Documentaries that feature undercover film of animals and activists counter their ‘invisibility’ and provide alternative narratives to the hegemonic and commercialized public sphere. They serve several vital functions in the strategic arsenal of animal rights activists, including: thrusting clandestine spaces of animal cruelty onto the public screen and exerting pressure on industries; and challenging the human/animal dualism, the violent hierarchy it justifies, and the (imagined) humane self-image of society.
CARRIE P. FREEMAN: Many pro-animal documentaries are built around footage taken by undercover animal activists uncovering abuses in industries such as agriculture and fishing, fur, marine parks, and biomedical research labs. This analysis explores the central role of undercover activist footage in recent documentaries: Earthlings, The Cove, The Witness, Peaceable Kingdom, Behind the Mask, Fowl Play, and Dealing Dogs. Considering both form and function, I investigate how this undercover footage works in terms of providing an inherent critique of power in our relationship with nonhuman animals – a sense of witnessing a crime that is an injustice both in terms of causing animal suffering and silencing their voice and agency…
Through the power of nonfiction, these documentaries challenge anthropocentrism by making nonhuman animals a central, serious character and plot point and characterizing their treatment (however legal) as criminally abusive. But in revealing this violence, this power over, to what extent do the films challenge what Derrida calls the “violent hierarchy” of the human/animal dualism to qualify as posthumanist cinema in the 21st century?.. To what extent do filmmakers fulfill a role as critical rhetoricians by providing context for the undercover image events that 1) legitimates animal activism as justified and 2) situates it as part of a historic heroic struggle for justice?…
The intensified frequency of post-humanist documentaries that feature undercover film of animals and activists counter their ‘invisibility’ and provide alternative narratives to the hegemonic discourses of postindustrial society and a commercialised public sphere. This essay demonstrates that these documentaries serve several vital functions in the strategic arsenal of animal rights activists. Three specific functions of these films have been emphasised here, including: 1) thrusting clandestine spaces of animal cruelty onto the public screen and exerting a reverse panopticon pressure on industries; 2) challenging the human/animal dualism, the violent hierarchy it justifies, and the (imagined) humane self-image of society; and 3) serving as a critical rhetoric that constructs dissonance-producing antagonisms, (dis)identification, and legitimacy of the movement…
The films strive to propel the necessary preconditions for emancipatory social transformation: witnessing and acknowledging that injustice is being committed; challenging injustices by deconstructing powerful binaries, including their structural and linguistic manifestations; and critiquing injustices by demystifying the complex power relations they entail and positing alternative orders. Undercover footage and cinema offer a powerful vessel to fulfill these preconditions and is a strategic resource for social movements.
So the old hymn goes, ‘was blind, but now I see.’ But, advocates of social change will aptly recognise this adage is incomplete. Beyond the broader proliferation of these images, beyond these preconditions for change (seeing, knowing, critiquing and the imagination of alternative social orders), a crucial question remains: What will actually galvanise the broad social action necessary to expansively alter discourse(s) and produce significant material transformations in space and the social order? Requisite to achieving these emancipatory ends is the construction and internalisation of a universal post-humanist ethics paired with sustained action. With the unabated use and abuse of animals, this utopia is distant, but not unreachable. There the proverb is revised, ‘was blind, but I now I see, believe, and do’. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: