PETA Anti-Porn

Upon looking over the PETA images in the slideshow, I was reminded of the lines in Welling's article regarding the voyeuristic nature of the "Ecoporn" being discussed. Namely, I'm referring to the "marginalized, decontextualized, powerless, speechless, unknowing, endangered, pleasure-giving, commodified, consumable...object." The parallels between these lines and the images shown are hardly unnoticeable! If this is true, meat-eating consumers are equated to the (unjustly) predatory "male" viewers addressed in the line beforehand: "omniscient, all-powerful, potentially violent, pleasure-taking, commodifying..."

It seems as though PETA puts forth a "call to action," alerting the "all-powerful" but "potentially violent" Omnivores that they can use their apex-predator human powers for good, instead of evil. I doubt, however, the efficacy of the shock technique, as in the photo of the severed cow's head. PETA continues to put out these images which probably actually hurt their reputation for being red-paint-slinging moral terrorists, rather than functionally helping their cause.


While "Ecoporn" is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing in such a way that it invokes emotion or empathy, PETA's promotional propaganda could be classified as Anti-EcoPorn because of its jarring, repugnant nature.

The Bear Isn't Porn

Bart Welling Makes an interesting argument in his article "Ecoprorn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman" and it seems that the way it is presented, there are very few things that can not be "ecoporn." In fact, Welling describes ecoporn as "ecoporn-as-porn places the viewer in the same asymmetrical, sexualized relationship to its subjects as standard pornography, even if its primary goal is not sexual arousal" (Welling, 56). He also notes that "Ecoporn also conceals the doubly invisible forms of damage inflicted on the nonrepresented, nonphotogenic landscapes that are logged, mined, dammed, polluted..." (Welling, 57).

When looking at pictures depicting animals, it is indeed important to think about how those photos came to be and what they are not showing. Much like a movie, it is the director's choice to show or not show their production equipment, the town over the hill, etc. In any case, Welling proposes that ecoporn feminizes nature. To say that nature carries a feminine characteristic is quite true. English has no masculine or feminine nouns, but if you take French as an example, “La Nature” is feminine.

I would like to draw a difference, however. This picture of a polar bear sifting through trash is, I would propose, not ecorporn. Welling, I imagine, might disagree. Here we see a creature that does not “look back” it appears “unaware that they are being photographed…” (Welling, 66). This is also a polar bear, one of the most awed creatures around. For centuries they have held a status similar to that of lions: powerful, graceful, dangerous creatures. That they could be “captured” in film seems already to “feminize” them. That man could subject such a creature to a photograph, to get it vulnerable enough to submit to something like that seems like a feminization to me. It is an ideal continuation of the idea of “male heroic narratives in nature programs often follow hard on the heels of hunting plots and colonial discovery narratives” (Welling, 61).

And yet, I do not believe that this is ecoporn. There is something distinctly non-sensual about it. First of all, this land is not “virgin.” It is covered by human garbage. The apparent ignorance of the bear is likely due to the fact that it does not care and probably has nothing to do with the kind of subjugation Welling speaks of. The bear must know the photographer is there, but he is disinterested. This point is not hidden by the photograph. The bear is not immersed entirely in its exploration of the trash, but could just as easily be looking at the photographer. The bear, effectively, breaks the “fourth wall.” Instead of being ecoporn, this picture represents a very real subjugation. There is nothing sensual about it. It is notable only because of its juxtapositions and the fact that most people do not commonly see polar bears. And yet, contrary to Welling’s argument, the polar bear does not “speak” for itself. It is simply a polar bear rummaging through trash, ignoring the cameraman. What speaks is subjugation. Not an animal, but rather a situation.

Where is the Agency in PETA and Barton??

