Marketing Animals - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

In the second section of the Western episteme,
called the Classical, the great tripartition between
observation, document and fable (differences
between, firstly, what one sees; secondly, what
has been observed and thirdly, what others
imagine or believe) did not yet exist, and the
reason for this was that signs were then regarded
as part of things themselves. In the 17 th century
they became modes of representation (Foucault
2002:140-141) evolving their own sign systems.
In the 18th century, Linnaeus (Systema
Natural, 1759) initiated a new system of
connecting things in the world to observation and
to discourse: the strangeness of animals was no
longer regarded as spectacle (as in the 16 th
century) but became the object of study for
taxonomic purposes. The causal relationship
between this view and the birth of natural history
as we know it today, is quite obvious. It was clearly
not the result of a new interest in nature and its
creatures (because the origins of this interest can
be traced back to pre-history) but really the
construction of a new field of increased visibility -
which depended on both exclusion and
systematisation (Foucault 2002:144-145). That
which could not be seen, was utilized as a
classificatory tool, giving rise to the development
of complex sign systems, dislocating the sign
from the thing itself. Signs began to take on a life
of their own.
In the late 20 th and early 21 st centuries, the
positioning of the human species in nature can
be described as heavily mediated by
technology. As both visual and audio-visual
media govern most mass media imagery,
including that of the animal, there should be no
problem to present the consuming public with
accurate, in situ representations of animals.
Verisimilitude, rather than similitude in some
representations, serves as ersatz quality for
contact with actual animals.
To a large extent, for human urban
populations, biological diversity has definitively
become a pure virtual reality: one that has its
origins in, and also is constructed by and given
content by three communication forces, namely
computer generated imagery, television
documentaries and branding strategies. It is a
fact that, in their daily living, current human urban
populations are exposed to a very limited number
of animal species. The viewer’s experience of the
animal therefore happens to be primarily a
mediated one. The consequent
simulation/representation of the animal, therefore
divorces the animal from its proper life context in
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order to fulfil the requirements as set out in the
consumer industry.
W.J.T. Mitchell compares the iconologist to
a natural historian: images and pictures are
compared to species and specimens in order to
explain how new images appear in the world,
what these effect , what they mean and how they
change (Mitchell 2005: 86-87). According to this
theory, images could therefore be subjected to
extinction, mutation and evolution or, exist, at
least, as co- evolutionary entities with human
beings. Darwinian evolutionary theory propounds
that common ancestral stock adapts to existing
conditions and are susceptible to gradual
modification over time. Populations are held in
check through natural selection and survival of
the fittest, the latter fulfilling the demands of the “
economy of nature” (White & Cribbin 1995:2000).
Transmutation is a resultant process in which the
modified offspring of all dominant and increasing
forms tend to become adapted to many and
highly developed places within the economy of
nature. An interesting view developed by Deleuze
and Guattari explodes the old model of the
evolutionary tree of descent. They introduce - as
they themselves call it - a schema of aparallel
evolution; I quote from A thousand plateaus:
“rhizomes operating already in the
heterogeneous and jumping from one already
differentiated line to another” (2004: 11). It follows
that evolutionary processes are not judged, but
simply are: a species is neither good nor bad
(Mitchell 2005:86).
By contrast to evolutionary theory, historical
analysis is traditionally linear, a process of
analogue and chronology. An historical survey of
the animal as sign will be helpful in identifying
certain classificatory paradigms in which the
animal had been manifested. Abject
representations of the animal as exotic other can
be traced from Roman times through to the 19 th
century and early 20th century circus productions.
More recently, to use Steve Baker’s term,
“disnification” of animals in representation, has
led to animals being trivialized, signifying
cuteness, humour and disempowerment.
“Disnification” immediately conjures up its prime
referent – signification – a term which is
employed to bestow meaning and credibility on
the subject. By juxtaposing these two concepts,
Baker points to the trivializing nature of animal
representation wherever it occurs in the mass
media. It is a common phenomenon to notice
that marginalized, disempowered groups are
often metaphorically classified as one of a