Violence in Ecoporn

I'm completely changing direction with my discussion because I forgot Professor Graban asked us about the violence behind Ecoporn.  That and the slide show won't let me type and look at the pictures simultaneously.
Was there violence?  I think yes.  At least, Welling thinks so.

Last class we constructed an image of ecoporn that paralleled nature to the objectification of women.  He took "the male surveyor" and placed him within a realm of power over "Nature's unseeing, aestheticized female object" (58).  Professor Graban questioned whether this idea of seeing and unseeing prompted discourses of violence--if it was right or wrong to see what cannot see you.

Apart from the sexual implications Welling makes: "Ecoporn supplies viewers with a fantasy of benign but total visual power over these nonhuman creatures and habitats that are both comfortingly humanized and pleasingly 'untainted' by humans" (57)--one might view the 'untainted' landscape one views in a picture as virginal with the viewer possessing "voyeuristic" qualities.  "It traffics in pictorial versions of the land-as-woman tropes...Ecoporn perpetuates ways of seeing feminized Others that have been instrumental in facilitating countless acts of violent expropriation" (58).

In using the women as land qualities of a voyeuristic society, Welling demonstrates how violence becomes key in Ecoporn, and the reasons why it's dehumanizes women the same way in which it celebrates dehumanization of nature.  He furthers his argument in illustrating the disturbing fantasy Susanne Kappeler calls "wild animal-woman, the sexual beast" (59).  Her theory suggests that there's "a truly hardcore obsession with explicit sexuality and violent death."  With new nature shows that depict the equivalent of "animal snuff films," the obsession runs deep within our culture.  Just look at some of the images Peta uses in their campaign for their argument.

The first image is that of bodiless cow.  Granted, these images are meant to 'scare' us into vegetarianism, but because PETA feels the image will be effective demonstrates their knowledge of society and what we want or want to avoid.