Do not feed the animals: an ecocritical perspective on cinematic animal attack narratives

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Content Do Not Feed the Animals: An Ecocritical Perspective on Cinematic Animal Attack Narratives by Isaac Rooks A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) School of Cinematic Arts (Critical Studies) August 2019 Acknowledgments The love and encouragement of Perry Radford kept me (mostly) sane during the day-to- day grind of working on this project. I cannot express how much I owe her. I am relieved that such a sensible and smart person did not reconsider being with me when she learned what I was spending my time researching. Throughout my life, I have been supported by the three other Doctor Rookses: Pam, John, and Elinor. They provided wonderful examples and helped me through this process in so many ways. Credit also goes to Luna and Dusty, who kept me company while I was writing. This document was shaped and shepherded by my excellent committee members. J.D. Connor took on the responsibilities of Chair before he even arrived in Los Angeles and he offered invaluable aid and insights. I am grateful that Priya Jaikumar agreed to be on my committee and stuck with this project, despite her dislike of horror movies. Randall Lake helped me get out of my film studies bubble and I appreciate his kindness and patience. All the faculty and staff of USC’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies helped me at some point, but I wish to express special gratitude to Akira Lippit and Nitin Govil, who helped guide this project in its early stages. I am lucky to have many wonderful friends, but there is something special about those individuals who understand the particular craziness of this process. While completing my MA at Indiana University, I met three great people who made that experience a joy: Sara Gray, David Maxson, and Hannah McSwiggen. Our Department might be gone, but we will always have Dunkirk. Oh wait – that closed, too. At USC, I had an amazing Ph.D. cohort in Anirban Baishya, Michael LaRocco, Sonia Misra, and Maria Zalewska. You would think at least one of us would have turned out to be a jerk…. Perhaps that was me? I am lucky that my path crossed with so many folks who are as good-humored as they are clever. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: “Brutal Enough”……………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1 - “All This Machine Does”: Imagining & Visualizing the Cinematic Animal Body………………...…………………..... 44 Making Ripples: The Impact of Jaws…………………………………………...…........ 46 Big Fish Stories: Jaws & Animal Attack Narratives…………………………………… 54 Gilding the Lily: Narrative Embellishment & the Jaws Franchise…………………….. 60 In the Flesh: Jaws & Visualizing Viscous Animals……………………………………. 67 The Breaking Point: The Jaws Franchise & Deconstructing the Visualized Shark……. 83 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………… 96 Chapter 2 - “He Had Always Tried To Be A Good Dog”: Simulating & Confronting Animal Agency, Intellect, and Cognition……………………… 98 Narrative Framing……………………………………………………………………... 110 The Use of Trained Animals…………………………………………………………... 127 The Limits of Language……………………………………………………………….. 141 Different Ways of Seeing……………………………………………………………… 150 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 163 Chapter 3 - “We Were Being Changed and Made Part of Their World”: Complicating the Relationships Between and the Status of Humans and Animals……… 165 Willard………………………………………………………………………………… 175 Orca…………………………………………………………………………………… 189 Monkey Shines………………………………………………………………………… 202 Phase IV………………………………………………………………………………. 213 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 228 Chapter 4 - “This is Paradise” The Implications of Aesthetically Manipulating Landscapes…………………………….. 230 The Picturesque Shallows ……………………………………………………………. 239 The Uncanny Black Water……………………………………………………………. 262 The Sublime and The Grey…………………………………………………………… 283 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 302 Chapter 5 - “I Will Kill the Lions and I Will Build the Bridge”: Crafting an Ahistorical and Oppositional Natural World in The Ghost and the Darkness ……………………………………………………….304 The Man-Eaters’ Legacy……… ……………………………………………………….307 A Colonial Environment………………………………………………………………. 323 A Wild Land…………………………………………………………………………... 341 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 363 Chapter 6 - “I Still Believe Man is Master of the World”: Addressing Ecological Concerns Using Animal Attack Narratives ……………………… 366 The Birds …………………………….…………………………………………………371 Apocalyptic Contexts………………………………………………………………….. 383 Long Weekend ………………………………………………………………………… 388 Day of the Animals ……………………………………………………….…………… 402 Frogs ………………………………………………………………………………….. 418 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. 435 Conclusion Extant / Extinct ……………………………………………………………………………… 438 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………. 457 1 INTRODUCTION “Brutal Enough” In October 2018, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Special Report on Global Warming on 1.5º C. The report accepts that global temperatures will rise above pre-industrial levels. The goal is simply to limit that increase to 1.5º C. A rise in temperatures greater than that “increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems” (“Special”). The report concludes that avoiding a catastrophic temperature increase is “possible,” but it “would require rapid, far- reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” (“Special”). The IPCC’s grim report is simply one in a long and ongoing series of admonitions from the scientific community that people’s actions in relation to the planet need to change in order to avoid dire consequences. Our current age has been called the Anthropocene, in recognition of the ways that human activities affect planetary conditions, often in adverse ways. It is a time characterized by ever- worsening anthropogenic ecological crises. These crises can manifest on the local and the global level, and they can take the form of spectacular bursts of destruction as well as incremental decline. Jennifer Fay notes that a grim irony characterizes the Anthropocene: humanity’s attempts to make the world more conducive to human life and comfort have made our planet less habitable for most forms of life. Efforts to control the world have created increasingly uncontrollable conditions (Fay, Inhospitable 1-2). The primary controversy around the Anthropocene is not whether it is a valid concept. Instead, experts debate when it began. The answer depends, in part, on how one conceptualizes the Anthropocene. Geologists, working from evidence in the stratal record, suggest that it began between 1945 and 1950, during a period known as “the 'Great Acceleration' that marked a global increase in population, industrial activity and energy use” (Zalasiewicz et. al. 289). This 2 understanding links the Anthropocene to processes of modernization and industrialization. Scholars in the humanities and the social sciences suggest that it may date back to more rudimentary stages in human development; the use of fire and the development of agriculture can be seen as ushering in the Anthropocene (Ellis et. al. 192). Such behaviors allowed humans to begin reshaping their environments in ways different than most animals’ activities. This latter understanding suggests that the Anthropocene is about impulses and drives that are intrinsic to humanity. Humanity may always have sought to manipulate the planet, bending our surroundings to fit our needs and desires. However, the scale of those manipulations and the severity of their fallout appears to be increasing and driving us to the breaking point. Scientists frequently issue warnings about the likelihood of cataclysmic consequences if current conditions around the world are not altered radically. These dire reports often cause a flurry of alarmist notices in the press, but the attention given to these topics gradually diminishes, subsumed by a host of other worries. There is also the inevitable chorus of voices dismissing such prognostications. Typically, these naysayers include those representing the corporate/industrial interests driving the crisis, and the political officials who would be able to help initiate and drive necessary ameliorative changes. This leaves members of the public to simmer in anxiety and resignation. One thing that the cycle described above makes clear is that the authority and consensus of the scientific community is insufficient to address these problems, and that scientists should not bear the whole weight of this responsibility. The IPCC’s report notes that changes must occur “in all aspects of society” (emphasis added). In order for anything like this to be possible, cultural attitudes also need to be engaged and altered. This especially holds true if the foundations for what would become the Anthropocene can be found in the earliest manifestations 3 of human development. It is the responsibility of humanities scholars to do their part professionally by researching how cultural texts position humans in relation to the world around them and apply those insights to their work in the classroom. Relevant work is being done by ecocritical scholars, but this branch of the humanities is still developing and suffers from a limited purview and rigid notions of which texts can properly address environmental concerns. These scholars need to be open to a variety of relevant texts, even ones that might initially appear objectionable. In fact, messy, complicated, and unpleasant texts may provide particularly apt expressions of conditions in the Anthropocene. In this project, I provide orientation to a subsection of cinema that I refer to as “Animal Attack” films. These are fiction films in which real-world extant animals function as the primary antagonists. These films represent an important but understudied collection of cultural texts that speak with great force to our current ecological paradigm. In an age when humans are degrading the planet and making it increasingly less conducive to supporting life, Animal Attack films posit a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between people and the natural world. These films often feature scenarios of a repressed natural world striking back or returning to get revenge. In that sense, they have greater relevance for our current era than more traditional ‘environmentalist’ texts, which typically present ambivalent or even benign relationships between humans and the natural world. Before beginning our exploration of this topic, however, we must get our bearings and understand where we are… 12° South, 78° East. In real life, these coordinates indicate a stretch of water in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933), they reveal the location of the mysterious and ominously-named Skull Island (See Figure 0.1). A massive mountain surrounded 4 by thick jungles dominates Skull Island. Its human residents huddle on a sandy peninsula behind a giant wall that protects them from the Island’s other inhabitants (See Figure 0.2). Figures 0.1 & 0.2 – Skull Island first appears in King Kong on a crude map being used by the expedition. Its abstract representation appears when its proposed coordinates are announced to the audience. The “real” Skull Island is later glimpsed in the distance. The indigenous people of Skull Island are a racist fantasy of non-white savages. The New York-based filmmaker and showman leading the expedition to the Island explains that they are the decadent remnants of a once-advanced civilization. While humans have progressively become more capable of controlling and manipulating the world around them, this tribe still lives in subservient terror of the natural world that dominates their homeland and threatens to push them into the sea. The primitive state of these people offers the first clue that Skull Island is so cut off from modernity that prehistoric monsters live there still. Dinosaurs prey upon the Western crew as they venture into the jungle, but the most awesome resident of Skull Island is a massive primate called “Kong.” Both Kong and his habitat have a tenuous connection to reality. One report notes that, before the two-year-long production process began, “three months were spent investigating scientific records” (“A 50-Foot”). When designing Skull Island, “geographic data concerning vegetation… were checked with experts and university research departments” (“A 50-Foot”). It was decided “that the most likely place for an island such as [writer Edgar Wallace] imagined… 5 was off the Malay Peninsula. The backgrounds were prepared with this locale in mind” (“A 50- Foot”). This information grounded the invention and simulation necessary to create a heightened environment “far more dramatic than any real jungle location could be” (Dunn, L.G. 97). Artists Mario Larrinaga and Bryon Crabbe painted backgrounds onto flats and glass frames for matte effects and process shots (See Figures 0.3 & 0.4). 1 In addition to these painted elements, miniature sets were constructed. Wood-and-wire frames became artificial trees when covered in clay and shellacked toilet paper. Bits and pieces of real plants 2 , including old grape vines and bonsai trees, were also incorporated into these scenes (“The Making of the…” 63; Ross 26). Figures 0.3 & 0.4 – Informed by real geography, the heightened jungle environments in King Kong were created using a combination of fabricated sets (sized to accommodate human actors and miniature models) and painted backgrounds used for matte effects and process shots. 1 The process shots employed in King Kong were unusually complicated for the period. Cooper explained to a Los Angeles Times reporter: “Several of the scenes required as many as seven process shots, although the average was two or three. (It is believed that not more than two processes have been used on one piece of film heretofore)” (Scott). 2 This occasionally caused difficulties for the crew. An American Cinematographer retrospective on the making of King Kong notes that these real plants “had to be watered frequently because of the heat of lamps. The resulting highly humid condition caused some plants to grow much faster than usual. When animation of a scene was continuous, such growth was normally imperceptible but any delay in time during the animation process would show up on the screen as a disturbing ‘jump’” (“The Making of the…” 103). In one instance, a primrose flower came into bloom during a stop-motion animation sequence. Screening rushes the next morning, the crew realized that the background “contained a perfect time-lapse study of a pure white flower opening,” forcing them to re-shoot the scene (“The Making of the…” 103). In later discussions about the production of Animal Attack films, one will see other examples of this early dynamic, where working with non-human elements creates unexpected complications. 6 Kong was born through a similar process: inspired by a real-world referent, made fantastic and monstrous through imagination, then constructed using a combination of artificial and biological components. Before King Kong, director Merian C. Cooper had the notion of making “a jungle picture in Africa and the East Indies” that would feature a live gorilla fighting Komodo dragons (Dunn, L.G. 66). Special effects tests developed for an unfinished RKO film, Creation, convinced Cooper that a similar spectacle could be achieved artificially on a studio set. Even as the creature at the center of this movie became fantastic and monstrous, Cooper still envisioned it as a decidedly gorilla-like creature. Cooper dismissed early designs of Kong as being too human- like, saying of one piece of concept art: “It looks like a cross between a monkey and a man with long hair. Damn it, I want to put a pure gorilla on that screen” (“The Making of the...” 62). Components of real animals contributed to the fabrication of Kong, who was created using cutting-edge special effects. Fur from bears and rabbits coated large-and-small-scale models 3 (“‘King Kong’ Speaks”; “The Making of the…” 62). Animal cries were also used for Kong’s roar, although they required manipulation: “The sound department had amassed a library of sounds made by living animals comprising about 500,000 feet of roars, barks, growls, snarls and hisses…. any of these sounds would be too familiar as well as too brief for a monster of Kong’s proportions” (“The Making of the…” 108). Eventually, Murray Spivack, RKO’s Director of Sound Effects, recorded the roars of lions and tigers at the Selig Zoo 4 at feeding time; when 3 The rabbit fur was another case of biological material becoming a source of consternation. Model maker Marcel Delgado warned that “it would show the fingerprints of the animators” (“The Making of the…” 62). Sure enough, the unique texture of the rabbit fur meant that “the hair of Kong’s hair and shoulders [would] ripple with each touch of the animator’s fingers” (“The Making of the…” 104). 4 William Selig, a pioneer in the early American film industry, helped develop the jungle-adventure film by shooting a fictionalized version of Theodore Roosevelt’s African safari in Chicago: Hunting Big Game in Africa (1909). Given the success of his early animal pictures, Selig established a Wild Animal Farm in East Los Angeles to facilitate their production. He constructed a private zoo on that larger farm, which “would allow the public to visit the popular Selig wild animal stars, as well as witness the making of jungle-adventure films. In essence, the Selig Zoo was conceived as the original motion picture theme park” (Erish 114). The Selig Zoo opened in 1915 and was used in conjunction 7 played in reverse, slowed down, and put on a loop, these yielded the proper effect (“The Making of the…” 109). Like Kong, these cries were familiar enough to be believable as the noises of an awesome and terrifying predator, but strange enough to suggest something unlike anything that viewers might encounter in the real world. Kong is both an unfamiliar and a familiar creature. The film presents Kong as an animal unlike any other, the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Yet when he gets transplanted to New York City and put on display, a member of the public describes him as being a “kind of gorilla.” Part of what makes King Kong a striking and odd text is the decision by the filmmakers to cling to the gorilla as their primary reference point. While parts of animals contributed to his making, Kong is wholly artificial. No real primates double for Kong at any point (See Figure 0.5 & 0.6). Kong could have been a monster wholly unlike any living creature, rather than just a larger version of an extant species. An element of plausible deniability potentially comes with the gorilla connection and resemblance, but it does not seem to have made the creation on screen any more believable to viewers. Surveying contemporary reviews, several critics report being hyper-conscious of the novel special effects and of Kong’s artificiality. Rather than being immediately absorbed, critics describe distancing reactions of awe or amusement (or some combination of the two). Variety predicted that it would take a while for viewers to get “used to the machine-like movements and other mechanical flaws in the gigantic animals on view” (Bige). Though a reviewer for Billboard eventually succumbs to the film’s charm, they describe an initial incredulity: “The ape seems rather phony in the first sequences, the jerkiness of his movements increasing the effect of unreality” (Burr). That effect of unreality may have been amplified by the fact that this fantastic herky-jerky creation was understood as being analogous to a living creature. As seen in that Billboard review, with Hollywood film productions until its closure in 1940. For an account of Selig’s early animal films and the history of the Selig Zoo, see Erish 101-131. 8 virtually all critics refer to Kong as an “ape.” Additionally, several news stories from around the time of King Kong’s release evoke the film playfully when covering incidents of actual primates escaping their enclosures, with headlines like “Shades of ‘King Kong’” and “‘King Kong’ On the Loose.” At the same time, the disturbing effects of the film’s scenario may have been amplified by the decision to reference a real creature with a fearsome reputation. Figures 0.5 & 0.6 – Whenever Kong appears on screen, the effect is achieved through constructed models that were always recognized as such. At no point does an actual gorilla ‘double’ for Kong. All the same, gorillas were a conscious reference point when designing the movie monster. At the time of King Kong’s production, gorillas had a villainous reputation in the West that undoubtedly contributed to the decision to build a monster movie around them. In a cultural history of gorillas, Ted Gott and Kathryn Weir note that, in the West, gorillas embodied fears of the primal jungle… of Darwinian theory and its disturbing suggestions that humanity was descended from such base creatures, and above all of unbridled sexuality, particularly of interspecies or inter ‘race’ sexual contact…. This trope surfaced constantly in films from the 1930s onwards which heavily mined these fears of bestial passion and ‘miscegenation’ through depictions of apes – and specifically gorillas – as either violently homicidal or curiously licentious… with the gorilla embodying chaos repressed by civilization in both cases. (125) 9 The gorilla, a beast a bit too close to humanity for comfort, was popularly perceived as a real-life monster. The image of a giant gorilla running loose in a major U.S. city and lusting after white women resonated with the multi-faceted fears described by Gott and Weir. Making Kong resemble a real-life animal also allowed King Kong to take advantage of an important trend in popular cinema. In addition to recognizing Kong as an ape, many commentators saw this now- iconic monster movie as the logical outgrowth of the “animal pictures” movement. 5 At the time, the press deployed the “animal pictures” label to identify films primarily focused on animal subjects. Many of these films (purportedly) took place in foreign locations and featured exotic creatures. Violence was often a major component in these films, which were described in terms suggesting a style of documentary filmmaking in which an educational veneer excuses the inclusion of sensationalistic material. A Variety article describes one such film, Africa Speaks! (1930), as being “highly instructive,” though it includes “the most terrible shots ever shown on the screen” (“To the Ladies”). A report in the Baltimore Sun describes another “animal picture,” UFA’s Pori, as “gruesome but informative” (D.K.). Shortly before King Kong’s release, industry commentators seemed unsure about the fate of animal pictures. A 1931 Los Angeles Times editorial declared: “While wild animal pictures have been much in vogue, their popularity, we learn, is dying to a certain extent. One reason is that women and children do not like to see films in which animals are killed” (“Wild Animal Films”). The article describes women covering their eyes and weeping in response to a scene in an unnamed film of a baby ape being killed (“Wild Animal Films”). Reports of viewers experiencing distress 5 This connection may have been partially based on the directors’ previous films. Before Kong, Cooper and co- director Ernest Schoedsack produced more traditional and realistic “wild animal pictures.” They “drew upon their experience as dramatists of reality to create through artifice a Hollywood sensation that hyperbolized many of the popular elements that had made travelogue-expedition films of the 1920s successful” (Mitman 57). For an overview of Cooper and Schoedsack’s early career and collaborations, see Mitman 36-41. 10 at seeing these acts of violence seem to confirm Jonathan Burt’s arguments that modern visual culture played a significant role in driving animal welfare concerns and legislation (“John” 212- 213). Witnessing violence against animals was an unpleasant and upsetting experience; why would anyone choose to witness such acts when seeking entertainment? Yet, soon after the prediction that animal pictures were on the decline, came the release of the phenomenally successful Bring ‘Em Back Alive (Elliott, 1932), which followed real-life animal trapper Frank Buck. While the earlier editorial declared that female audiences were too sensitive for grisly animal pictures, Buck insisted that women loved animal pictures, provided that the films were “brutal enough” (“Women Like”, emphasis added). Buck argued that audiences were only losing interest in animal pictures because most of the films were insufficiently intense. Buck contended that the problem lay in the fact that most producers did not appreciate, capture, or convey the inherently violent drama of the natural world – something that audiences were interested in and wanted to see: “Can there be anything more brutal, more relentless, more fascinating than the battle of the jungle.... Even as we sit here, out there in the jungle a tiger is at grips with a python” (“Women Like”). Buck describes the natural world as something “out there,” an exotic and foreign space that stands in contrast to, and fascinates, the civilized and sedate Western world. 6 According to Buck, in addition to failing to appreciate this drama, earlier animal pictures misunderstood the affective temper of mainstream audiences. True – most viewers do not want to see something cute or defenseless, like a baby animal, being killed. Buck explains the decision 6 Frank Buck’s sentiments were not exclusive to their time. They bring to mind the musings of Werner Herzog, speaking in Burden of Dreams (Blank, 1982) about the Amazon Basin: “Nature here is violent. Base…. There is some sort of a harmony. The harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” Similarly, one gets shades of the mindset behind King Kong when Herzog describes this place as “an unfinished country. It’s still prehistorical [sic]. The only thing that is lacking is the dinosaurs.” 11 to cut footage of a deer being attacked by a python out of Bring ‘Em Back Alive: “If ever the audience feels sorry for an animal in a fight, instantly the picture is cruel, censorable” (“Women Like”). If an animal were going to be subjected to violent treatment, it should be a species that people find distasteful, or a creature that could be narratively positioned as villainous. A Variety reporter explains how this dynamic plays out in Bring: “Snakes are instinctively hated by humans, and the tiger in the picture’s main struggle is just as loathsome because the continuity took care to show him supposedly tracking down a native child…. If no one feels sorry [for the animal], then [the captured violence is] just a whacking thrill” (“Women Like”). In Buck’s statements, one sees the future of violent films featuring animals developing. Even if the public seems too sensitive to enjoy stories about killer animals, or to witness violence being done to animals, this material still holds a powerful and dreadful appeal. Producers just need to understand what types of animals are acceptable participants in these contests. Specifically, they should be creatures that generate strong negative reactions in viewers or that can be narratively presented as monstrous. By the time of King Kong, the animal picture trend was back in full swing. In addition to documentaries, many studios were producing fiction films featuring jungle settings and exotic creatures. The headline of a Baltimore Sun article declared that, despite the financial crisis, there was “No Depression For Animals or Their Trainers In Movies;” it noted that “every studio is in the throes of making an animal picture of some kind.” That article recognized King Kong as being part of this larger trend, but different, since it was “a thriller in which the four footers are mainly synthetic prehistoric ones.” Another article in the New York Herald Tribune concurred, describing 1933 as featuring “the most active animal film cycle of all time. Production is in full blast, with most of the studios vibrating with the roar of lions, with hyenas laughing at 12 supervisors and boa constrictors hissing at the stars” (Wooldridge). Sets were turned into jungles and stocked with imported “jungle killers” (Wooldridge). The article positions King Kong as upping the ante, as its producers were “not content with mere earthly animals” (Wooldridge). At the same time, the article makes it sound like the decision to substitute fake animals for real ones made things considerably safer, as well as more predictable and humane. Producers were already on the right track with the decision to control their environments – shooting in a studio rather than on location. Yet they were stuck using potentially out-of-control dangerous animals. The article describes a scene of violent chaos at Paramount Studios, during the filming of the horror film Murders in the Zoo (Sutherland, 1933): Last week the press was invited to Paramount Studios to witness – from a supposedly safe vantage point – the opening of the cages and the loosing of the beasts upon an unsuspecting victim. With a roar six lions bounded out, the other beasts did likewise and soon there was an ear-pounding din as a lion unexpectedly broke the back of a puma trying to escape. After five minutes of terror, a leopard started after the press and was stopped in time by trainers with spears and pistols. The hyenas remained in their cages to laugh raucously. (Wooldridge) King Kong was not only breaking the mold by moving the gruesome animal picture into heightened realms of fantasy; its use of artificial animals in a fabricated environment was also removing important production obstacles. In its embrace of the artificial, King Kong was an outgrowth of the “nature-faking” employed by so many animal pictures. The practice was controversial; producers who passed off fake nature scenes as genuine could face criticisms and sanctions (“Faked”; Mitman 51-54). Edwin Schallert, writing for the Los Angeles Times, notes that most viewers were conscious of 13 this artifice. Nevertheless, the public’s desire for these narratives allowed them to suspend their disbelief: “there is still a never-ending lure to the movie visioning of human beings encountering jungle dangers. It only takes a suggestion of the menace to create the psychology of suspense. Human imagination does the rest” (“Nature”). Schallert suggests that the human mind hungers for these spectacles. His proclamation that this material possesses a “never-ending lure” seems to be confirmed by the long history of similar cultural objects produced both before and after the production of King Kong. Violent animal scenes became a mainstay of early cinema shortly after the medium’s inception. One of the most notorious examples of this is the 1903 short Electrocuting an Elephant, in which Thomas Edison “executes” Topsy, a killer circus elephant. 7 Yet early cinema was simply continuing a cultural fascination with animal aggression that spans human history, manifesting in art across cultures and time periods. David Quammen’s cultural history of predatory animals, Monster of God, describes Paleolithic cave paintings of lions in France’s Chauvet Cave (See Figure 0.7). Quammen wonders: “Why were those ancient artists so dreamily fascinated by lions…. How could the Paleolithic people of the Ardèche valley afford such aesthetic admiration, and such serene spiritual appreciation, for a species of large predators that, at least occasionally, must have included Homo sapiens within its diet” (408)? Quammen argues that such artistic works reflect humanity’s dreadful fascination with dangerous animals; it is “not just our fear of homicidal monsters but also our need and desire for them. Such creatures enliven our fondest nightmares. 7 Topsy was electrocuted for trampling to death a man who tormented her, though she is sometimes accused of having killed three people in total. The editors of the collection Animal Horror Cinema: Genre, History and Criticism open their collection by recounting Topsy’s case. They situate Topsy as not only a significant animal in the history of cinema, but one who “stands before the camera not simply as an animal but also as a being who is imagined to have consciously transgressed the boundary between right and wrong…. she is a criminal who has several peoples’ deaths on her conscience, who is capable of comprehending the nature and scope of her unforgivable crime” (Gregersdotter et. al, “Introduction” 3). As a real-life killer, Topsy can be read as one of cinema’s first animal “monsters.” Nonetheless, she inspires a significant amount of sympathy, at least with contemporary audiences, as all we are left with is the recording of her sorry demise. 14 They thrill us horribly. They challenge us to transcendent fits of courage… They allow us to recollect our limitations. They keep us company” (431). This impulse is evidenced in Assyrian reliefs of men grappling with lions, and Grecian urns depicting the trials of Hercules, as the hero contends with monstrous lions, boars, and flesh-eating horses. It manifests in John Singleton Copley’s painting of a shark lunging at a nude swimmer and Henri Rousseau’s depictions of jungle cats hunting Africans. It can be discerned in Edgar Allan Poe’s story of a razor-blade wielding orangutan and Herman Melville’s epic about an unstoppable sperm whale. The same fascination persists into the modern-day entertainment industry and has spread to media beyond film, including television, comic books, video games, and VR experiences. Though Animal Attack imagery and narratives have a long lineage, I limit my focus in this project to the study of cinematic texts. Cinema endowed this trope with new immediacy and impact, allowing this material to be visualized in motion. As other forms of media appropriate this trope, critics should first engage the iconic cinematic legacies upon which such texts draw. There are also compelling conceptual reasons to focus on Animal Attack films. Cinema was the key popular artistic development in an age of industrialization that exponentially increased humanity’s impact upon the environment. This impact includes the displacement and erasure of animal life and the destruction of these animals’ habitats. The ways Figure 0.7 – David Quammen references the numerous paintings of lions found in Chauvet Cave as an early instance of humans being fascinated by, and seeking to represent artistically, dangerous predatory animals (Image: HTO). 