Onward, Christian penguins: wildlife film and the image of scientific authority

Wexler, Rebecca

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.06.001

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Presenter-led films and docudramas not only tend to omit these details, but they also rely on narrative storylines with a clear order of events. These narratives are typically anthropomorphized and often include stereotypical Western ideals, such as monogamy and heteronormativity (King, 1996;Mills, 2013;Wexler, 2008). Anthropomorphism was common among the films we reviewed, and included using the anthropomorphic terms "husband" and "wife" to describe primate relationships.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primate Documentaries: A Critical Analysis of Their History

Koenig

2022

Soc. Animals

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Primate nature documentaries have been popular with audiences since their inception in the early 1900s. Audiences trust primate documentaries, but scholars are concerned about how documentaries sometimes misrepresent primates. We provide an analysis of the history of primate documentaries, with a focus on how and why misrepresentation happens. We summarize why wildlife documentaries are important, and then we explain concerns over documentaries’ mischaracterization of nonhuman animals. Then, having viewed every available primate documentary (n = 210), we provide the first scholarly attempt to (a) provide a big-picture view by collating and describing the subgenres that can be used to characterize primate documentaries, and (b) describe the historical development of these subgenres, from early sensationalized films to modern large-budget productions. This history describes the chronological development of the diversity of primate documentary subgenres and explains the misrepresentation of primates as the result of filmmaker goals across that historical development.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primate Documentaries: A Critical Analysis of Their History

Koenig

2022

Soc. Animals

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“…Enhanced learning and positive conservation attitudes through nature-based activities result from a state of mindfulness of the participant, which is induced by characteristics and structure of the content [46]. Furthermore, aesthetic elements of the medium that presents science content can affect how the recipient accepts and understands the science itself [47].…”

Section: Science Content Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delivering the message: a theoretical study on designing science content for nature-based experiences

Kim¹

2014

JCOM

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The urgent state of our global environment calls for collective action, which depends in large part on effective science communication for better understanding and awareness. Activities and institutions that provide opportunities to learn about nature all ultimately rely on scientific findings about nature. Although science produces the knowledge and information about nature, for the content to be accessible and meaningful to the general public, it needs to be processed by what I call science content design. This process is similar to the concepts of interpretation in tourism, or aesthetic understanding in alternative science education. This study is a theoretical exploration on the definition and nature of science content design, what constitutes its process, and how the content can be designed. Focusing on the fields of macro-biology, I also discuss the types of biological content generally used in nature-based experiences, and examine model cases of biological content design.

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“…The ability for the penguins’ plight to be read as an allegory of traditional family values is seen most clearly in the success of the film March of the Penguins / Le Marche de l’Empereur (dir. Luc Jacquet, 2005), which led to ‘Christian interpretations of the film as evidence for intelligent design’ (Wexler, 2008: 273) and was seen as verification of the instinctual nature of parental care.…”

Section: The Familymentioning

confidence: 99%

The animals went in two by two: Heteronormativity in television wildlife documentaries

Mills

2013

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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This article examines British television wildlife documentaries in order to outline the ways in which limited representations of animal behaviour recur. It focuses on representations of animal sexuality, monogamy and parenthood, and suggests that how such activities are repeatedly represented draw on normalised human notions of such behaviour. This is demonstrated through comparison of these representations with literature from zoology and ethology, which shows that a considerably wider variety of animal behaviour has been documented. The article suggests that the discourses of sexuality, monogamy and parenthood are interrelated and interdependent, with the validity of each supported by the existence of the others. It is argued that how animals are represented in such documentaries matters, partly because normalised discourses must be drawn on in order for programmes to make sense of the behaviour they present, but mainly because animal behaviour is commonly used as evidence for `natural' forms of human behaviour.The episode 'The Big Freeze' in the BBC wildlife documentary series Life in the Freezer (BBC1, 1993) recounts the extreme conditions that Emperor penguins in the Antarctic must face when breeding and raising their offspring. A key problem is keeping a laid egg warm, and the programme shows that the male penguin has a 'brood pouch' into which the egg is transferred once it is laid which, the voiceover tells us, keeps it '80 degrees warmer than the outside temperature'. Once the egg is in the pouch the female penguins trek to the sea to feed, leaving the starving and cold male to protect the egg and the

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Onward, Christian penguins: wildlife film and the image of scientific authority

Cited by 8 publications

References 5 publications

Primate Documentaries: A Critical Analysis of Their History

Primate Documentaries: A Critical Analysis of Their History

Delivering the message: a theoretical study on designing science content for nature-based experiences

The animals went in two by two: Heteronormativity in television wildlife documentaries

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