The PETA add of the little chickens...exclaiming that they aren't nuggets, reminded me of something Barton said: "The United Way came to center most of their ads around children, a textual practice with multiple effects...it effectively erase[es] the complex experience of disability...it also establishes a binary distinction between the able-bodied and the disabled, separating and distancing the disabled from the abled." (173) PETA is doing the exact same thing here in this ad. Why are little "children" chickens being distinguished between full grown, fattened chickens, who are most definitely kept for slaughter as well? If we are going with the whole "These animals have feelings too!" act, then why would the experiences of the adult chicken not be shown to? If both parties have feelings, then do both not have agency? Or is it an absurd thing to think of a chicken having agency? Or is it only absurd because if we thought of them as beings possessive of agency, then maybe we wouldn't...eat them? Yes, that's a lot of turning tables. I think I've decided that it isn't the chickens who have the agency, its the advertisers, manipulating the way readers perceive things. Before the PETA ad, would I have thought of baby chickens as chicken nuggets? Absolutely not. Will I now? Not to any large degree, but yea from time to time. I think the key, with Barton's disability ads and PETA's animal rights ads, is to preserve your own agency, as the reader, to not let them simply influence and manipulate your thoughts and opinions, but to employ your own and "filter."

Butchery of Taste

Welling's article discusses how "visual representations of nature [...] can code the viewer's eye" (53), and the PETA ads represented in our slideshow certainly demonstrate how depictions of animals can easily be manipulated to institute a certain value system into the viewer. As Tango mentioned, too many of these ads are directed toward people who choose to eat meat through guilting the viewer (such as the ad that asks "If dogs tasted like pork, would you eat them?") and shaming the viewer with the graphic image of an animal, which is difficult to identity, with a decapitated head slung askew from a hook, confronting the viewer with fear. While these ads are not necessarily unfounded in their message, the methodology behind most of them are flawed both in that all but one addresses the pressing issue of factory farming, and, more, that the ads accost the viewer on an emotional appeal––detracting, in ways, from the levity of the intellectual value in vegetarianism.

United Way Vs. Peta

Barton spends most of her article critiquing the fear and pity the United Way organization used as a means of sparking charity in American society of the 1950's. I think what makes her argument successful against The United Way campaign, is its focus on how it removed agency from people with disabilities. It is easy for a reader to get frustrated at the idea of other equals, being treated as though they are helpless and pitiful on their "progress toward normalcy" (Barton 184). We understand people with disabilities to be  worthy of agency, capable of leading healthy lives despite their limitations, just as we ourselves struggle with limitations.

How then does this Bartonian analysis discuss campaigns for creatures who are removed from the possibility of having agency? As we can gather from the Peta collection, these ads follow the same schema of the United Way campaign: fear and pity. The first two images of the slide show demonstrate this. The first gory and bloody shocks the reader with the physicality of the subject matter, and asks "Did your food have a face?" The second evokes pity as little chicks, fluffy, yellow, cute, and innocent, demand "we are not nuggets!" I am intrigued at how closely these two representations can be juxtaposed against the United Way flyers Barton analysis in her work. The chicks are the younger generation representing their older counter parts, and the bloody animal face evokes emotions that were probably present in 1950's American Society when they looked upon images of "crippled" children in the United Way campaign.

But we are not morally opposed to Peta's violent and pitiful representation of animals, because they are not viewed at having any predisposed sense of agency. We do not feel like the chicks are similar to the children in the United Way campaigns, removing the voice of the older generation. Instead we say,"Yea, it makes sense that Peta uses chicks, that way they evoke a stronger message." I guess my point is that Barton's argument against fear and pity as a means of campaigning is only possible when the defendent (here people with disabilities) have agency. In the case of Peta and other animal rights organizations it is morally acceptable to represent animals in his manor as a means of sparking reaction in society, because we will never get to know if this representation pisses the chicks off.

Zoo Animals

Has anyone ever read Yann Martel's Life of Pi? 

There's a fascinating contradiction about contemporary perspectives of zoos and what the animals actually do while in a zoo.  He says (and this is a fictional book--I'm not a zoologist by any account.  I just think it's interesting if it's true) that animals in the wild don't do anything different from animals in the zoo.  They mark their territory and that territory becomes their home.  That's what animals do in a zoo.  And are perfectly content to do so.  Which makes me think about the slide on zoo-animals in a prison.  I'm waiting for the slide show to open on my computer so give me a minute.

