Animals and the Natural World

By Johnny W. Lee

Advertising

From the moment we get out of bed to the moment when we go back to bed we are bombarded with advertisement. Chapter 6 of Communicating Nature written by Julia B. Corbett talks more about these advertisements in detail. She mentions, “according to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, we are exposed to three thousand advertisements each day.” When think about this statement it tells us that advertisement is everywhere and it is indeed the “the ultimate pop culture message.” According to Corbett, “Advertising is the task of producing discrete promotional messages about products, services, or organizations” while “Marketing is concerned with the entire process of selling a product or service through pricing, distribution, positioning, and promotion.”

There are four different types of common ads that feature the environment. They are called nature-as-backdrop, green product attributes, green image, and environmental advocacy. An example of such an advertisement is the “package of paper towels, there is a graphic of an evergreen forest. The text reads: ‘soft, strong and absorbent Green Forest products work just like other paper products but they’re better for the environment’.” This is green product attribute type of advertisement where by highlighting the green attribute it gives the consumer a sense that there are causing less harm to the environment.

At a glance it looks like this product helps and supports the environment, but Corbett mentions that “Green Forest paper towels, only 10 percent of the content was used previously and recycled—so-called post-consumer waste. The other 90 percent is pre-consumer waste, most likely ‘cutting room floor’ scraps in a manufacturing plant.” There are many more advertisement like these—as Corbett puts it “tell buyers little about the true environmental costs of the products they buy.” In the world of advertisement is there a lot of misinformation and assumptions we the consumer make. The consumer can easily be fooling based on how the product is presented (marketing) and not what it actually supports. 

Animals and Us

Aside from communicating the product to consumers—the meaning of animals is also presented the same way. They’re embedded into our pop culture even though on average our contact with animals in minimal. Corbett mentions that “Animals are powerful place-markers and symbols of what is ‘natural’ and wild, and represent the antithesis of technological culture.” We use them as a source of communication by generalizing them and bunching them into a simple word called “animals.”

In an article from Nature from December of 2014 titled, Animal-rights activists ramp up campaigns in Europe, Alison Abbott speaks about activists calling for an end to research using non-human primates. She mentions “an anonymous person took smartphone footage of caged monkeys in a primate laboratory at the Sapienza University of Rome.” The film reported malpractice in the laboratory, but “preliminary investigation commissioned in response by the Max Planck Society did not reveal systematic problems in animal welfare.” It is hard to tell who is in the right since the video is not attached to the article. The university states, “the methodological details and the scientific results of all experiments are published in international scientific journals that are archived and searchable in the PubMed database of scientific literature.” The footage of caged monkeys empowers the animal-rights activists by giving them a reason to support their cause—to stop the harm of animals.

In captivity the animals are in pain, in the essay, “Am I Blue?” by Alice Walker, Walker speaks about a horse named Blue, a horse that is lonely. She describes that “Blue was lonely. Blue was horribly lonely and bored.” She would later mention that “animals are forced to become for us merely ‘images’ of what they once so beautifully expressed.” Walker talks about how animals like Blue could be free, but they are reduced to a mere shell while being held in captivity.

In a book by Linda Hogan titled Dwellings it talks in more detail about how each of us view animals differently. She goes on to talk about the lives of wolves and how we cross paths with them. Hogan mentions, “Our presence means tragedy to them. They are shot by hunters, trapped, poisoned, and hit by logging trucks as they travel the human roads.” She uses this statement to put us in the mood of how tragic the situation is. It evokes a feeling of sorrow to read about death.

In the film The Cove a similar technique is also present in the introduction by showing the brutal killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. The end of the film shows the viewer the behind–the –scenes killing of these dolphins. It allows the viewer to see the dolphins at Taiji being trapped and killed. The film is capable to eliciting sadness to the audience by showing this footage.  Soon the reef fills up blood red from the dolphin blood and it is that scene that leaves the viewer moved by sorrow from the cruel death.

In the film How I Became an Elephant, Juliette West travels from California to Thailand to witness the abuse of elephants. The film showcase the pain inflicted on these animals held in captivity. In one scene the viewer can an elephant being beaten by hooks. This is for the sole propose of being trained for commercial purpose. The same feeling is of sorrow is felt as the previous examples. What all these films have in common is that it captures the painful moments of the animals and it gives us—the viewer a chance to feel their pain through their views.