Animals + Media “The Reading”

Upon reading the title of Week Seven’s reading – I was utterly confused. I mean, what do animals have to do with the media? I mean, sure there is some romanticisation surrounding zoos and animals, however, nothing directly linked to our course. I actually found this reading quite ironic due to my own personal circumstances; for most of my life, I actually wanted to become a veterinary zoologist and worked in Taronga Zoo (in Sydney) for six years prior to me coming to University (then I realised that it wasn’t for me/it was ALOT of work for something that ended up becoming more of a ‘chore’ rather than a ‘hobby’ and that I would have to train and stick to one thing my whole life, to be honest, terrified me). Coming from a behind-the-scenes perspective, having worked in a zoo for a large chunk of my life (and if you’re interested, it was in the carnivore division! lions and tigers and bears… oh my), I can say that the animals (at my zoo anyway) were treated very, very well.

The reading does touch on animal cruelty (something I am against, of course) and how animals in zoos have now learned a natural behavior due to the ‘spoonfed’ approach they are given – they will never be able to be out of captivity. And to be fair, in some ways, this is a positive and a negative. I didn’t understand the link between this and the world of media? Is the author saying that he would compare the media’s effect on humans as ‘social conditioning’? To be fair, this point could be main in a link to radio, news broadcasts, and propaganda – often individuals take those on at ‘face value’ thus, are ‘socially conditioned’ to believe in something that may or may not be true? However, I couldn’t exactly find that exact link between animal and man and the media. One could also make a link to iconography such as Disney, where they use animals (such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck) that are possessing human qualities and values (ie: there is a whole “Disney” movie centered around Christmas and how each of these ‘animal households’ celebrate).

I’m super interested in attending the lecture next week to provide some background knowledge to this reading, because if I am completely honest – it’s very confusing.