Abstract
This chapter introduces a cognitive ecocritical approach that draws on research in affective neuroscience and cognitive ethology to explore the role of anthropomorphism and trans-species empathy in viewers’ engagement with nonhuman characters in wildlife documentaries. It argues that recent ethological research casts a new light on neurologist Vittorio Gallese’s concept of liberated “embodied simulation” in film viewing, and that a closer look at the embodied expression of animal emotions allows for a better understanding of our affective responses to the animals we see in nonfiction film. Drawing on the work of Dirk Eitzen, it further suggests that viewers’ belief in the authenticity and consequentiality of the events seen on screen is of central importance to their emotional responses to wildlife documentaries.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Armbruster, K. (2013) “What Do We Want from Talking Animals? Reflections on Literary Representations of Animal Voices and Minds,” in DeMello, M. (ed.) Speaking for Animals: Animal Autobiographical Writing. New York: Routledge, pp. 17–33.
Bekoff, M. (2003) Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bekoff, M. (2007) The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—And Why They Matter. Novato: New World Library.
Bekoff, M., Allen, C. and Burghardt, G. (eds.) (2002) The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Berns, G. (2013) “Dogs Are People, Too.” The New York Times, October 5 [Online]. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?_r=0 (Accessed: September 10, 2016).
Bousé, D. (2000) Wildlife Films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bradshaw, G. A. and Watkins, M. (2006) “Trans-species Psychology: Theory and Praxis,” Spring Journal, 75, pp. 69–94.
Burt, J. (2002) Animals in Film. London: Reaktion Books.
Carroll, N. (1996) “Nonfiction Film and Postmodernist Skepticism,” in Bordwell, D. and Carroll, N. (eds.) Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 283–305.
Chris, C. (2006) Watching Wildlife. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
De Waal, F. (2001) The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. New York: Basic Books.
De Waal, F. (2009) The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. New York: Three River Press.
Eitzen, D. (1995) “When is a Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Reception,” Cinema Journal, 35(1, Autumn), pp. 81–102.
Eitzen, D. (2005) “Documentary’s Peculiar Appeals,” in Anderson, J. T. (ed.) Moving Image Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 183–199.
Franklin, R. G., Anthony, J. N., Baker, M., Beeney, J. E., Vescio, T. K., Lenz-Watson, A. and Adams, R. B. (2013) “Neural Responses to Perceiving Suffering in Humans and Animals,” Social Neuroscience, 8(3), pp. 217–227.
Gallese, V. (2014) “Bodily Selves in Relation: Embodied Simulation as Second-Person Perspective on Intersubjectivity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 1–10 [Online]. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1644/20130177 (Accessed: September 10, 2016).
Garrard, G. (2012) Ecocriticism: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.
Grodal, T. (2009) Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Guzman, R. (2012) “Chimpanzee is Compelling and Cute,” Newsday, April 18 [Online]. Available at: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/chimpanzee-is-compelling-and-cute-1.3669064 (Accessed: September 10, 2016).
Hoffman, M. (2000) Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horon, S. (2012) “Disney Extends ‘Chimpanzee’ Donations,” Global Animal, April 27 [Online]. Available at: http://www.globalanimal.org/2012/04/27/disney-extends-chimpanzee-donations/73107/ (Accessed: September 10, 2010).
Kellner, D. (2010) Cinema Wars. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Mitman, G. (2009) Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Nagel, T. (1974) “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” The Philosophical Review, 83(4), pp. 435–450.
Panksepp, J. (1998) Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Panksepp, J. and Panksepp, J. B. (2013) “Toward a Cross-species Understanding of Empathy,” Trends in Neuroscience, 36(8), pp. 489–496.
Pick, A. (2011) Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press.
Plantinga, C. (2009) Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rivas, J. and Burghardt, G. M. (2002) “Crotalomorphism: A Metaphor for Understanding Anthropomorphism by Omission,” in Bekoff, M., Allen, C. and Burghardt, G. M. (eds.) The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rust, S. (2014) “Ecocinema and the Wildlife Film,” in Westling, L. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 226–239.
Smith, M. (1995) Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sturgeon, N. (2009) Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Natural. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Von Leszczynski, U. (2013) “Film Chimpanzee Leads to Questions Over the ‘Truth’,” Gulf Times, May 19 [Online]. Available at: http://www.gulf-times.com/story/353179/Film-Chimpanzee-leads-to-questions-over-the-truth (Accessed: September 10, 2016).
Welling, B. H. (2009) “Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman,” in Dobrin, S. and Morey, S. (eds.) Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature. Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 53–77.
Welling, B. H. (2014) “On ‘The Inexplicable Magic of Cinema’: Critical Anthropomorphism, Emotion, and the Wildness of Wildlife Films,” in Weik von Mossner, A. (ed.) Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp. 81–101.
Welling, B. H. and Kapel, S. (2012) “The Return of the Animal: Presenting and Representing Non-Human Beings Response-ably in the (Post-)Humanities Classroom,” in Garrard, G. (ed.) Teaching Ecocriticism in Green Cultural Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Weik von Mossner, A. (2018). Engaging Animals in Wildlife Documentaries: From Anthropomorphism to Trans-species Empathy. In: Brylla, C., Kramer, M. (eds) Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90331-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90332-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)