A Dead Cow Head's Agency

Okay, so I am in no way a PETA hater, but I do think that there are flaws in their attempts at agency. Because I know a bit about PETA (as many people do) and what they seem to want to stand for, I feel comfortable saying that the group really needs to improve its strategy.

The first issue I saw with the PETA advertisement was the sort of nauseous horror I experienced when I saw the image of the bloody hanging cow head. Was I irked? Oh yeah. Was I inspired to change my lifestyle so that more of these bloody heads could be avoided? Not so much. Why? The image of the dead cow was absolutely horrifying, but it was such a harsh image that I couldn't help but wonder who the victims of this advertisement were, the dead bloody heads, or the targets of the ad- the everyday people just flipping through a magazine or browsing through channels when suddenly they come face to face with a bloody massacred cow head? Is PETA giving that cow agency? I think it could be argued both ways, but my strongest inclination is to say no.

PETA is not the only party guilty of playing of human emotional fear and pity triggers. As Barton says, "Charities of the1950's actively exploited fear of disability and pity for its victims in fund raising." (172) United Way in particular, used ads of little children or sad cases of disability and paired them with provocative slogans and sort of calls to action. But how can the disabled achieve any kind of agency when they are viewed as such others. We have to distance ourselves from them because we are "normal," and in doing that I think that the connection between "us" and "them." This makes any donation or effort to help more of an act of pity than a real inclination to do a good thing. I think the same distancing effect happens with PETA. We don't want to identify with the fact that we may be eating that sad, bloody cow head, so we sort of push it away from ourselves.

Which ties in with the PETA ads because I wonder if there is a large difference between the pity compulsion to donate money and the pity compulsion to change one's entire lifestyle and diet? I think money is something one can give without having to compromise much of his/her lifestyle. But PETA asks for more than money. They ask for you to look at that bloody cow head, or those cute little baby chicks, and be so disturbed or feel so guilty that you'll never eat meat again. As a lifelong meat-eater, I am inclined to say that this is asking too much and not providing the right kind of inspiration. And even if the ads were provocative enough, would real change be made in the treatment of these animals? If PETA answered this question, perhaps their advertisement would be more effective.

So really, does the bloody cow head have agency? I am not sure that it does. Sure, the death and mutilation of the cow is presented to the viewer, but it makes me wonder if the cow is really represented? And if PETA asked for a smaller change, or even provided the idea that if the viewer could change a certain set of behaviors, then this positive result could happen, would agency then be effective?

Traces of Kantian philosophy in "Ecoporn"

While reading Welling's article on ecoporn, I was vaguely reminded me of the different moral theories of Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's categorical imperatives. To summarize briefly, utilitarianism believes that the action that brings about the greatest amount of pleasure is the correct one. For Kant, categorical imperatives were based upon rational thought and looking at actions as good in themselves, rather than examining their consequences. For example,
Kant sees telling the truth as a categorical imperative, so even if someone's life depended on you lying, you should tell the truth. The consequences of the action are irrelevant.

I can see these philosophies interact in Welling's article when he says, "I can imagine many of my fellow parents objecting loudly to the idea that there is any connection whatsoever between Playboy and Florida Panther Net. The trouble with this kind of 'intentionalist' approach... is that it would distract attention form the rhetoric of the images itself" (65). Although the intentions of Florida Panther Net are noble, in that they are trying to educate children and inspire people to care about the well-being the of Florida panther, this should not excuse the method in which it is done. In the Kantian moral philosophy, he emphasizes that we should all value people in their own right and never see them as a means to an end.

(For example, using the popular trolley scenario, imagine if you were on an out of control trolley headed to kill five people on the tracks and you had the choice to switch directions and kill only one person. In Kant's theory, you should remain on the track you're on rather than switch tracks, since the sole person on the other tracks has a right to live, and who are you to choose who lives anyway? Although tragic, the five deaths are simply the unfortunate outcome of the situation.)