15 cinema attempts to preserve images of animals and landscapes, even as the real things are adversely affected by other elements of modernity, lends these cinematic images an added layer of poignancy and significance (Lippit, Electric 196-197). Yet it is not just that cinema is a product of modernity that seeks to capture images of the things which modernity destroys. Jennifer Fay argues that cinema “is the aesthetic practice of the Anthropocene. Or, to put it more forcefully, cinema helps us to see and experience the Anthropocene as an aesthetic practice” (Inhospitable 4). Cinema “makes the familiar world strange to us” through its transformation of the world “into an unhomely image” (Fay, Inhospitable 3). Humans create uncanny worlds in cinema even as they turn the real world into an uncanny version of itself. Herein lies the significance of a text like King Kong. If Kong Kong is the product of artistic and narrative legacies that conceivably stretch back to the beginning of human civilization, I argue that Kong represents an important development in that lineage. “Nature faking” was a common practice amongst early animal pictures. However, Kong introduces unprecedented levels of explicit fantasy and artifice. It turns a real animal into an iconic monstrous creature that roams an exaggeratedly exotic non-Western jungle landscape. It emphasizes the “world-making” and “simulationist aesthetic” that Fay argues links cinematic practices to the world-changing developments of the Anthropocene (Inhosptiable 4, 6). Having helped transform Animal Attack cinema into an artistic form uniquely capable of addressing the conditions of the Anthropocene, Kong gave rise to a host of Animal Attack films that continue to this day. Indeed, these later films shaped Kong’s legacy, as subsequent entries in the Kong franchise emphasize the monster’s gorilla qualities more explicitly. 8 In order to provide 8 An article about the 1976 remake directed by John Guillermin notes that one of the major debates was about how gorilla-like the creature should be. The filmmakers wanted “to anthropomorphize Kong,” while make-up artist Rick Baker wanted something much closer in design and behavior to an actual gorilla (Kilday). For the 2005 remake, actor Andy Serkis, who performed the Kong role in motion capture, told director Peter Jackson: “I think we should make [Kong] more gorilla-like than beast-like” (“Andy Serkis”). For his performance, Serkis studied captive gorillas in the London Zoo and wild gorillas in Rwanda (King, Susan). For Kong: Skull Island (2017), director Jordan Vogt-Roberts 16 clarification about what constitutes an Animal Attack film for the purposes of this project, I shall describe how I am identifying this object of study. Threatening animals play significant roles in many films 9 ; for the purposes of this project, I limit my focus to texts in which deadly animals function as the primary antagonistic forces and sources of anxiety. Specifically, I deal with films in which the central creatures are strongly analogous to real-world extant animals. It must be noted that all of the films considered in this project, even the ones presenting their scenarios as being ostensibly plausible, traffic in fantasy elements. As I detail in Chapter One, Jaws might reference biological facts and historical precedents, but its aggressive shark behaves differently than actual great whites. At what point does the fantasy become so unrealistic that the film’s depiction loses relevance for conversations about how people think about actual animals? Complicating this question is David Quammen’s theory that most of the outlandish monsters found in fiction, from mythic antiquity to modern genre films, are distorted reflections of the real fearsome animals that always frightened and fascinated human beings (431). 10 Some of these fantastic movie monsters bear an obvious resemblance to real animals. There are werewolf films and related texts, in which humans transform into unnatural human-animal hybrids (The Fly, Cat People, etc.). Do these films count as Animal Attack features? What about dinosaur films, like the Jurassic Park franchise? Dinosaurs are extinct, but attributes drawn from wanted Kong to be a movie monster, “not a gorilla” (Bishop). Still, gorillas were an important reference for the visual effects crew and for actor Terry Notary, who has played several primates in motion capture roles (Bishop; Shanley). 9 For example, there is the ominous Rottweiler that accompanies the Antichrist in The Omen (Donner, 1976), or the brutal bear attack that provides a crucial set piece in The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015). These elements might be understood partially in relation to the Animal Attack films profiled in this project, but their aggressive animals are only one part of a larger equation and the animal’s effect must be understood in relation to a host of other factors. 10 Real-world animals sometimes inspire these fantastic monsters directly; Quammen points to screenwriter Dan O’Bannon’s use of parasitic spider wasps as the basis for the life cycle of the creatures in the Alien franchise (426- 427). 17 the animal kingdom inform their cinematic resurrections. 11 What about films in which real animals take on unreal appearances, as with the giant ants in Them! (Douglas, 1954)? Then there are films in which real animals stand in for unreal species; Arachnophobia (Marshall, 1990) uses harmless Avondale spiders to portray highly venomous fictional spiders. There is a distinct risk of going down a taxonomic rabbit hole without achieving any useful analytic insights. For the purposes of this project, I limit my analysis to films that present their featured animals as real animals, albeit with varying levels of embellishment in terms of their physical and mental qualities. These animals often behave unnaturally. The actual species being referenced may never even appear on screen, being simulated instead through various special effects. However, the animals in these films are intended to be understood as directly corresponding to real creatures that viewers could encounter in the world. Even with these constraints, this project engages a diverse collection of texts from different time periods, echelons of production, and national/cultural contexts. Since this project will identify tropes applicable to these varied texts, future scholars can draw upon the insights provided by this study and assess how this information applies to the less clear-cut examples referenced above. The decision to label this collection of texts “Animal Attack” films also deserves an explanation. Few formal studies conceptualize these films as a distinct subsection of cinema worthy of unique consideration, and those studies label these films differently. Lee Gambin’s 11 In order to make the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993) appear real, their designs relied “on shared assumptions of animal form, movement, and behavior…. The [Jurassic Park] dinosaurs, regardless of their paleontological accuracy, are true to schemata derived from real, contemporary animals” (Baird 91). Effects expert Phil Tippett explains that, during the design phase, “we set about poring over all kinds of nature documentaries and films and breaking them down frame by frame – looking at how certain birds move, studying elephants and so forth, so that we had a really solid understanding of animal movement” (Baird 92). It is a technique with a long history; the dinosaurs in the original King Kong were also created with reference to real creatures. When animating these extinct creatures, technicians referenced slow-motion footage of elephants and the sequential photography of Eadweard Muybridge (“The Making of the…” 72). Even in the recent Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018), animators drew upon reference footage of ostriches, emus, dogs, and crocodiles when designing the dinosaurs’ movements (“VFX Evolved”). 18 popular press survey of the field, Massacred by Mother Nature, refers to them as “natural horror” films. Catherine Simpson’s scholarly article analyzing Australian killer animal films similarly identifies them as “eco-horror” films. Those labels fail to distinguish between films in which animals are the antagonists and films in which the threat comes from other elements of the natural world (plants, extreme weather, diseases, etc.). “Natural horror” and “eco-horror” could also apply to horror movies offering commentary (overt or implicit) on humanity’s relationship to the environment. Given the argument put forward by ecocritical scholars “that all films present productive ecocritical exploration and careful analysis can unearth engaging and intriguing perspectives on cinema’s various relationships with the world around us,” one could argue that any horror film potentially counts as a work of “eco-horror” (Rust & Monani 3, original emphasis). “Animal horror” is the term offered by Gregersdotter, Höglund, and Hållén in their anthology, Animal Horror Cinema. This term has the advantage of acknowledging that there are distinct ethical, affective, and conceptual stakes involved in casting real animals in monstrous roles. However, I disagree with the way that all of the above terms identity these films as belonging to a single genre. Conventions and tropes associated with the horror genre are certainly important components in most, if not all, Animal Attack films. Even films that mine these scenarios for laughs are dealing with taboo material. The prospect of being killed and eaten evokes a powerful primordial dread. David Quammen quotes biologist Alistair Graham, who argues: “The fear of being eaten by an animal… is much greater than the fear of merely being killed by it” (132). While Graham claims that these fears relate to taboos about cannibalism within human society, Quammen speculates “that the extra dimension of dread derives largely from ancient concerns about funerary observances and the deceased’s prospects in the afterlife” (133). Being eaten represents an ignoble 19 desecration of the body as it is ingested, digested, and inevitably extruded as waste. Val Plumwood adds that the indignity of this fate also stems from its implications for the place of humans in their ecosystem. Plumwood writes that, traditionally, Western concepts: of human identity [position] humans outside and above the food chain, not as part of the feast in a chain of reciprocity but as external manipulators and masters of it: Animals can be our food, but we can never be their food…. The idea of human prey threatens the dualistic vision of human mastery in which we humans manipulate nature from outside, as predators but never prey. (“Surviving”) The prospect of becoming an animal’s meal provides a visceral and humbling reminder of people’s vulnerability, animality, and continued existence within ‘primitive’ systems out of which many like to believe humans have fought/thought their way. While acknowledging the important, and perhaps indispensable, contribution horror makes to the mechanics of these films, it must be acknowledged that these films engage a variety of tonal and generic registers. Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, for instance, claim that satirical Animal Attack films like Frogs (McCowan, 1972) and Piranha (Dante, 1978) treat “eco-disasters… [as] a serious affair,” and compare them to films like Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973), The China Syndrome (Bridges, 1979), and Silkwood (Nichols, 1983) (109). This categorization suggests that Murray and Heumann’s understanding of those darkly comic Animal Attack films is overly influenced by a sense of them as works of pure horror. In reality, these films cannot be reduced to a single genre. I therefore refer to these films using the more inclusive Animal Attack label. To consider all of these films as unambiguous works of horror risks misunderstanding how they register with audiences. Noting the variety found in the Animal 20 Attack menagerie is also important because it allows one better to understand the error of scholars who ignore, marginalize, or condemn these films. Despite the richness of this subsection of cinema, scholarly work analyzing this material is limited and often only engages a small selection of the whole. Scholarship tends to concentrate on a few iconic films, the most noteworthy examples being The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) and Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), both popular films by prominent auteurs. Many Animal Attack films are B-Movies or works of exploitation cinema. These are cheap, quickly-made films of often- dubious artistic quality that exist primarily to take advantage of hot button cultural topics or the success of earlier films. For example, in the immediate wake of Jaws came a rush of similar Animal Attack films. 12 One might therefore view these films as interesting only insofar as they indicate the success of the text that originated the cycle. Jaws is the thing to study, the argument goes. The various texts inspired by it are derivative and disposable. This perspective misses two important features of exploitation cinema. When there is a rush of films made in response to a popular text, these imitators inevitably respond to the original, and each other, in interesting ways. It matters what stays the same and what changes in the basic narrative or scenario linking these various movies. Independent exploitation films are not subject to the same constraints shaping high-budget, studio-produced films; they can therefore bring different perspectives to the subject at hand. In essence, they create a conversation in which different texts riff on common themes. In that sense, they can offer new perspectives not only on the original text, but also on the thematic material and ideology 12 Shortly after the release of Jaws, Variety reported: “Imitations of [Jaws] are coming from all directions – more shark thrillers, as well as scripts about killer bears, crocodiles, alligators, and even piranha fish” (McBride, “More Sharks”). A Wall Street Journal article similarly warned: “Spurred by the box-office success of ‘Jaws,’ Hollywood is planning a plethora of other animal-scare films starring piranhas, alligators, crocodiles, and, yes, more sharks….Making the rounds of the studios these days is a yarn about a rampaging grizzly… and another about a pack of wild dogs” (Gottshalk Jr.). One producer explained: “All of Hollywood is in an enormous foot-race…. Anyone with a picture about animal terror has a chance of riding in on the tremendous crest of ‘Jaws’” (Gottshalk Jr.). 