Marketing Animals - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

construct subject positions that counterpose ‘hot’
and ‘cold’ killings. In the 1950s these position the
female homemaker as fearful mother. An
example of this is seen in Figure 5 with its headline
“every wise mother is afraid of flies”. These types
of advertisements encouraged a ‘hot’ killing
motivated by feelings of fear, hate and even
dread. The second subject position was that of
the mother as armed warrior. As seen for example
in Figure 6 these advertisements created the
mother as armed warrior taking a stand against
pests as her baby sleeps. Again motivated by a
hatred, the killing itself here is shown as cold,
necessary, calculated and pre-meditated, a
killing that makes use of the most modern
products. More recent advertisements create this
interplay in a different way, counterposing the
panic that would be experienced if the house
was not correctly and thoroughly protected
against incursions with the recommended
clinical, calculated and multi-pronged, multilayered
approach where homemakers are
prompted to instil a range of barrier sprays
alongside traps, surface sprays and quick knock
‘em down sprays as a last line of defence in the
homemaking war. One Mortein promotion, for
example, describes the American Cockroach as
a creature “that can send a normally placid
homeowner into a roach-whacking frenzy”, a
panic that contrasts with the calm possible if a
recommended combination of barrier sprays,
surface sprays, traps, bombs and baits are
employed within the home (Mortein, AHB, January
2001, p131). These layers of poisonous barriers
co-create home, mirroring and solidifying its
material form through their chemical boundaries
and offering to seal even the most microscopic
of places against the pest incursion. Again,
although inspired by a fear or dread the process
itself is disembodied and mediated by chemical
products that are shown to safely and silently
destroy the household pest.
The scientised and modern nature of the
killing process is a key tactic through which killing
practices are established as appropriate within
home. They purport to separate the homemaker
from the practice and moment of killing through
chemicals that are deployed remotely. These
separate the homemaker from the killing through
time and space: killing occurs in the hidden
spaces that pest animals inhabit and is affected
around the clock in the absence of the human
homemaker. The disembodied nature of this
process is critical, affording a detached
experience of the killing. In this process success is
gauged circuitously through an absence of pests
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and the good health of human residents rather
than through the sighting of dead animals.
Conclusions
As previous research has shown in relation to
practices of cleaning and germ management,
popular marketing activities have kept the pest
threat at the forefront of domestic concern. The
‘iceberg’ threat is perhaps the most insidious and
effective of these representations, equating
individual pest incursions with vast numbers of
hidden pests and the disintegration of home. In
these depictions the presence of one insect pest
signifies these hordes and highlights the limitations
of human control over home and the easy
permeability of home’s borders. In this context
pests are creatures that unstitch home,
highlighting the constructed and always insecure
nature of boundaries between home and its
dangerous and disordered outside. More than
this, they point to home’s enormous underbelly –
the liminal spaces that accommodate pest
species within home and allow these animals to
feed off the home itself. Pests represent the
inadequacies of homemaking and cleaning
activity, signifying the presence of dirt within the
domestic, including the dirtiness of the human
itself. Killing practices thus become an essential
component of homemaking, a tension that is
managed through reference to the scientific and
modern nature of pest removal processes and
through practices that separate human from pest
by facilitating disembodied and detached
killings.
The gender politics of pest removal
advertising are striking. Advertisements are
targeted at women and construct two key subject
positions: the woman as fearful and the woman
as warrior. Women’s role as homemaker is
activated through each of these positions which
place responsibility for pest management and
home protection in the hands of the mother. The
masculine subject position has not been
discussed in this paper, but is significant in
positioning the male figure in three key roles. First,
the masculine subject position is tied to DIY home
construction: men are depicted as fathers and
husbands who have the responsibility to choose
construction products that are pest resistant to
ensure a solid and stable home environment.
Second, men are positioned as expert through a
range of advertisements: they are the scientist,
professional pest controller and public health
authority rolled into one who warn women about
the risks that pests afford within home. Third, and