Final Paper - Ooh, A Rock; I'd Hit That!

Kristen Ohlemeier

11/18/10

Albert Rouzie

Final Project

Ooh, A Rock; I’d Hit That!

A Criticism of Ecoporn

Not an especially apt title. This is more like a criticism of the criticism of Ecoporn but the language of paper writing dictates succinctness and that was about as succinct as it could get. All photos hereby used in this essay are my own and will not be in the works cited list below, otherwise all papers and videos used for this essay are definitely cited.

To many noted environmentalist writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, Carol J. Adams, Susan Griffin, Susanne Kappeler, Charles Bergman, and now Bart H. Welling there is a developing medium that is as equally “harmful” to children as heterosexual pornography today and that is “Ecoporn.”

According to Welling, Ecoporn is defined as, “…a type of contemporary visual discourse made up of highly idealized, anthropomorphized views of landscapes and nonhuman animals” (57). This definition includes the sexualization of the landscape and animals, such as a tiger posing regally in the common position of feline relaxation being that of a woman’s pose in regular pornography, and going back to the colonialist view of the New World landscape being “virginal,” much like a woman’s womb.

Although environmentally-driven, Welling refers to Ecoporn as the next stop in exploitation of the environment much the same way that men supposedly exploit women after watching pornography. This is as much a fight against societal patriarchy that exists to this day and the same domineering attitude towards nature, as was instilled by the Judeo-Christian God and Western thought.

According to Jerry Mander, who is a Deep Ecologist and was among the first to use the term “Ecopornography” in a paper of the same name, Ecoporn has little to do with the sexual portrayal of nature as much as it has to do with how nature is used particularly for capitalist interests. As Welling states of Mander’s own views, “…the environmental credibility of the organization propagating a given image deserves more scrutinty than the rhetoric of the image itself” (54). A particularly apt example of this are the advertisements British Petroleum ran after the highly publicized Gulf of Mexico oil spill; in this attempt to save face BP forced the man who received most of the blame, Tony Hayward, to narrate commercials with unassuming and innocent machinery in the background. Through the ad, it attempts to offset the horrible disaster with a positive message of people working together on an ocean scenery and showing perfectly clean birds being handled by volunteers. Despite their work to spin the disaster to their advantage of improving their image from the greasy, money-grubbing capitalistic business that this oil spill made them to be, their relationship with the United States in particular remains rocky (Werdiger).

Welling, on the other hand, sees Ecoporn as far more nature-centric than questionable of the integrity of a non-living, industrial business, since he cites among various works in his article such as The Lion King as guilty of being Ecoporn (67). Although Welling is primarily concerned with the violence and sexism associated with regular pornography being applied to the environment, his other concern is that of the human being, saying:

“Either way, if you are a typical media-saturated resident of the United States, your response will likely be the same: you feel mildly pleased with the world, flip the page, change the channel…or fall asleep. This apathetic consumerist response should be exactly what environmentalists work to unsettle, no promote” (56).

Disregarding that condescension is likely not the best way to inspire the average viewer into crafting his everyday life around the effort to save the world, Wellings is criticizing a strategy of hopefully inspiring someone to do just that. One of the greatest examples of supposedly terrible Ecopornography is that of the popular BBC series known as Planet Earth, which practices several filming techniques Welling despises, in their attempt to make the planet seem vast and untouched. As it conveys the planet earth through overhead sweeps and tries to provide a clear picture of each of the general ecosystems at work, it uses the intricate network of the planet’s system to inspire a person to do its best to save the environment, implying that even as old as these networks are, the balance within which it exists is extremely fragile. As with the ills of the organic campaign against the meat-packing industry, the pro-environmentalists must realize if they want people to act on their message, then the tone must reflect one of hope rather than fear and despair. Because this is an age of proliferate technology, the people will expect environmentalists to offer technology-based solutions to maintain their current quality of life, which is something the more extreme pro-environmentalists seem to have difficulty grasping.

The fuss raised up about Ecoporn is very reminiscent to the fuss raised up about heterosexual pornography by Evangelist Christians, worried about the negative effects of porn on the sinner’s soul and also on the little children if they got their hands on it. As Welling states, “That the new ‘animal snuff films’ are branded ‘education’ and shown openly during prime time by various television networks does not render them less pornographic than films featuring voyeuristic representations of sexual violence against women…” (59). While some of his views are founded on the potentially denigrating view that consumers of pornography may have on women and, may in fact, pass over to the environment, this attempt at emphasizing the danger to children is not any different from the Evangelist Christians attempting to ban porn.