Keeping this moral philosophy in mind, it becomes easier to accept Welling's argument. So what if ecoporn is designed to make us care for the environment? We are treating as an object, at a distance, rather than seeing it as it truly is and valuing it as such. Going back to Welling's discussion of the photographs of the Florida panther, he criticizes them saying, "the viewer... is most definitely not placed in the position of a fellow animal--working hard to catch a glimpse of a fast, powerful predator that under truly wild circumstances would not welcome the attention. Rather, we are cast in the role of voyeurs, potential destroyers, and/or potential saviors of the compliant or unknowing... animal victim" (66). In these photographs, these animals are simply passive, not truly looking back, but this is only due to how they are presented. The photographs are evidence that we do not value nature for what it truly is, but that they're simply representations of it that fit our own agendas and desires.

Barton, Campbell, Banerjee, and PETA

When I think of the paradox of agency, I usually go back to Campbell's definition of the community conferred agency: "The agency of the subject appears to be an effect of its subordination."

In Barton's article, the disabled characters featured in the United Way are given agency by United Way and this agency can only be granted once the disabled character lives a "productive" life according to society. For instance, the article uses the example of the blind character and leader dog. United Way provides the dog who enables the blind character to act "normally" in society. The blind character's normalcy is therefore granted by both United Way and the dog.

The article says that the disabled characters in the ads are portrayed as "dependent childlike adults" without agency, but I wonder if that's completely true. In Campbell's definition, agency is constructed based on the standard of a community. In the case of the United Way ads, they are targeting a community which values production. Normalcy is working a 9: 00 to 5:00 job. Agency is therefore framed with those definitions. The characters in the United Way ad are shown as individuals living "productive" lives due to their help from United Way. The characters are assimilating to the community's definition of "production" and "normalcy." These definitions may be warped, but they are the standards of the community.

Can their "dependency" be a kind of agency? The characters are, after all, "subordinated" by the rules of the community, and this subordination allows them to have some kind of voice in society, albeit warped and mediated. Could the fact that they have any kind of representation at all in the media be a kind of subordinated agency? They aren't seen for who they really are, but they are seen. 


In regards to the PETA ad, it seems that the person being "othered" is the reader of the ad, and the fear of that otherness is the pull of the ads. Two ads in particular caught my attention in regards to "community conferred agency": the polar bar standing in the litter and the chicks ad which ask us to "Go vegetarian for the planet." Both are implying that the community is harmed by our actions. The planet and polar bear are harmed by our waste. Eating the chicks harms the planet, our community. In other words, "If you're not a vegetarian, you're not a part of the community." In this way, the ads could almost be said to be threatening to take away our agency. "If you don't subordinate your eating habits to our rules, then you're harming the community." Without the community, we don't have agency. 


The United Way ads evoke "pity and fear" because the business presents the disabled characters are trying to become a part of the community. They aren't completely inside the community as proposed by the United Way. Fear is supposedly evoked in the community assimilated ad viewer. What would happen to YOU if you weren't totally a part of the community? Wouldn't it be scary? The PETA ads are scary because they're threatening to strip the viewer's agency. The animals are natural parts of the planet and community. I wouldn't say that the ads I've named give the animal characters agency, but they do represent preserving the principles of the community or preserving its natural and correct state. They are symbols for the rules governing the society, and PETA is pointing to these rules as being broken by the viewer. 


In other words, the ads are asking us to subordinate ourselves to maintain our agency. Acting independently of the community and eating chickens  is wrong. If we act independently, we lose our agency. 

