From Mickey Mouse to the teddy bear, from the Republican elephant to the use of "jackass" as an all-purpose insult, images of animals play a central role in politics, entertainment, and social interactions. In this penetrating look at how Western culture pictures the beast, Steve Baker examines how such images - sometimes affectionate, sometimes derogatory, always distorting - affect how real animals are perceived and treated. Baker provides an animated discussion of how animals enter into the iconography of power through wartime depictions of the enemy, political cartoons, and sports symbolism. He examines a phenomenon he calls the "disnification" of animals, meaning a reduction of the animal to the trivial and stupid, and shows how books featuring talking animals underscore human superiority. He also discusses how his findings might inform the strategies of animal rights advocates seeking to call public attention to animal suffering and abuse. Until animals are extricated from the baggage of imposed images, Baker maintains, neither they nor their predicaments can be clearly seen. For this edition, Baker provides a new introduction, specifically addressing an American audience, that touches on such topics as the Cow Parade, animal imagery in the presidential race, and animatronic animals in recent films.
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"A pleasure to read as well as being a substantial work of scholarship." -- Andrew Johnson, Environmental Values "Immensely accessible ... Baker's study is witty, learned, sophisticated, and direct." -- Norman Bryson, editor of Visual Culture: Images of Interpretation "The continued value of Picturing the Beast lies in Baker's insistence that we consider animals more carefully, even when their appearance does not seem immediately significant (such as in children's literature, cartoon strips, advertisements, and news stories about politicians), that we ask questions about why animals appear the way they do, and that we think hard about how they might be imagined differently." -- Molly H. Mullin, Anthrozos
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a nice & original study of animal imagery,
By A Customer
This review is from: Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Paperback)
Picturing the beast is about the way animals are depicted in the media (cartoons, photography etc.) The thesis of the book is that such depictions partly determine the way we think about and treat animals. Picturing the beast is a highly original study and is recommended for anyone interested in media & communication, or the animal rights debate
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First Sentence:
An invitation to the reader: try to envisage the whole of the culture, the contemporary culture of which we are part, and then call to mind all the ways in which animals figure in its everyday operation. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
national animal symbol, contemporary animal rights movement, picturing the beast, lucky cows, animal symbolism, modern episteme, animal identity, animal content, wolf boy, new cultural history, cat massacre Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Daily Express, First World War, Bulldog Bobby, New York, Mickey Mouse, Roland Barthes, Daily Mirror, Keith Thomas, Mary Douglas, Jonathan Cape, Noah's Ark, Daily Star, Elaine Scarry, John Berger, Keith Tester, Clifford Geertz, Hampstead Heath, Margaret Thatcher, United States, Walt Disney, Animal Liberation Front, Daily Telegraph, Julian Barnes, Michel Foucault, Ursula Le Guin New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
An invitation to the reader: try to envisage the whole of the culture, the contemporary culture of which we are part, and then call to mind all the ways in which animals figure in its everyday operation. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
national animal symbol, contemporary animal rights movement, picturing the beast, lucky cows, animal symbolism, modern episteme, animal identity, animal content, wolf boy, new cultural history, cat massacre Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Daily Express, First World War, Bulldog Bobby, New York, Mickey Mouse, Roland Barthes, Daily Mirror, Keith Thomas, Mary Douglas, Jonathan Cape, Noah's Ark, Daily Star, Elaine Scarry, John Berger, Keith Tester, Clifford Geertz, Hampstead Heath, Margaret Thatcher, United States, Walt Disney, Animal Liberation Front, Daily Telegraph, Julian Barnes, Michel Foucault, Ursula Le Guin New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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30
books
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- The Labour Party: A Centenary History by Brian Brivati on 6 pages
- Man and the Natural World (Penguin Press History) by Keith Thomas on 5 pages
- Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge Classics) by Mary Douglas on 4 pages
- Zoo Culture by Robert Mullan on 4 pages
- The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory and History of Literature, Volume 10) by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
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- The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies) by John Dececco Phd on page 98, and page 99
- From Antz To Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis by Martin Barker in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography by Philip Rousseau in Back Matter
- The Talking Greeks: Speech, Animals, and the Other in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato by John Heath in Back Matter
- Writing Race Across the Atlantic World: Medieval to Modern by Phillip Beidler on page 133
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