21 informing that original text. Furthermore, as I discuss at greater length later in this project, there is value in degraded works of ‘bad’ cinema. They engage audiences on a more ironic, distanced, and cognitively active register than a polished work of absorbing and affectively engaging cinema. In that sense, an inept version of a well-executed film may lay bare certain truths concealed by the original’s craft. I will offer an example of this in Chapter One, in which the skillfully produced Jaws is put in conversation with its poorly rendered sequels. Perhaps because critics have traditionally only been drawn to so few of these films, Animal Attack films tend not to be analyzed in relation to other Animal Attack films. They are more likely to be understood in relation to other works of (primarily horror) genre cinema, or other films prominently focused on relationships between humans and non-human animals. With some regularity, they become undifferentiated examples in conversations about these topics. They are treated as if they were not significantly different from horror films with non-animal antagonists, or films about non-aggressive animals. Homogenizing these films in this way risks fundamentally misunderstanding how these films function and missing key ethical considerations which should be addressed when discussing these films. Each of these points is worth addressing in more detail. Antagonists in horror films typically fit into one of three broad categories: villainous humans, real-world non-human animals, and purely fictional creatures. Some critics, in attempting to provide an overarching theory about the horror genre or monsters within fantastic genres, argue that there are no real differences between who or what is the antagonist in any given horror text. Barbara Creed, charting misogynist trends in horror, catalogs a collection of natural and unnatural threats found in genre films: “the terrifying spider of The Incredible Shrinking Man; the toothed vagina/womb of Jaws; and the fleshy, pulsating, womb of The Thing 22 and Poltergeist. What is common to all of these images of horror is the voracious maw, the mysterious black hole that signifies female genitalia” (27). Additionally, to be eaten by an animal or a fictional monster, to be dismembered by a psychopath, or to be bitten by a vampire – these are all expressions of the same castration anxiety (107). Carol Clover makes a similar argument that the nature of the antagonistic agent in horror films is unimportant: “Although a gorilla, a blob, a shark, and a motel attendant are superficially very different entities, they all do more or less the same job, narratively speaking” (Men 12). Clover’s stance is indicative of a larger tendency amongst critics to ignore the animality of animal antagonists and the implications of that animality. Instead, critics seek to interpret the animal as a metaphor. What truths or insights about the human condition do these animals conceal? For instance, Halberstam does recognize that “the cinematic monstrosity [in The Birds] represents something very different, and functions differently, from the textual horror of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula” (24). Yet Halberstam ultimately interprets Hitchcock’s killer birds as being psychoanalytically informed expressions of gender-based anxieties, and therefore fundamentally linked to those other forms of textual horror, even if they express those anxieties differently. This critical strategy is especially evident in relation to Jaws and The Birds, as will be discussed in Chapters One and Six. I argue that there are fundamental differences between the entities listed above by Clover. A human actor portrays the murderous hotel attendant, and that actor understands how their performance will be manipulated in the production process. If the villainous person is presented as having a mental disorder, that portrayal could contribute to the marginalization and stigmatization of those suffering from the disorder. However, humans dealing with similar conditions would have the ability to articulate their objections and offer insights into the actual nature of their condition. Meanwhile, there is no living thing that directly corresponds to ‘the 23 blob.’ Its presence demands an automatic suspension of disbelief and its abilities are only constrained by the internal logic of the narrative and its creator’s imagination. As the invention of human artists, the fictional creature is also more readily understood as a vehicle for symbolic meaning. The gorilla and the shark, however, are creatures that do exist, yet cannot knowingly collaborate on an artistic project. When they are incorporated into a film, either the animal itself or a re-creation of it, their images are always subject to manipulation by human artists attempting to create meaning for a human audience. While the representation of these animals might be taken metaphorically, it can also impact how people think about and feel towards the actual species. While animals might have human advocates, they cannot offer their own correctives or addenda to these representations. As such, it is necessary to engage the significance of these animals as animals. However, this does not mean that these films should simply be read in exactly the same way as any other film prominently featuring animals. While all non-human animals might be considered others in relation to humans, the relationship humans share with dangerous animals comes with a unique set of stakes. Val Plumwood argues that people’s willingness to live with large predators indicates “our preparedness to coexist with the otherness of the earth, and to recognize ourselves in mutual, ecological terms, as part of the food chain” (“Surviving”). The presence of predators reminds humans that they are not the privileged center of the world, and it requires humans to “acknowledge our own animality and ecological vulnerability” (Plumwood, “Surviving”). Some animal studies scholars, like Donna Haraway, try to avoid the topic of dangerous or unpleasant animals in their writing. This strategic decision attempts to avoid potentially cultivating negative attitudes towards animals. Yet there is value and necessity in acknowledging that dangerous alterity, rather than ignoring it. In addition 24 to the distinct insights predatory animals can provide, eliding the dangerous potential of certain animals could result in a sense of betrayal and anger when these animals hurt people. Just as real predatory animals differ from non-dangerous creatures, films centered around fundamentally antagonistic relationships between humans and non-humans offer different morals from other films centered on animals. Scholars discussing the place of animals in visual culture sometimes miss this fact. In observing parallels between “the fictions of liveness” shared by both taxidermy and animatronics, Jane Desmond makes no distinction between the monstrous animal bodies on display in the film Congo (Marshall, 1995) and the cute creatures found in family films like Babe (Noonan, 1995), Doctor Doolittle (Thomas, 1998), and Stuart Little (Minkoff, 1999) (170). Jonathan Burt, building on Desmond’s observations, compounds the issue. Discussing the varied techniques used to simulate animal bodies on screen, Burt uses a pair of family films, Fluke (Carlei, 1995) and 102 Dalmatians (Lima, 2000), to bookend a trio of decidedly grimmer films: Man’s Best Friend (Lafia, 1993), The Ghost and the Darkness (Hopkins, 1996), and Congo (Animals 158-159). Earlier, in the same text, Burt observes how films often emphasize the eyes of animals as a way of gauging the ability or inability of humans to know, understand, and connect with animals. Again, he uses a pair of family films, Free Willy (Wincer, 1993) and The Horse Whisperer (Redford, 1998), to bookend examples from Moby-Dick (Huston, 1956) and Orca (Anderson, 1977) (Animals 62-72). As I discuss in greater detail later in this project, the stakes of forming benign relationships with animals are different from those attending attempts to contend or connect with dangerous ones. There is nothing inherently wrong with comparing markedly different portrayals of animals. In looking at a variety of Hollywood anti-whaling narratives, David Ingram puts Moby-Dick and Orca in conversation with films like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy, 1986) and Free Willy 3: The Rescue (Pillsbury, 1997) (Green, 84-87). In those instances, 25 Ingram clearly notes the contrasts between how these films treat and present their animal subjects. Ingram, however, is guilty of another limitation in the critical response to these films. When critics do recognize and engage the distinct status of the dangerous animal figure in these films, they often castigate these texts for offering harmful misrepresentations of the central species. Looking at Jaws and films of its ilk, Ingram sees them as indicative of the continuation of “older forms of theriophobia [fear of wild animals], in which wild animals remains [sic] figures onto which social and psychic anxieties are projected…. the success of the Jaws cycle and its imitators in the 1970s suggest that the need to displace and externalize guilt and fear onto wild animals still exists, despite the rise of conservationism and concern for endangered species” (Green 71). The continued production of Animal Attack films is taken as further confirmation that these negative attitudes are prevalent and persistent (Green 71). The above argument indulges in a tendency to lump together very different Animal Attack films and declare them all problematic texts. Randy Malamud offers another example of this tactic. Malamud is no fan of overly-sentimental depictions of animals either. He cites feminist critiques of “how women under the male gaze were profusely objectified, essentialized: two-dimensionally caricatured in a good girl/bad girl dichotomy, angel/whore. Nonhuman animals, too, are cast in this mode” (74-75). In the animal version of this reductive dichotomy, “the whores are the monstrous others, animals who earn our scorn, and who serve the purpose of allowing people to satiate our sadistic drives towards animals by hating or destroying these creatures. Think of King Kong; the shark in Jaws; Ben the rat in Willard; Orca, the killer whale; Alfred Hitchcock’s birds” (75). As will be discussed later, the animals listed above all function and are positioned in different ways. Yet, in Malamud’s argument, they all represent the same irredeemable theriophobia. 26 This reductive dismissal can lead to serious critical oversights. Though Pat Brereton makes a case for Steven Spielberg as a Hollywood ‘eco-auteur,’ he passes over Jaws with barely a mention: “Unlike more recent fleshed out ecological parables, Jaws does not attempt to transcend its generic roots and remains a primal horror text which rarely questions the supremacy of man over nature, much less attempts to understand the other” (63-64). The decision to discuss ecological elements of Spielberg’s works without engaging Jaws feels inexplicable. It is a glaring omission that weakens Brereton’s argument. It is almost as if Jaws were too toxic a text to engage; as if its absence were better than its evocation, which could cripple the attempt to make a positive case for Spielberg’s ecological sensibilities. Critics need to stop being contemptuous (and afraid) of these films. Arguably, the quickness of critics to label these films ‘bad’ is indicative of the traditionally narrow purview of environmental humanities scholars. While these Animal Attack films may not all fall under the generic label of horror, they all utilize genres of extremity, including action, science fiction, and comedy. Their embrace of the fantastic puts these films at odds with the environmental humanities’ preferred cinematic engagements with ecological themes. Since ecocriticism’s origins in literary studies, its proponents have tended to favor realist aesthetics. Lawrence Buell notes: “ecocritics, both first-wave and second-wave, often show what superficially seems an old-fashioned propensity for ‘realist’ modes of representation, and a preoccupation with questions of factual accuracy of environmental representation” (31). Ralph H. Lutts notes that, since the early-twentieth-century in the U.S., there have been debates within nature writing about how best to balance science and sentiment (190). Lutts observes: “The tension between science and sentiment has not gone away and we continue to allow biases and expectations to distort our understanding of nature” (191). Too much of either element leads to 27 distortions; the two need to be kept in balance. If this balance is not present within the same text, then it might still be represented within the larger collection of texts being considered. However, as indicated by Buell’s quote, there tends to be an exaggerated response to charges of ‘misrepresentation’ when it comes to environmental issues (Ingram, Green 1-2). In relation to cinema, this can manifest in a narrow sense of what constitutes effective or laudable examples of ecologically-engaged filmmaking. Paula Willoquet-Maricondi expresses skepticism about mainstream narrative cinema’s ability to engage ecological issues productively. Hollywood might produce films with ostensibly pro-conservation messages, but these narratives typically focus on human protagonists: “their fundamental message is one that affirms rather than challenges the culture’s fundamental anthropocentric ethos” (“Shifting” 47). Consequently, they can never alter how audiences think about ecological issues. Willoquet-Maricondi links these films to an environmentalist ideology that denigrates the “earth, water and air as less than organisms, as merely their environment” (“Shifting” 44). Environmentalists only care whether the world can sustain the all-important human subject comfortably. In contrast, an ecological perspective emphasizes humanity’s imbrication in a larger system: “It implies equal importance among all components, while also implying that everything existing within the Ecosphere, including the human race, is a product of it, a subdivision of it, a part of it, and therefore less important than it” (“Shifting” 44). Humanity does not inherently possess more value than the other parts making up the whole, and none of those individual parts matters as much as the whole. Willoquet-Maricondi argues that, in order for a cinematic text to convey such a worldview, it must break from mainstream narrative and representational traditions. In keeping with the move of suggesting that only a limited form of 28 ecological philosophy expresses proper care for the planet, Willoquet-Maricondi and others argue that only a subsection of realist cinema can perform the necessary disruptive task. Willoquet-Maricondi advocates for “films whose overt intent is to educate and provoke personal and political action in response to environmental challenges” (“Shifting” 44). She suggests that such films could employ “a variety of approaches,” but only discusses two (“Shifting” 45). Films employing “a lyrical and contemplative style can foster an appreciation for ecosystems and all of nature’s constituents – air, water, earth, and organisms. Alternatively, ecocinema can deploy an overtly activist approach to inspire our care, inform, educate, and motivate us to act on the knowledge that they provide” (“Shifting” 45). The latter refers to environmental justice documentaries focusing on activists and seeking to mobilize viewers. The former are independent or experimental works, texts produced outside of what Willoquet- Maricondi views as the complacent mainstream. These films challenge people’s anthropocentric biases about what cinema can and should be. In particular, Willoquet-Maricondi and Scott MacDonald advocate for ‘Slow Cinema,’ a form of experimental cinema that they argue has great ecological potential. Shots of long duration and a lack of narratives or soundtracks characterize works of Slow Cinema. They attempt to simulate “the experience of being immersed in the natural world” (MacDonald 108). These films encourage audiences to appreciate things in the world that they (and mainstream cinema) might take for granted. MacDonald explains: in conventional, commercial film and television, whatever beautiful imagery we do see is on-screen briefly, and as background to the ‘more important’ melodramatic activities in the foreground. Viewers are implicitly trained to see whatever beauties of landscape, and place in general, as evident, ephemeral and comparatively insignificant, not something 29 deserving sustained attention or commitment…. [the message of Slow Cinema is] that this place is worthy of our sustained attention. (113, original emphasis) By breaking with the (demonized) conventions of commercial entertainment, Slow Cinema “offers the greatest potential for a truly consciousness-altering cinematic experience,” one that could “retrain perception” and change people’s attitudes (Willoquet-Maricondi, “Introduction” 12). Slow Cinema represents a radical form of cinematic realism and complements the more conventional realism found in the documentaries that Willoquet-Maricondi recommends. Even if one accepts the arguments in favor of the media forms described above, these works have limited appeal and a correspondingly limited ability to impact public opinions about ecological issues. The audience for a documentary with an overt political message is likely to be already sympathetic to the film’s thesis. It is a self-selection process that means “such films may only be preaching to the converted” (Ingram, “The Aesthetics” 48). Meanwhile, the rarified aesthetics of Slow Cinema can actively alienate viewers. David Ingram notes that, by MacDonald’s own admission, some viewers have “negative reactions” to works of Slow Cinema, “ranging from boredom to mild annoyance and even anger” (“The Aesthetics” 47). Ingram also disputes the premise that the aesthetics of these experimental films have an inherent eco-friendly connotation: the claim that certain formal techniques in film, such as long, slow takes of landscapes seemingly empty of human presence, can foster heightened ecological awareness in the viewer often depends on unexamined assumptions about cinema spectatorship, particularly concerning audience predisposition and training… the meaning of a film is not simply inherent in the formal elements of the text itself…. prior training appears to be necessary if they are to be interpreted as ecocinema. (“The Aesthetics” 47) 30 Ingram’s comments point out a contradiction at the heart of the positions taken by Willoquet- Maricondi and MacDonald. On the one hand, they posit a viewer with a discerning, esoteric taste who can decode the ideological import of aesthetic strategies. Yet they suggest viewers are too naïve to process the messy and contradictory messages found in the average Hollywood film. In addition to featuring the anthropocentric bias that Willoquet-Maricondi identifies, Hollywood environmentalist films are likely to feature conflicting messages. Several scholars writing about ecocinema note that this is not unique to environmental issues; this is generally the case with Hollywood movies: “Hollywood’s commercial intent to maximize profits by appealing to wide and diverse audiences works against ideological and political coherence in the films themselves” (Ingram, Green viii). Contradictions are baked into the multiple appeals juggled by works of mainstream entertainment. Some go further and argue that these contradictions are inherent to ideology: “no ideology, eco-friendly or otherwise, is sufficiently consistent to withstand the pressures of figuration when inscribed in film…. every film contains contradictions – points at which their ecological representations and messages break down” (Hageman 65). From a purist perspective, these contradictions constitute flaws that require dismissing these films. I follow the belief that these “breaking points must not be read as signs of failure to be lamented, but as indices of the contradictions within the ideology that determines our current ability to think and represent ecology” (Hageman 65). There are lessons to be learned from these contradictions, which “can serve to expose and dramatise the core concerns of the age” (Brereton 36). Despite having little patience for Animal Attack films, Ingram points out that accepting this fact can allow one to see how even texts “not considered ecologically or politically ‘correct’ by some ecocritics,” nevertheless “may promote cognitive and emotional learning about 31 environmental issues” (“The Aesthetics” 59). In line with this outlook, I argue that Animal Attack texts have great relevance for our modern age, which is itself not ecologically ‘correct.’ I do not argue that Animal Attack films hold the key to solving the planet’s environmental problems. I do argue that these texts have a part to play in conjunction with a large and diverse array of ecologically-oriented media texts. As Ingram observes above, all of these texts will inevitably be incomplete and imperfect, and scholars will likely need to aid members of the public in unpacking this material. Since all texts are in the same position, it would be a mistake to write off Animal Attack films, which have broad popular appeal and which resonate with prevailing environmental conditions. Willoquet-Maricondi and MacDonald celebrate the way Slow Cinema’s realist aesthetic encourages aesthetic appreciation of nature’s beauty and the meditative contemplation of its serenity. Their critical understanding imagines an ecological sensibility that would not be out of place in the 1800s. Additionally, as Ingram notes, this presentation erases the presence of humanity, both within the scene and behind the scenes. This potentially elides how humans are imbricated in these environments and responsible for their treatment and current conditions. Animal Attack films offer more appropriate scenarios for the Anthropocene, given that so much of contemporary thought about the environment is characterized by feelings of dread, anxiety, and guilt. 13 In the words of Frank Buck, these films are “brutal enough” to contend with the current state of affairs. If one hopes to encourage people to think well of, and act decently towards, the natural world, stories about humans in conflict with the world in a violent all-or-nothing struggle 13 An extreme example of this would be what the American Psychological Association calls “eco-anxiety,” which can range from PTSD-like reactions to experiencing extreme weather events to low-level, persistent anxieties related to “longer-term climate change” (“Climate Change’s Toll”). 32 superficially seem like negative texts to be putting forward. There is an additional concern that these films often feature people acting with justified violence against the natural world, and frequently end with the death of whatever animal challenges human supremacy. One might interpret these endings as confirming humanity’s dominion over the earth. In this sense, these movies have the same issues as many other horror films in which the monstrous figure symbolizes alterity, and its defeat appears to vindicate the status quo. It has been noted elsewhere that horror tends to express a conservative worldview (Halberstam 12; King, Danse 39). These films might therefore be accused of reinforcing the negative attitudes that ecocritics want to challenge. I do not dismiss the fact that some Animal Attack films offer a reactionary view of environmental issues and ecological sensibilities. However, even in those cases, there is value in engaging these texts seriously, as they offer insights into the negative cultural attitudes that critics need to address. Yet I disagree with the sense that all Animal Attack films fall into this category. Many of these films end on an ambiguous note that does not simply involve a human victory. Even when these films do end with the death of the animal, are critics to assume that what will linger most with viewers is the text’s neat resolution? I argue that what resonates most with audiences is the spectacular disruption of human exceptionalism that makes up most of the film’s running time. Even if the ending offers a ‘bad’ moral, the overall impact of these texts can be progressive. In almost all cases, Animal Attack films play with, and deconstruct, important premises in Western thought concerning humanity’s relationship to the non-human world. There is a long tradition in the West of assuming that clear distinctions divide Humans from Animals and Civilization from Nature, and that the human side of that equation is always superior. These films make those conceptual oppositions into literal battles. Through their melodramatic visualization and narration of those divisions, these films make those taken-for-granted 33 categories appear strange. In so doing, they encourage viewers to interrogate their assumptions about those categories, leaving them open for reevaluation. Though these films might appear to be silly or reactionary on the surface, they can undercut notions of human exceptionalism and supremacy, they can subvert assumptions about the non-human world, and they can cultivate fascination with nature’s alterity. Based on the contemporary relevance of Animal Attack films and their potential to offer valuable and humbling lessons, I argue that critics must engage the ecological fantasies found in these texts on a deeper level than they have previously. Obviously, this means analysis that acknowledges what makes Animal Attack films different and that goes beyond superficial disapproval. When analyzing these texts, it also means looking at more than just the human in relation to the animals. The few scholars who have studied this subject are not always willing to make this move. As mentioned above, the editors of Animal Horror Cinema distinguish Animal Attack films from other types of “eco-horror.” They make the reasonable point that Animal Attack films only constitute one manifestation of eco-horror, a subgenre that “includes movies where the relation between humans and animals plays a marginal role and where the ecosystem itself… is the villain” (Gregersdotter et. al. “Introduction” 4). However, Gregersdotter et. al. go on to argue that animal horror “also comprises films that centre on the relation between ‘human’ and ‘animal’ as categories unrelated to their places in the ecosystem” (“Introduction,” 4, emphasis added). One can understand the logic behind only focusing on the animals. After all, animals are the clear focal points in Animal Attack films. They are the active antagonists, which makes them the most significant non-human figures from a narrative perspective. Yet it is telling that Gregersdotter et. al. do not offer examples of Animal Attack texts divorced from ecological 34 concerns. I suspect that this is because none has been made. There are films in which that element is less prominent; several of the films considered in this project play out in or around domestic settings primarily. However, I argue that the place of animals and humans in their ecosystem is always relevant to Animal Attack films. To argue otherwise is to indulge the harmful fantasy that the actions of individuals can be divorced from the larger ecological context. Even when these films do not address ecological themes explicitly, those issues lie just beneath the surface. In order to engage properly with the ecological imaginary offered by these films, one must account for the environments in which these films take place and analyze how these films present their landscapes. Animal Attack films are about more than the primitive fear of being eaten, or the existential dread of reevaluating and unsettling anthropocentric or humanist assumptions. These films deal with humanity’s place in the world. They are about the relationships and connections linking living things to the environments that sustain them. Animal Attack films explore these topics by dealing with anxieties about placement and mis- or displacement. They indulge the sense that modern humans have made themselves estranged from their own planet. Humans and non-humans each have their own spaces to which they have laid claim. When someone or something leaves their designated space, they enter an environment in which they do not belong. These transgressions have consequences. Sometimes these films deal with non-human creatures trespassing into “human” environments, as they rampage through cities, suburbs, or built structures. These animals might be rogue pets or familiar pest species. They can also be invasive species – exotic, non-native creatures. Often, humans intentionally relocate such animals, only to have them escape their enclosures and wreak havoc. 35 A more common scenario focuses on humans stranded in wild or foreign environments. It must be acknowledged that Animal Attack films are primarily, though not exclusively, a Western phenomenon. The majority of Animal Attack films are produced in the U.S., with Australia also producing a significant number of relevant films. As such, these films tend to have Western-centric notions of what constitutes the wild or foreign. U.S. Animal Attack films will often use Latin America or Africa as their backdrop. Those areas have a long history of exploitation by the West, and Western culture often imagines and presents those areas as being less developed. However, U.S. and Australian films may also take place in wild domestic settings. Both the U.S. and Australia have settler colonial histories, which suggests that the anxieties in these narratives of (often white) citizens feeling out-of-place in their homelands might not be far removed from the postcolonial fears expressed in the films set abroad. While I argue that the animality of these animals must be acknowledged, these films do often metaphorically engage issues of human alienation and difference, and there is a strong undercurrent of colonial angst running through Animal Attack cinema. As will be discussed later, this is in part due to the fact that dangerous animals and inhospitable landscapes were barriers to colonial conquest and can therefore be seen as being indicative of an environment that is both appealing and frightening in its perceived exoticism. As indicated above, these environments are often not presented as being scary or unappealing, at least not initially. Many of the environments depicted in these films are lovely, and many of their narratives are motivated by acts of tourism gone wrong as people actively seek out these attractive environments. Yet the land’s association with danger complicates its ability to deliver easy aesthetic pleasures. This play of pleasure and peril can be read as presenting beautiful 36 nature as the prize at stake in a contest between humans and non-humans. However, it also nuances and complicates the audiences’ initial reaction to the environments depicted. While they may be thematically significant, one might question how much attention the average viewer gives to the settings of these melodramatic narratives, and therefore how likely they are to be affected by them. Presumably, audiences (like some critics) will focus primarily on the active human or non-human participants in any given scene. However, Animal Attack films heighten their viewers’ awareness of the surroundings in two key regards. First, it is a function of the prevailing generic tendencies within these films. Audience members watching a scary film have a reason to remain conscious of the area surrounding a character. The anticipation that something dangerous might emerge to surprise characters encourages hypervigilance. Secondly, many Animal Attack films, as alluded to above, deal with tourist activity. Protagonists travel to spectacular environments and the audience vicariously shares their experience of marveling at the sights. It is a presentation that often exceeds narrative demands and encourages even casual viewers to pay attention to the presented landscapes. Throughout this project, I perform close readings of illustrative texts. Contextual information about the production, promotion, and reception of these films informs my analysis. In many cases, the pragmatic and practical constraints that shape the final form of these films also impact their ideological and ethical implications. These details nuance a purely textual analysis approach to the material; in some instances, they radically alter or deconstruct a surface- level understanding of the individual films and the larger collective of Animal Attack narratives. Details about the production of these films also resonate with Fay’s argument that the world- building on display in cinema parallels the world-altering processes at work in the Anthropocene. Even as these narratives reflect and enact the anxieties on the Anthropocene, behind-the-scenes, 37 one witnesses humans struggling to control animals and environments in ways that parallel the play of human control and lack of control that characterizes the Anthropocene. Typically, the behind-the-scenes information upon which I draw is not information hidden away in an archive and cut off from the public. I work primarily with material disseminated in the mainstream media in order to coincide with and advertise the release of the film – either in theaters or on home media. I gravitate towards this material because of its status as a logical public extension of the finished film. This is accessible information intended to contribute to a larger constellation of material informing how audiences understand the final product. In addition to examining contextual details relevant to the creation and dissemination of these films, I also understand these texts in relation to the following factors: trends within the cinematic industry, particularly what Richard Nowell calls film cycles; the larger cultural climate, especially as it concerns environmental and ecological issues; and relevant biological and scientific data that the films incorporate, manipulate, or ignore. In addition to this contextual information, my analysis draws upon three general bodies of theoretical literature. I work with film theory, particularly material related to the peculiar mechanics of genre and “bad” cinema, as well as work focused on the representation of the monstrous other in mainstream cinema. I engage critical animal studies, primarily theory related to the significance and implications of animal representations in popular visual culture. Finally, I draw upon cultural landscape theory, with its focus on how physical environments become cultural artifacts through artistic framings and presentations. The novel ways in which these fields interact in relation to an understudied topic offer new insights into each. As I have already referenced above, this work will also offer new perspectives and a valuable contribution to the burgeoning critical orientation known as ecocriticism or the environmental humanities. 