race, gender, and progress. We demonstrate that …


Amorous Anthropomorphism, Marine Conservation And The Wonder Of Wildlife Film In Isabella Rossellini’S Green Porno, Sarah Wade Jan 2020

Amorous Anthropomorphism, Marine Conservation And The Wonder Of Wildlife Film In Isabella Rossellini’S Green Porno, Sarah Wade

Animal Studies Journal

Green Porno is a series of short films in which Isabella Rossellini explores the reproductive lives of creatures whose physiology and habitats are vastly different from humans. In series three, Rossellini comically performs sea creature sex and draws attention to the threats they face from human activities like overfishing. Through Green Porno, Rossellini claimed that she wanted to evoke a sense of wonder to compel viewers to protect wildlife. Recognizing wonder’s widely acknowledged ethical and compassion-inducing potential as well as its prevalence in wildlife film and television shows, this article discusses Green Porno in relation to the awe-inspiring ‘pornographic’ …