As a man named Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist, argues of porn in a congressional hearing in front of Congress, "Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance” (Singel Wired). In an effort to prove how immoral and psychologically unhealthy porn is, those trying to ban it completely are reduced to fear-driven rhetoric as though heterosexual porn will destroy children if not controlled or banished – note that the parents’ responsibility to make sure their children do not get a hold of porn is never brought up. Welling’s and other author’s statements about Ecoporn hardly falls into the same trap as fear-mongering, as the idea of there being Ecoporn at all is relatively new to the public and for the most part panned, but his feelings on the effects of Ecoporn are not dissimilar from those stated by Satinover above:

“…Carol J. Adams, Terry Tempest Williams…and Charles Bergman have shed light on the issue of how pornography and visual representations of nature…can code the viewer’s eye not just in similar but, as I will argue here, in deeply interrelated ways: as solitary, central but remote, omniscient…potentially violent…an all-seeing but simultaneously invisible consuming male subject to its marginalized…consumable female object” (53).

With a list of negative adjectives, Welling invokes the domineering patriarchal over the vulnerable Mother Nature so often portrayed in historical pictures, insisting later in his essay much like William Cronon’s The Trouble with Wilderness that because most of the documentaries’ today refuse to portray animals and nature itself as an exploited subject, then they are effectively erasing the past of all original exploitation of the native peoples of the region. Although it is admirable to fight against the male dominion of all things as according to nature, there seems to be an undercurrent of extremism in regard to this issue that the rest of humanity has failed to pick up on, and it begs the question of whether the supposedly damaging effects of Ecoporn should be acknowledged at all. Much like heterosexual porn, the damaging effects are largely environmentally doctrinal and as widespread as heterosexual pornography is, the majority of the male half of the human race has not acted on the savage whims that pornography is meant to inspire, by seeing women as objects of desire rather than flesh and blood beings.

Wellings is worried about the consequences this Ecoporn will have upon the environment, but the problem with this is that man has already been exploiting the environment without thought of consequence since the very beginnings of civilization, if not even more savagely carried out today under the guise of corporate expansion and capitalism. Why criticize the efforts of the Planet Earth crew to try to show as it was meant to be without human influence? Granted, the disturbance of the environment, the idyllic view of the world particularly without humans is a little unsettling, and the attempt to separate humans from animals despite the fact that someone is holding the camera is not conducive to the idea of untouched human influence, but to Planet Earth crew, the pros completely outweigh the cons of instilling this particular view. And just because they feature many of the same filming techniques that Welling himself despises does not make it on the same level as pornography. With the issue of Global Warming gaining more ground, David Attenborough finishes the Ocean Deep segment of the series with a pacifistic call-to-arms, “It’s not just the future of the whale that today lies in our hands; it’s the survival of the natural world in all parts of the living planet. We can now destroy or cherish – the choice is ours” (Attenborough, Planet Earth).

The environmental writers, much like the people for the Liberation of all animals, appear to have, in the words of Michael Pollan, “A deep current of Puritanism run[ing] through the writings of the animal philosophers, an abiding discomfort not just with our animality, but with the animals' animality" (321). Not to argue that the natural view as humans should follow is for the man to be the sole provider of the family and the woman do nothing but nurture the offspring, but that these writers attempt to apply human concepts to animals with no knowledge of those concepts, such as the patriarchal society. As Welling cites other authors in his essay:

“Carol J. Adams and Josephine Donovan suggests that such narratives ‘work to reinscribe male-spuremacist ideologies, both in promoting a view of nature as dominated by aggressive and violent males….[This model] is designed…to arouse fear in women and to promote their sense of needing men’s protection’” (67).

Two words: spotted hyenas. The spotted hyena social order does not allow their male half to dominate the clan; conversely, an alpha female called the matriarch heads each clan. A Michigan State University researcher, Kay Holcamp, argues this to be the case as a result of their cubs not being able to develop the powerful skull and jawbones necessary to break bones for proper feeding until they are past sexual maturity (Michigan State University). The mothers must compensate their cubs’ weaknesses by being extra aggressive, especially since male hyenas are notorious for murdering cubs when left unattended. Perhaps documentaries on spotted hyenas can be construed as beneficial to the female ego since it depicts an opposing view to the regularly patriarchal state of nature in wild life documentaries.

Planet Earth remains to be one of the most popular documentaries of the age and, admittedly, it takes a far different approach from other nature shows such as The Crocodile Hunter, by almost completely removing the human element and attempting to refrain from disturbing the animals as much as possible. Also, instead of focusing solely on the animals, either, it tries to show the viewer how everything in each ecosystem connects via the natural mechanism of evolution. Probably its most astounding accomplishment was bringing the background of flora to the forefront. When, before, animals stole the spotlight, Planet Earth sets up cameras to record a day’s movement in a typical meadow, forest, or jungle and show just how plants are as alive as animals, how they move, how they struggle to reach the sun, how they protect themselves via chemical defenses, or how they best propagate their own offspring.

Among the most famous examples from the Planet Earth series is the clip of the wolf chasing the caribou on the tundra, which shows one set of filming techniques to help get the viewpoint across that despite each animals’ difference in physical appearance, many unconsciously display some of the same behavioral characteristics as other forms of life, such as ants.