38 This project consists of two sections, each three chapters long. The first section deals with the animal figures in these films, the second addresses their environmental settings. Both sections follow comparable trajectories. The first two chapters in each section are animated by concerns about how these productions use and simulate the relevant animals and landscapes. I begin each section with an investigation of the visual presentations of animals and landscapes. I then discuss the conceptual positioning of animals and landscapes in these films and the ways they challenge or confirm cultural expectations about Animals and Nature. In the final chapters of each section, I look at the relational dynamics found in these films and how they position the human in relation to the non-human. Chapter One begins with one of the most popular and controversial Animal Attack films. Focusing on the Jaws franchise, Chapter One details how these films narratively position great white sharks as monsters and use various effects to construct and present their monstrous bodies. Environmental critics frequently condemn Jaws for its misrepresentation of the central animal as a killing machine; they suggest that the stereotypes Jaws helped form and perpetuate contributed to the physical destruction of actual sharks. What these detractors fail to acknowledge is that the fear and fascination provoked by this cinematic shark can generate positive as well as negative attitudes and actions towards the real creatures. I argue that the crucial factor in determining how viewers process this text is the extent to which they recognize the fantasy at play in its narrative and imagery. In addition to discussing Spielberg’s iconic original, this chapter analyzes the increasingly weak Jaws sequels (Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, and Jaws: The Revenge). This expanded focus allows me to acknowledge and engage the original film’s broader exploitation legacy and consider the value of “bad” films, whose shoddy construction emphasizes the absurd elements that more competent Animal Attack features obscure. The conceptual and practical difficulties 39 facing these films as they create ever-more fantastic scenarios in order to showcase the impossible cinematic object of the monstrous shark’s body also raise questions related to the effect of seeing animal bodies on screen and witnessing violence being done to those bodies. Chapter Two continues and expands Chapter One’s investigation of how these films attempt to control their central animals, and the ways in which that control breaks down. In Chapter Two, the focus shifts to how these films make antagonistic animals into active narrative agents and create a sense of their interior worlds and thought processes. Though the representations of animals found in these films may rankle critics, they also complicate traditional understandings of animal agency and cognition in productive ways. In order for the animals to serve as plausible threats in these narratives, Animal Attack films bestow upon their non-human antagonists heightened intellectual abilities and autonomy. These presentations undercut traditions within Enlightenment philosophy and Western humanism that denigrate the abilities of non-human animals. While these films typically do not offer realistic depictions of animal behavior, they represent cultural engagements with a complex and controversial topic, as they explore the potentials of, and the ramifications of acknowledging, animal agency and cognition. Looking at several killer dog films (including Cujo, Baxter, The Pack, White Dog, and White God) this chapter examines how these narratives rationalize and frame the behavior of out- of-control canines, and the ways in which that framing impacts audience responses to the animals’ deviance. Markedly different from uncontrollable sharks, domesticated dogs make a productive case study because of the ways they inherently complicate notions of natural versus unnatural and intentional versus unintentional behavior. Importantly, the presence of real dogs in these films can also undercut authorial intent, due in part to popular affection for the species. I interrogate the on-set use of trained dogs in these productions, which complicates their 40 presentation of independent, anti-human animals. I then detail the various ways in which these films play with different forms of communication and “language” in order to make the dogs’ actions legible, with particular attention paid to the tendency in these films to obsess over the animals’ eye as a way of conveying thought. As in Chapter Two, Chapter Three looks at how Animal Attack films deconstruct problematic legacies in Western humanist thought. In this case, I focus on the mutable privileged category of the ‘Human.’ Disruptions and transgressions of the conceptual border separating the human from the non-human play an important role in the horror genre. Chapter Three analyzes how four films about intimate or combative relationships between humans and animals interrogate notions of the ‘Human’ and wrestle with the implications of a posthumanist paradigm. Theoretical works by Deleuze and Guattari and Donna Haraway are central to my discussion of the ambivalent ways in which these films respond to the erosion of humanism. Willard and Orca function as parables about the process of becoming-animal and becoming with animals, and the tragic ways in which humanist dogmas can betray or impede that process. Monkey Shines offers a reactionary statement concerning the perceived degradation of the idealized masculine subject through interaction and entanglement with non-human entities, and the dangers of embracing the allure of a new subject position. Meanwhile, Phase IV provides a more positive take on what it presents as the inevitable end of humanism. It encourages viewers to face and accept the strange and the new while forging unconventional empathetic bonds with non-human subjects. Having looked at the animals in these films, and their relationships to humans on and off- screen, the second section of this project pulls back to consider the environments in which these narratives take place. Chapter Four explores how the production process is determined by and determines the shooting location and its appearance. At the heart of this chapter are questions about 41 the relationship between landscape aesthetics and ideology. Chapter Four picks up from Chapter One the thread of examining the (sometimes unintentional) ramifications of how these productions put natural subjects on the screen. I investigate how a trio of films taking place in enclosed ‘natural’ settings deploy the aesthetic modes of the picturesque, the uncanny, and the sublime when presenting their landscapes. The Shallows digitally captures and manipulates a UNESCO Heritage Site in order to create a generic tropical paradise. In ‘solving’ the problem of location shooting by creating an environment that can be manipulated just like the film’s artificial shark, The Shallows produces a scenario of tourism-gone-wrong that capitalizes on the self-deconstructive potential of the reactionary picturesque aesthetic. Black Water features a less appealing location: an uncanny and heterotopic swamp. The swamp and its depiction reflect ambivalent attitudes towards landscapes that characterize Australian national cinema and that resonate with settler colonial anxieties. Black Water presents an environment typically imagined in Western cultures as being inimical to human pleasure and development. In so doing, its depiction bridges two distinct registers of the uncanny: the horrific, which can lead to destructive impulses, and the fascinating, which can yield more positive attitudes. Finally, I consider how The Grey positions the natural world as a site of terror and struggle, but also of revelation and transcendence. The Grey’s presentation of a remote mountainous wilderness approaches the difficult-to-capture aesthetic of the sublime. Specifically, it evokes what Christopher Hitt refers to as the ecological sublime, a variation on the aesthetic that values and respects nature’s alterity. I argue that these three texts play with cultural tradition and tweak the classical expressions of the aesthetic forms in question, ultimately encouraging a respectful attitude towards the natural world’s alterity. Chapter Five provides an in-depth study of the ideological ramifications of a production’s control over and manipulation of an environment. The first section of this project addresses the 42 notion of the Animal and the Human; Chapter Five deals with the way landscapes in these films create a corresponding split between Nature and Civilization, with Nature being similarly stigmatized and linked to marginalized human subjects. Primarily focusing on The Ghost and the Darkness, Chapter Five compares how several films use the historic case of the Tsavo Man-Eaters to construct myths about the Civilized versus the Savage. These myths resonate with, and foreground, the environmental and colonial themes relevant to so many Animal Attack films. In addition to these themes being central to Ghost’s narrative of heroic colonial agents fighting lions while building a railroad through Africa, these elements are also relevant to the production of Ghost. One of the first Hollywood productions to film in South Africa after the end of apartheid, Ghost produced its historical fantasy in a nature preserve, a temporal enclave ostensibly cut off from history. In this amnesic space, Ghost creates a superficial and partial recreation of turn-of- the-century Kenya. In mashing up disparate geographies, Ghost creates an environment that reads broadly as both Africa and untamed wilderness (Nature). This not only feeds into harmful tendencies to read non-Western countries as primitive, it also attempts to construct a public memory that obscures truths about how human activities affect and shape the land. Ghost ultimately conveys an ambivalent attitude towards the natural world. While appreciating its lovely qualities, Ghost suggests that nature needs to be developed and shaped, as though the desirable and unpleasant parts of nature (and the colonial enterprise) can be neatly compartmentalized. In Chapter Three, I take a step back to consider the relationship between humans and non- humans. In Chapter Six, I make a similar move and focus on how humans and animals are positioned in relation to their environments and ecosystems. Chapter Six evaluates several films delivering environmentalist messages through apocalyptic narratives about entire ecosystems mobilizing against humanity: The Birds, Long Weekend, Day of the Animals, and Frogs. These 43 films all suggest that modernity alienates people from the land in ways that are harmful to both the earth and people. The overwhelming struggle in these films is to represent the systematic relationships at play when confronting environmental degradation, as well as reckoning with the connection between individual micro-scale actions and societal macro-level factors. In all of these films, I am interested in the ways in which they construct the sense of an all-encompassing ecosystem, primarily through their sound design. Within these confines, there is significant diversity amongst the profiled films. Some deliver their environmentalist messages unintentionally. Others evoke these themes subtly, while still others are explicit in their intent. Apocalyptic narratives historically played an important but controversial role in the environmentalist movement. Current dire ecological conditions are making these grim scenarios popular and relevant once again, renewing debates about their worth and impact. The Animal Attack narratives considered in this chapter exemplify many criticisms of the apocalyptic representational strategy. While acknowledging other critics’ concerns, I argue that the heightened scenarios in these films fit into coherent rhetorical traditions and serve as useful supplements to the activist-oriented, realist texts typically favored by ecocritical scholars. 44 CHAPTER 1 “All This Machine Does”: Imagining & Visualizing the Cinematic Animal Body Halfway through Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), vacationers visiting Amity Island take to the sea hesitantly. They splash about, making the most of a July 4 th weekend soured by a series of brutal shark attacks. Local fishermen did catch a tiger shark, the suspected culprit. A photo of its bloody body stands by a souvenir stand where tourists can buy shark teeth. Still, despite the communal bravado, things remain tense. The uneasy calm shatters when a woman spots a dorsal fin cruising amongst the swimmers. Panicked crowds flee the water in an ugly stampede. A police boat approaches, the crew’s guns drawn and at the ready. In the water, the fin lists unnaturally. The artificial fin topples over as two boys in wetsuits release their prop and breach the surface. Seeing the armed officers, the tricksters raise their hands in sheepish surrender. All is well. Then, as the tension subsides, the ominous and familiar “duh-dun” musical cue starts. A woman on shore spots the fin of the real shark, surreptitiously gliding past the distracted crowds towards its unsuspecting prey. That shark’s reality is relative. When it attacks moments later, the film uses an animatronic head, which remains underwater for its first appearance. The water obscures the model in a forgiving haze, making its flaws difficult to spot. Prior to this, the shark exists as an off-screen threat, hinted at but never seen. By the conclusion, the film casts aside all pretenses as the faux shark leaps onto the deck of the protagonists’ boat. It writhes about, chomping its eponymous jaws in broad daylight, basking in its prosthetic glory. The genie was out of the bottle after that climactic reveal. Subsequent shark movies, within and beyond the Jaws franchise, felt obliged to provide more on-screen shark action. Bringing those killer sharks to the screen, however, presents a daunting challenge. 45 This chapter focuses on the conceptual and the practical challenges facing Jaws and its sequels as they narratively position the great white shark as a movie monster and manifest its monstrous body on screen. In so doing, this chapter offers a transformative addition to scholarship surrounding Jaws, an iconic text and a highly influential work of Animal Attack cinema. Analysis of Jaws tends to go one of two basic routes: either the critic attempts to interpret the shark as a metaphor for human concerns or the critic responds negatively to the film’s misrepresentation of sharks. It is crucial to engage the animality of the film’s shark, in part because Jaws created a culture of fear targeting sharks that continues to have a destructive real- world impact. Yet the fear and fascination generated by Jaws has also had positive ecological impacts that critics rarely address, opting instead for disapproval and dismissal based on surface- level textual engagement. Looking at the Jaws franchise helps one understand the various forms of labor that go into (literally) constructing these potentially harmful fantasies. When one appreciates the nature of this artifice, one can more effectively confront its legacy and channel viewer responses to the text in beneficial directions. Though it is important to understand a culturally significant text like Jaws, the work done in this chapter yields insights into more than just this text or its franchise. Studying the Jaws films offers insights into why dangerous animals in general make compelling cinematic subjects and narrative antagonists. This helps explain both the enduring popularity of Animal Attack cinema and reflects how humans think about animals. The Jaws films also illustrate common challenges facing filmmakers who would seek to build a film around dangerous animals. These issues include the need to alter facts about the animal’s behavior, sometimes to an absurd extent, and the difficulty of constructing a simulation of the animal’s body that can evoke the referent without appearing comical. Though talented filmmakers can overcome these hurdles, 46 these challenges typically result in deficiencies in the film’s presentation, weaknesses that can be used to deconstruct the fantasy on display and point towards a non-diegetic reality. These weaknesses will typically be more glaringly evident and unavoidable in ineptly executed films, hence the decision to expand my focus to take in the Jaws sequels. In addition to looking at the canonical Spielberg text, this chapter also addresses the narrative and visual presentation of monstrous sharks in Jaws 2 (Szwarc, 1978), Jaws 3-D (Alves, 1983), and Jaws: The Revenge (Sargent, 1987). Discussing these films allows my analysis to address the exploitation legacy of Jaws, which undercuts and deconstructs the masterful original. One can argue that Jaws is not about a shark, but the sequels become increasingly and unavoidably about the shark. They understand the fish, not the human characters and their stories, as the thing that defines the franchise and makes it appealing. As these films bring back the shark, showcasing it more and more, they do so with increasingly outlandish stories and shoddy special effects. In their inept imitation and exaggeration of the original, they unravel the seams showing in the first film. I intend use this discussion of the narrative and visual presentation of animals in Animal Attack films to engage important points of consideration applicable to all Animal Attack films. However, sharks elicit distinct affective responses and present unique challenges to filmmakers. Accordingly, when explaining certain concepts, I will address the depiction of other species in other films in order to point to more general conclusions that can be drawn based on my analysis. Making Ripples: The Impact of Jaws The cultural resonance of Jaws, the original summer blockbuster, means that even individuals who never saw the film are probably familiar with its plot, characters, and iconic lines and moments. In Jaws, a great white shark claims the waters off Amity, a New England 47 beach community, as its personal feeding grounds. During summertime, this makes tourists the primary protein source in the water. Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a police chief afraid of the ocean, and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), a shark-obsessed biologist, warn officials to keep people out of the water. Despite earlier attacks, their pleas go unheeded for the sake of tourism revenue. As a result, more people die. While the option to stay out of the sea remains on the table, too much blood has been spilt and Brody’s children have been endangered. The shark must be killed. Brody and Hooper ally with Quint (Robert Shaw), a seaman with a vendetta against sharks. The trio confronts the shark, a creature more massive and powerful than anticipated. In the ensuing battle, the shark devours Quint and destroys his boat. Brody, alone and clinging to the sinking ship’s mast, shoots a compressed air tank he lodged in the shark’s greedy gullet during its assault on the boat. The shark explodes in a shower of gore. As it sinks, Brody and Hooper paddle back to shore. Of course, from the perspective of the franchise and the Animal Attack subgenre, this represents only a temporary victory over the unruly natural world. Jaws influenced the development of Animal Attack cinema. As mentioned in the Introduction, it boosted the sheer number of Animal Attack films, as producers rushed to capitalize on Jaws’s success by making similar films. It also popularized the trope of building films around animals that are naturally dangerous; their threat does not stem from some unnatural quality (e.g., unusual size or intelligence). 1 Jaws presents its shark’s actions as not dissimilar to the natural inclination of sharks to eat everything (and everyone). 2 While Jaws 1 Jaws popularized, but did not invent, this trope. These narratives were less common before Jaws, but Bwana Devil (Oboler, 1952) and The Naked Jungle (Haskin, 1954) are both films about naturally deadly animals. 2 Beryl Francis explains that rumors about “rogue sharks” stem from a 1958 theory advanced by Dr. Victor Coppelson. Coppelson speculated that attacks at disparate locations might be blamed on a single cruising “killer which, having experienced the deadly sport of killing or mauling a human, goes in search of similar game” (Francis 47). This theory was subsequently refuted, but it still holds sway in the media. 48 vilifies a living species, most critics seek to find a meaning for the shark relevant to human interests. The standard critical line on Jaws holds that, despite appearances to the contrary, it is not a film about a shark. 3 Arguing otherwise betrays an overly literal engagement with the text. The challenge lies in discerning what the shark symbolizes or conceals. As with the boys’ shark fin prank in the film, while the public viscerally reacts to the “shark,” critics endeavor to figure out who manipulates the fake shark and why. The reader’s interpretation inevitably reflects their analytic inclinations. Feminist critic Jane Caputi sees the film as a patriarchal myth about men destroying a terrible mother figure. Communication scholar David Dowling simultaneously argues that the shark represents the external threat of foreign Communist aggressors, and the domestic peril of urban violence invading a small, all-white town. 4 Arguing from a Marxist perspective, Fredric Jameson suggests that the variety of plausible readings available makes the fish at the center of Jaws less a great white and more a red herring. The polysemous shark distracts from the ideological significance of the central human characters, whose dynamics dramatize an allegory about the forging of contemporary American society. 5 3 Reflecting on Jaws’s 40 th anniversary, film critic Mark Kermode wrote: “First things first; Jaws is not about a shark. It may have a shark in it – and indeed all over the poster, the soundtrack album, the paperback jacket and so on. It may have scared a generation of cinemagoers out of the water for fear of being bitten in half…. But the underlying story of Jaws is more complex than the simple terror of being eaten by a very big fish.” Kermode makes this line (“Jaws is not about a shark”) a catchphrase on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review. He frames this almost as an introduction to critical film literacy – understanding that Jaws is not about a shark, despite superficial evidence to the contrary, means looking past the obvious to engage the text’s deeper meaning. 4 Dowling views Jaws as “an allegory for how the United States should have won the [recently ended] Vietnam War” (58). Brody’s success depends on devising “a chemical solution to end the series of bloody battles in one explosive moment – an unmistakable reference to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima” (59). In relation to domestic anxieties, Dowling notes that Jaws came out during a period of popular urban vigilante narratives, including Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971), Magnum Force (Post, 1973), and Death Wish (Winner, 1974) (58). Brody does mention coming to Amity to escape the hopeless blight of New York City. 5 In the film, the forces of law-and-order (Brody) and corporate science and technology (Hooper) form an alliance, cemented by the sacrifice of historical consciousness (Quint), to defeat [insert threat here] (Jameson 142-144). 49 None of the above interpretations are necessarily wrong. No doubt these critics would also argue that their readings carry serious consequences, as a popular text supports and perpetuates pernicious ideologies, be they patriarchal, imperialist, late capitalist, etc. However, exclusively focusing on discerning the human relevance of the artificial shark risks missing the real shark as it swims past and does significant damage. Real sharks have a bad reputation amongst humans. Shark attacks can be traumatic and tragic, but they are also rare. The causes of these attacks can usually be understood and therefore people can minimize the risk of attacks. 6 Still, sharks cannot provide their own PR when these incidents occur. The many killer shark movies that exist and continue to be made also do them no favors. Jaws is the wellspring of modern shark-based horror – texts that turn sharks from formidable aquatic predators into movie monsters. Critics encourage viewers to decode the symbolic meaning of Jaws. However, a literal interpretation of the text can have consequences more immediate and concrete than those resulting from allegorical readings. Jaws came out in the summer (it was released on June 20) and its tale of holidaymakers becoming fish food struck a chord. Commentators alluded to its efficacy and success by suggesting that it would make people afraid to visit the beach and enter the ocean (See Figure 1.1). One pithy review begins: “Jaws does for ocean bathing what Psycho did for taking a shower” (Gelmis). Its release did affect coastal tourism adversely. 7 Yet the fear generated by 6 Florida University’s Museum of Natural History offers an extensive list of “Advice to Swimmers” for “reducing the risk of a shark encounter.” These include things like not wearing shiny jewelry “because the reflected light resembles the sheen of fish scales.” Most of the advice revolves around strategies to minimize the risk of being mistaken for a typical food source, like fish or seals. 7 A North Carolina community suffered a 10-15% dip in tourist revenue and organized an emergency conference to address the economic impact of Jaws. One official “was upset the movie was released just as the summer beach tourist season was getting under way. ‘The timing, I’m sure, was something the producers planned for personal financial gain and they had no regard to what they were doing to the financial health in the beach community’” (Lowery). 50 Jaws did not simply manifest in an aversion to the beach. Indeed, it drove some onto the water, resulting in increased levels of shark fishing. As with many causal relationships, it is difficult to determine how big a role Jaws played in increasing shark fishing. Before its release, the sport enjoyed niche popularity but was derided as “poor man’s big-game fishing.” 8 After Jaws, enrollment in shark fishing tournaments rose, as did demand for charter boats offering shark fishing. Fishermen and outside analysts suspected a connection. 9 Bolstering their conclusions, some converts cited Jaws as their inspiration. 10 More fishing meant increased shark meat consumption. One New Orleans fish dealer credited Jaws with doubling sales (Press). A Florida DNR official framed this as a retaliatory gesture, saying it 8 Frank Mundus, who allegedly inspired Quint, started a shark fishing charter business in 1951. At the time, he “called it monster fishing because nobody would go shark fishing” (Rather). 9 In October 1975, one captain told a New York Times reporter that “[Jaws] broke the business wide open… I would say we had a 50 per cent increase this season of people chartering boats to go out after shark” (Savage, A., “‘Jaws’ Spurs”). The same reporter notes elsewhere that “a shark-hunt contest off Brielle [New Jersey] drew about 200 entrants, compared to 50 last year” (Savage, A., “For Shark Anglers”). 10 A reporter notes that many of the new fishermen idolized Quint; one 22-year-old “had seen ‘Jaws’ three times… He knows Quint’s lines by heart, and recited them” (Sterba). Another fisherman told a reporter that, after watching the movie, his wife would not “let me sleep unless I catch her a shark” (Harris, A.). Over the Julv 4th weekend Variety (Archive: 1905-2000); Jul 9, 1975; 279, 9; Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive pg. 9 Figure 1.1 - A full-page ad in the 9 Jul. 1975 issue of Variety heralds the financial triumph of Jaws by winking at its negative impact on beach holidays. The ad may also imply that the/a killer shark lurks somewhere in the water. 51 was a case of “a nation eating what once ate them” (“Sharks Sighted”). Still, compared to other game fish, shark meat’s profit was limited. 11 More profitable were the sharks’ teeth and jaws, which fisherman would often just cut out before dumping the sharks’ bodies. 12 Waste was not the only issue. As one might expect with an activity whose popularity was partially driven by fear, there were reports of unnecessary violence surrounding the practice. 13 Great whites were not exclusively the targets; any shark could become a victim of this frenzy. Environmentalists expressed concerns about this wasteful consumption and cruelty. 14 In response, fishermen justified the sport, claiming that they were protecting swimmers from dangerous animals (Slocum). The rarity of shark attacks outside of cinematic fiction makes the argument that sharks must be culled for human safety dubious. 15 Experts also dismissed conservationist concerns, arguing that sport fishing could not impact shark populations. 16 Only later did biologists realize the devastating ecological consequences of this unregulated practice. 17 11 Even during the 1975 shark fever, one fisherman explained that sharks “are not much use to anyone,” their meat sometimes only going for 15 cents a pound (Harris, A.). 12 One fisherman testified: “shark’s jaws have been bringing upwards of $50 a set from tourists” (Harris, A.). Another source offered a similar account, with a fisherman explaining “he can get $7.50 for large teeth and $1.50 for smaller ones. Because most sharks have three layers of teeth, he is not wanting for money. The jaws are even more lucrative. A large set sells for $75 and a small set for $35” (Gaspar). The fisherman was baffled by the wasteful trend: “I [do not] understand… [I] used to throw [the teeth] away, but now [I] throw away the meat. Crazy people, shark meat [is] good to eat” (Gaspar). 13 One article quotes Jim Hardee, the fishing editor for the Miami Herald: “College kids have been traveling all across the country to come to south Florida to catch sharks…. I talked to a dealer yesterday who said three college boys came in an old jalopy and they bought some tackle and wanted to kill jaws. Quite often the big sharks that they bring in are female and it’s not unusual for the small baby sharks to come out of the females once they’re put out on the deck. About 20-22 baby hammerheads came out of this shark on the dock and the people on the dock went into a frenzy, stabbing and killing them. They killed every one of them. It was repulsive” (Unger). 14 One reporter summarized this perspective, writing: “Because many boated sharks are simply killed, but not eaten, shark fishermen are accused by environmentalists of the ‘senseless destruction of nature’” (Slocum). 15 There are a number of statistics illustrating how unlikely shark attacks, particularly fatal ones, are. The University of Florida provides a long list, including the fact that people are 75 times more likely to be killed by lightning than by sharks (“Shark Attack Compared”). 16 In 1975, Jack G. Casey, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, told a reporter that, despite the acceleration of recreational shark fishing as a result of Jaws, “the number of sharks cruising the waters off New England is ‘as abundant as it ever would be’…. Because shark fishing in this country is primarily done for sport, Casey says, he believes there is no conservation problem with sharks in the near future” (Cohen, J. M.). 17 In 1981, marine biologist Dennis Bedford explained that, due to the increase in unregulated and wasteful shark fishing, “There is a danger of the shark being wiped out…. [Sharks] have a low natural mortality, so don’t need many 52 Though the shark fishing fad’s popularity waned, Jaws still affects attitudes towards sharks detrimentally. Political scientist Christopher Neff notes how the “socio-psychological saturation of [Jaws] as both a summer blockbuster and societal meme is widespread” (117). It provides vivid emotional shorthand to justify negative attitudes towards sharks and ecologically irresponsible policies – what Neff calls the “Jaws Effect.” The negative impact of Jaws helps explain why Peter Benchley, who wrote its source novel and co-wrote the screenplay, spent his later life raising awareness about the true nature of sharks and the importance of their conservation. 18 Jaws can be understood as being about more than its explicit content. Still, more than any other Animal Attack film, it demonstrates the devastating consequences that can attend a literal interpretation of the text. Understanding Jaws, and similar texts, from an ecologically mindful perspective is critical. However, much of the work done in that vein has been disappointingly one note. As detailed in the Introduction, many critics viewing Jaws with an eye towards its ecological impact condemn the film as reactionary (Brereton 63-64; Ingram, Green 71; Malamud 74-75). Not only is it identified as a noxious text in its own right, it is understood as being indicative of ugly sentiments within the culture. David Ingram interprets Jaws as a direct response to the growth of U.S. environmentalism in the 1970s (Green 88). At a time when people were being admonished to be more responsible and conscientious in their practices and attitudes vis-à-vis the non-human world, Jaws provides a cathartic tale of humans taking violent and justifiable action against a hostile natural world that imperils human recreation, commerce, and well-being. young, but adding to that mortality through fishing pressure can substantially damage the population” (Ruhlow). As will be discussed in greater detail later, most large predators are similarly vulnerable (Quammen 415-416). 18 In the press, Benchley explained: "Knowing what I know now, I could never write [Jaws] today… Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges” (Nelson). 