PETA should listen to Welling, but won't

At the conclusion of her piece Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman, Welling argues that, "Environmentalism needs to keep 'rethinking the human place in nature' and revisualizing its visual practices accordingly. In short, it needs [to attempt] to imagine a world that truly looks back" (Welling 69). Throughout the piece, Welling makes it clear that the subjects of ecoporn cannot "look back," and this is part of what contributes to ecoporn. PETA capitalizes on this idea. Animals cannot "look back" and they can't fight back -- they are purely innocent victims of human destruction. While Welling might argue that PETA is exploiting the animals, PETA might say that it is what is necessary to cause change. Thus, I'm finding it hard to reconcile Welling's advice about ensuring that animals are given the chance to "look back" and PETA's whole campaign vision. What can PETA do to ensure that animals are able to "look back?" I am not saying that PETA should go on its merry way continuing to contribute to ecoporn. I have evidence that doing so is actually counterproductive to their cause. I have many vegetarian friends who call PETA "too radical," and certainly this is much related to the ads they circulate. The first picture on the slideshow of the cow's head is brutal and disgusting. In the case of my vegetarian friends, this type of ad turns them away from PETA instead of encouraging them to join their organization. PETA relies on making meat eaters feel shameful and guilty, and for some people this has the opposite affect and makes them turn away from PETA. Given this, it seems that Welling makes a sound argument that PETA should consider. If they were not so abrasive, were more honest, and not so reliant on ecoporn, perhaps they would reach a larger audience, and that should be their major goal. I doubt PETA would consider such an argument, however. They seem to love shock value even if that is at the cost of more vegetarians at their side.

Oh PETA, the prodigal definition that good intentions are practically useless.

I'm not sure if I really understand the prompt for the agent/cy slide show, but here goes nothing.

Barton's disability discourse was built on "textual practices of erasure" (169). This means that United Way used ads that dehumanized and infantized disabled people. In other words, the ad 'erased' most of their disability in order to create the appearance that normality equaled autonomy. The United Way ads stripped their disabled subjects of their agency by making their models into archetypal objects. The PETA ads differ in that they put a spotlight on animals that have already had their autonomy taken away from them. Both of these campaigns fail to target the foundational problem.

For United Way, that problem would have been a bit difficult since it was the social construction of disability and all the myths that tag along. It's not forgivable but at least understandable why this wasn't attempted. United Way ran as a business and was more interested in raking in the donations rather than changing how the world viewed disabled people. PETA didn't have an abstract, socially constructed foundational problem. The campaign skips over the capitalist, disgusting meat industry and immediately attacks the meat eater. For example, "We are not nuggets! Please do not eat us." is a plea from the chicken to the meat eater. This is problematic because the meat eater only has access to processed nugget-shaped chicken due to the terrible industry that provided it. Also, would you say that this slogan creates the sense the chickens have agency?

The United Way ads attempted to evoke pity and fear to reel in donations. PETA also plays on emotions. The poster with the slogan "If dogs tasted like pork, would you eat them?" doesn't make a lot of sense. At a glance, the ad is trying to draw an emotional connection between the beloved family pet and dinner. Upon further investigation, this ad loses its logic because it skips the middle man again. We eat the meat that is packaged and provided for us. In other countries, that does include dog and they do eat it. If the goal is to actually save animals' lives and not just convert a bunch of people to vegetarianism, PETA should be attacking the industry the raises, slaughters, and processes those pigs.

Where does agency play a role in all of this? Are these animals agents or not?

Oh, Barthes, What Has Become of Me?

I was recently sitting about, doing some hand-work, and thinking about various notions of the self. I though about the idea of a (possibly eternal) spirit or soul which is a sort of carrier for what we call the self, which somehow houses the individual. Then I moved on to a little consideration of the self as a collection of memories, more of a result  of a functioning brain than anything spiritual or constant. Then it struck me: "Why, that sounds like Barthes!"

Barthes writes that the reader "is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted" (877). There is no constant reader, no self, only a collection of the symbols in the work. While Foucault holds that the author is "reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence" (905), in Barthes' argument, the reader is nothing but a singular absence until the text is imposed on him. Sort of like the idea that a mind is just a mind until memories begin to gather in it, and it is the memories that create the person.

The idea that there is no constant self, or that the individual is not really individual, often results in discomfort. However, as Campbell points out, "the concept of the individual... did not emerge fully in the  West until late in the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century" (2). In fact, the first use of the word was in reference to G-D as the "high and individual Trinity" (Campbell, 2). We now use in reference to ourselves a word that was first used to describe G-D. That's presumption, right there. I myself have no profound attachment to the idea of the individual, but I am partial to environments where everyone is treated as an individual. This is probably because, as Campbell says, "agency manifests itself  in the practices of individuals"(5), so when one is considered an individual, one acquires agency. Individuality is indeed a very nice thing to have.