The overhead shots of sprawling plains is used quite liberally in the Planet Earth series, obviously to depict a landscape much more vast than the human imagination can grasp. Perspective is always useful when the human social connections appear bleak and the world seems in dire straits, until people realize that it is quite difficult to destroy something that big. Can humans mutilate it? Eradicate all life forms from it? Certainly and easily, too, but despite what humans do to the Earth, it will survive and create new life forms to complete the chain that keeps it thriving, even if humans are no longer around to see that happen.

The Caribou herd in this particular video is filmed far above in an airplane with the engines muted for greater enjoyment, since no one wants to hear the roar of an airplane engine during a nature shot no matter how realistic it is. From above, it appears to be little different from a colony of Army Ant, snaking across the landscape in strange little columns, stopping to feed on the new pastures they come to until they have eaten their fill and moved on. As far as the food chain goes in this system, it is quite simple and broken down in bite-sized pieces for average consumer’s consumption: Caribou eat the grass, which is newly grown from the sun’s rays, which were scant months earlier during the winter, and the wolves are following in their stead, picking out the young and the weak so that the herd is stronger as a whole. As Pollan said of the photograph with his friend, Angelo skinning the pig, “There it was, one of the food chains that have sustained life for a million years…one uncluttered and most beautiful example of what it is” (363).

Welling would have a field day with the next clip that may define just what the Planet Earth series is about and shows more artistic potential in it than any other example within the entire series as a whole: the Great White Sharks hunting Cape Fur Seals off the coast of South Africa.

Even before this clip came out, it had long been established that Great White Sharks occasionally power through the air in their attempt to snatch these seals as they swim. The elements are all there for Welling’s attributes of Ecoporn and then some: suspenseful music, slow-motion if not altogether graphic shots of sharks sinking their teeth into these tiny seals, cool coverage by Sir Attenborough himself, and even an atmosphere of gloom cast by the gray sky and green murky water. None of it is necessary, except perhaps the high-speed cameras to slow down the ascent of these animals, but even that element is arguable as effective and perhaps awe-inspiring as it is – which it should not be. This is the natural order, showing the little cuddly looking seals getting mauled by an animal more than ten times its size, and Welling argues that this is precisely the pornographic footage that should not have made it onto the television.

Welling writes of these particular sharks in his essay, saying “…sharks are undergoing an image restoration of their own….in print and on film to transform Great White Sharks in the popular imagine from killing machines to paragons of evolutionary fitness” (59). It would be difficult to argue that sharks are not the fittest among animals since sharks have retained their basic form since the Cretaceous period, but the video above does little to help the sharks’ reputation as heartless killing machines when filmed murdering defenseless and tiny – by comparison – animals such as the seal. At any rate, is it so wrong to attempt to stymie the effects of human consumption and degradation by educating the general public that sharks, as evil as they appear, are still key elements in an intricate food chain that would otherwise collapse without them?

Ecoporn. According to Welling and, as mentioned above, various other environmentalist authors such as Terry Tempest Williams, it should not even appear during prime time television where any child could stumble across it and become corrupted by its graphic display of the mechanisms of nature and one animal killing another, which is as much a part of life as breathing. Has nature, itself, been tampered for viewing pleasure by anyone who ever wanted to film a documentary series? Yes, it most certainly has because although humans are not meant to be in most of the environments that these animals survive in, we are still animals that were developed as a result of these natural mechanisms, and all the ecosystems must occasionally suffer the taint of the human being, just as the jungle suffers the tiger and the savannah suffer the wildebeest. We are humans and we are animals and it is time that humanity comes to terms with that identity and work to preserve the food chains that have unfortunately been broken as a result of our civilization.

Works Cited

Attenborough, David, Perf. Planet Earth – Wolves Hunting Caribou. British Broadcasting Company: 2006, Film. .

Attenborough, David, Perf. Planet Earth - The King of the Ocean (Great White Shark). British Broadcasting Company: 2006, Film..

Attenborough, David, Perf. Planet Earth – Ocean Deep. British Broadcasting Company: 2006, Film.

Singel, Ryan. "Internet Porn: Worse Than Crack?." Wired 19 Nov 2004: n. pag. Web. 18 Nov 2010. .

Welling, Bart H.. "Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman." Ecosee; Image, Rhetoric, Nature. Ed. Sidney L. Dobrin. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009. Print.

Werdiger, Julia. "BP Faces Long Road to Restoring Confidence in US." CNBC 27 July 2010: n. pag. Web. 18 Nov 2010. in_US>.

Hayward, Tony, Perf. British Petroleum(BP) Oil Spill - 2010 Commercial. British Petroleum: 2010, Film. .

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006. Print.

Michigan State University. "Studies Of Hyena Skull Development Put Teeth Into New Female Dominance Theory." ScienceDaily, 8 April 2009. Web. 18 November 2010. /releases/2009/03/090331112851.htm>.