Reading the trophy: exploring the display of dead animals in hunting magazines

Abstract

Photographs of trophy animals in 14 popular hunting magazines were analysed to explore the visual representations of dead animal bodies. We found multifaceted messages about the relationships between humans and other animals grounded in narratives of gender, race and embodiment. The visual representations of dead animal bodies are embedded in the taken-forgranted stories of love and affection for nature and wildlife that frame the contemporary hunting agenda, including the assumption that trophy displays memorialize the beauty of nature and natural animals. Disentangling ourselves from that dominant notion of what it means to display dead trophy animals was revelatory. Instead of love and respect for nature and wildlife, we found extreme objectification and marginalization of animal bodies. While we observed some elaborate displays of reassembled and carefully positioned dead bodies to appear as if still alive, a number of trophy exhibits hid the animal body behind or beneath weapons and other hunting equipment. The vast majority of the hunters in the images were white males, and when women or men of colour were included in the photographs their representations were usually consistent with gender and race stereotypes. Of these race/gender stereotypes the most interesting (and most symbolic of the patriarchal nature of the hunting discourse) was that neither women nor men of colour ever held a weapon when they appeared in photographs with white men.Hunting was not about getting enough vitamin B 12. (Donna Haraway, Primate Visions 1989:217)

Mapping Visual Studies in Communication

“…Such articles take on specific contexts, such as questioning the documentary value of photographs and the editorial agendas of newspapers, showing how patterns from the road-movie genre constrain visual representations of the refugee, or aligning film images of whitecollar crime with cultural codes that downplay its importance in the public arena (Lackey, 2001;Wright, 2001Wright, , 2002. Feminism and gender make appearances in the articles (Kalof & Fitzgerald, 2003), and the persuasive power of imagery comes to the fore. Two studies break from the predominant reliance on rhetoric.…”

Animals, Women, and Weapons: Blurred Sexual Boundaries in the Discourse of Sport Hunting

“…Subjective experiences position consumers (and researchers) to interpret text meanings, often in opposition to the dominant ideology embedded in the imagery (Kalof & Fitzgerald, 2003;Lerner & Kalof, 1999). Thus, a text is a site of multiple interpretations (Denzin, 1992, p. 53).…”

“…Kalof and Fitzgerald (2003) found a pattern of interchanging humans with weapons in the visual display of trophy animals. In that study, there was little anthropomorphism of animals in the trophy photographs, except when humans were absent and weapons substituted for humans in the display (Kalof & Fitzgerald, 2003). But in our examination of the sexualized connection between animals, women, and weapons, the anthropomorphization of animals was central to our findings.…”

Ethical Content of Pictures of Animals in Tourism Promotion

“…Dimensions and subcategories of the coding frame were identified combining a concept-and a datadriven strategy (Schreire 2012). The concept-driven strategy drew on earlier research results, in particular studies of the use of animals in advertising, and a study of the display of killed animals in hunting magazines (Spears et al 1996;Lerner and Kalof 1999;Kalof and Fitzgerald 2003 ). The data-driven strategy consisted in identifying relevant categories during the data collection, adopting an inductive approach in line with the spiral model of qualitative research (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2011).…”