53 Condemnation only takes ecocritical understanding of Jaws so far. It also does not make Jaws, or similar films, go away, stop being produced, or no longer resonate with audiences. Mere dismissal of a popular text one finds ideologically objectionable accomplishes little, if anything. Such a reaction also obscures how critics might engage the text productively, rather than railing against its popularity. The powerful affective response a text like Jaws elicits need not result in hostility towards the species depicted. While many condemn the misperceptions propagated by the film, scientists cite Jaws as driving public interest in, and knowledge about, sharks. Reflecting on the legacy of Jaws, Robert Heuter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory, concludes: “In the final analysis, Jaws has been a positive thing for the science of sharks… because it has elevated the public's interest in these animals” (Lovgren). Some biologists even credit the film with influencing their career paths. 19 Though humanities critics focus on the harmful consequences of Jaws primarily, the fear and fascination caused by Jaws inspires positive, as well as negative, attitudes and actions. Reactions to the text can range from the extreme of wanting to take a shark’s life to wanting to devote one’s life to the study and protection of sharks. The legacy of Jaws and the responses it generates towards sharks are more complex than critics have previously acknowledged. Careful analysis of Jaws and its legacy, as represented by its sequels, offers a richer understanding of how Animal Attack films construct their monstrous animal subjects. When one understands how this vision is conceptually and physically created, one can engage the fantasy these films offer 19 Understandably, some biologist fans have an ambivalent relationship to the text. One article quotes “Oliver Jewell, a Ph.D. candidate studying great white sharks at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research: ‘I saw the movie when I was about five. It was probably the biggest early life influence on my career choice. The most captivating thing for me was the shark itself. The idea that there were these huge and magnificent animals out there—and that nobody knew anything about them really hooked me. Hooper, and the marine biologists in Jaws Revenge [sic] (Jake and Michael), were all inspirational to me, too, because they did what I wanted to do. I still credit those early years of watching Jaws as inspiration, although sometimes a little shyly; I’m well aware many others used the movie to justify killing millions of sharks across the globe” (Shiffman). 54 more effectively. This, in turn, can allow critics to channel reactions to Jaws and similar texts in beneficial, rather than detrimental, directions. The influence Jaws has on attitudes towards actual sharks most likely depends on the perceived relationship between the creature on screen and the creature in the sea. Is the cinematic shark falsely understood as mimicking the behavior of real sharks, or are real sharks understood as fascinating and powerful creatures that inspired a flight of fancy? The best way to appreciate this distinction involves thinking critically about the convoluted strategies necessary for filmmakers to incorporate these animals into works of fiction. Examining the narrative and visual treatment of sharks in the Jaws films offers insights into how the use of real animals works for and against these particular films and Animal Attack films more generally. While sharks are plausibly frightening, the ways they are used narratively and presented formally, particularly in the Jaws sequels, offer inroads for deconstructing the potentially harmful fantasies these films peddle. Big Fish Stories: Jaws & Animal Attack Narratives Practical and conceptual challenges face filmmakers building narratives around dangerous sharks. On the practical level, filmmakers must effectively manifest the shark on screen; it must appear to interact with and menace the human actors. I will discuss how the Jaws films confront this challenge later. First, I shall address the conceptual hurdle of creating the narrative in which the shark wreaks havoc. The challenge relates to the behavior of the animal being referenced, and the rarity of fatal attacks on people. Though the risk of shark attacks is minimal, and sharks face greater risk from humans than vice versa, films about killer sharks keep getting produced. I argue that this is because animals in general, and sharks in particular, possess many qualities making them compelling movie monsters. 55 I mention in the Introduction that horror villains tend to be either humans, non-human animals, or fantastic and unrealistic creatures. Non-human animals work in this role because they combine strengths seen in the other two categories. Unlike humans, animals possess an unsettlingly alien form of consciousness. Yet, unlike literal aliens or other cryptids and ghouls, these creatures exist in the world and people could encounter them. These individual points deserve unpacking. The reality of extant animals grounds horror fiction scenarios, facilitating the audience’s suspension of disbelief. 20 Large apex predators, like great white sharks, fill the movie monster role with particular ease. Statistics aside, these creatures pose a plausible threat to human life. They can, and have, killed people. And, however comfortingly rare such attacks may be, the prospect of being devoured by another creature conjures deeply rooted fears. The visceral affective power of that threat feels more tangible and compelling than dry facts about probability. Still, it is too simple to suggest that these shark attack films are made because ‘sharks exist and they are inherently scary.’ After all, not all the species featured in Animal Attack films pose similarly plausible threats. Also, sentiments towards sharks are neither monolithic nor static. Attitudes towards animal species are culturally specific and historically variable. In the U.S., perceptions of sharks changed drastically over a relatively short period of time. Around the start of the twentieth century, some doubted whether sharks would dare bite a living person. 21 20 Stephen King argues that this grounding is essential, as most horror narratives “demand a heavy dose of reality to get them rolling. Such reality frees the imagination of excess baggage and makes the weight of unbelief easier to lift. The audience is propelled into the movie by the feeling that, under the right set of circumstances, this could happen” (Danse 182). 21 Richard Fernicola explains “that from 1891 to July 1916 the scientific world expressed the firm view that sharks will not attack a living man” (xxv). New York businessman and “amateur swimmer” Hermann Oelrichs offered money to anyone “who could testify and substantiate his statement that he had seen a shark bite a living struggling man…. This reward was never paid” (“Sharks Attack Only”). Skeptics at the time held that a shark would only attack a dead body, and was “somewhat of a coward, like his distant land relative, the grizzly bear.” 56 Sharks gained a popular reputation as killers in July 1916, when four people were fatally attacked over the course of twelve days off the New Jersey coast. However, sensationalistic media coverage of shark attacks only exploded after the release of Jaws. 22 Jaws was produced when the general public and scientific communities knew little about sharks. 23 Through reference to infamous shark attacks, including the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks and the aftermath of the USS Indianapolis sinking, Jaws could create sufficient plausible deniability for its tale of a killer shark. Yet the toothy maw of a shark, a creature perfectly evolved to an environment where humans are ill at ease, needs few citations to make it frightening. Jaws presents a shark that acts more like a Shark (the mental image of how the species behaves) than real sharks. Yet Jaws also sparked curiosity about sharks; in so doing, it contributed to greater scientific and popular knowledge about the species. Nowadays, people are more likely to view sharks with wary respect and awe, but not to think of them as overtly or purposefully malicious. To an audience with a basic level of knowledge about sharks, the behavior on display in shark attack movies will often not scan. It is unlikely that a shark would attack a person, more unlikely still that a single shark would attack multiple people, and impossible that one or more sharks would fixate on and pursue specific individuals. This disconnect between reality and fantasy poses a problem in most Animal Attack films, where the species on display typically exhibit heightened or fanciful behaviors. Yet the appeal of animal villains relates to more than the way they provide a foundation of reality allowing fantasy to take root. 22 World War I superseded the U.S. “shark panic” following the 1916 attacks (Francis 46). Beryl Francis offers a comprehensive study of the protracted (and ongoing) media frenzy around shark sightings and attacks kickstarted by the release of Jaws. 23 George Burgess, a shark biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, explains: “when Jaws premiered, scientists knew little about sharks, partly because they were considered a nuisance by fisheries. ‘The most important commercial species always get the biological buck in terms of grants and money… Nobody cared much about sharks’” (Lovgren). There was no financial incentive to study the species and so sharks remained mysterious. 57 Human and animal villains are both more plausible threats than invented monsters, but animal antagonists possess an enigma that humans often lack. However monstrous the homicidal maniacs of horror may appear, they are still humans; their humanity is a feature that they share with their victims and audience members. While the killer’s ability to commit heinous acts marks them as fundamentally different than most humans, their humanity suggests the possibility that they can be communicated with or diagnosed and understood. 24 The non-human animal is a tougher nut to crack. Western thinkers long assumed that animals’ lack of written or spoken language systems comparable to that of humans indicated their inferiority and emptiness. That which could not be identified or understood was assumed not to exist. As human knowledge about animals grows, it becomes clear that animals do have ‘interior worlds’ and an ability to understand and react to the world around them. However, the exact nature of their interior worlds remains unclear. John Berger describes animals as living “parallel lives” to humans, separated by a “narrow abyss of non-comprehension” (13-15). Animals are enough like humans to make their non-human alterity intriguing, but also potentially disturbing and unsettling. Non-human animals offer a fascinating and largely inscrutable real-world alien presence. This endows them with a touch of the fantastic beast; they are beyond the realm of comprehensive human knowledge and control. I argue that this explains why point-of-view shots became hallmarks of the Jaws films and Animal Attack movies generally. I discuss these shots at greater length in Chapter Two. Ostensibly presenting the animal’s perspective, these POV shots 24 Many films featuring human killers provide some explanation for the killer’s behavior. This is not always the case, as in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) and Halloween (Carpenter, 1978). Yet subsequent films about the iconic killers in those films do explore and explain the villain’s psychosis. 58 offer fleeting opportunities for the audience to assume the position of a creature that exists in, understands, and perceives the world in ways very different from humans. If all non-human animals are strange to some extent, sharks, like reptiles and insects, are more resistant to being anthropomorphized than non-human mammals. This partially explains their ubiquity in Animal Attack cinema. In Jaws, Hooper tries to explain the world of the shark to Amity’s incredulous mayor: “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks. And that’s all.” Hooper offers two ways to stop this single-minded being: “you’re either going to kill this animal, or you’re going to cut off its food supply!” To the consternation of ecocritics, the film presents the first option as being infinitely more cathartic. What made Jaws an insidious force at the time of its release was the way its plausibly framed fantasy filled a gap left by ignorance. The elements discussed above (the believability of sharks as real-world threats, the inscrutable alien logic governing their actions, and their resistance to being anthropomorphized) come together in Jaws so effectively that many viewers accepted the premise that sharks are relentless human-killing machines. They bought this fantasy to such an extent that it put shark populations at risk. This earns Jaws critical condemnation for “stereotyping and misrepresentat[ing]” a threatened species (Ingram, Green 72). Presently, thanks in part to Jaws, that dangerous ignorance is less prevalent. Greater knowledge does not make people discount the possible threat posed by sharks, but it creates greater understanding of and respect for these creatures. In some cases, it even allows for something approaching affection. 25 Still, Jaws and its potentially harmful impact should not be dismissed. Neff cautions 25 While sharks resist anthropomorphization, a variety of cartoons and toy products endeavor to make them cute and cuddly. Even scientific organizations have adopted this tactic in an attempt to make sharks endearing. OCEARCH tags and tracks sharks. They manage Twitter accounts for these tagged sharks, giving them playful personas. 59 that the “Jaws Effect” is still a pernicious force. Part of the reason Jaws possesses that power relates to its captivating formal and narrative presentation. I will discuss its formal presentation in due course, but first wish to consider how its narrative works. The qualities that make Jaws a compelling text, one more absorbing that its sequels and many of its imitators, are the same elements that encourage critics to view it as being about more than a shark. Jaws centers on the interpersonal dynamics between three characters, each portrayed by a talented performer and each with his own compelling backstory and motivation. The classic horror scenario of an evil force preying upon an idyllic small town transitions seamlessly into a rousing nautical adventure. At its center is the satisfying character arc of Brody, who overcomes his fears to make his family and community safer. The shark contributes little, serving as a personality-free entity motivating the action. The resulting drama keeps audiences engaged, while also potentially making them more passively receptive. Herein lies the possible danger identified by many ecocritics. Despite this potential danger, critics fail to appreciate how the success of Jaws also undercuts the impact of its negative ecological ideology in two key ways. First, as indicated above, it contributed to popular knowledge about sharks. This revealed how the movie monster shark’s behavior departed from reality. Secondly, producers’ desire to capitalize on the phenomenal box office performance of Jaws rushed a series of sequels into existence. The original film works by sidelining the shark, literally (minimizing its screen time) and figuratively (focusing on its human characters). While the Brody family offers a nominal point of continuity between sequels, the shark provides the true thread connecting the films. The monster shark defines the franchise. If Jaws is not a film about a shark, its sequels definitely are films about sharks. Indeed, Joe Alves, who oversaw the shark’s design and construction in Jaws and Jaws 2, 60 helmed Jaws 3-D; it is a staffing decision indicative of how the sequels increasingly foreground the shark’s presence and its significance. Although less satisfying as cinematic experiences, the Jaws sequels perform the unintentional, but valuable, task of deconstructing the original’s plausibly presented fantasy and making it absurd. Gilding the Lily: Narrative Embellishment & the Jaws Franchise The sequels must transform a fearsome real animal into an iconic franchise villain – one always able to return for another film. In so doing, they lose the original’s plausible deniability. Yet they never embrace the absurdity of their premises in the way that some later shark attack films do. Postmodern shark attack films might inject obvious fantasy into the proceedings, as in the “science gone awry” narrative of Deep Blue Sea (Harlin, 1999). Others go the camp route of films like Shark Night 3-D (Ellis, 2011) and the Sharknado franchise. Those strategies play their own part in deconstructing the media myth of the malicious shark. I argue that there is something uniquely productive about the way the Jaws sequels ineptly struggle to maintain one foot in reality while indulging in heavy or ludicrous fantasy. Jaws belongs to the potentially insidious category of Animal Attack narratives that play their fantasies straight. Its sequels attempt to maintain the element of reality and believable threat that made the original’s shark a compelling antagonist. However, trying to maintain a claim on scientific grounding places noticeable strain on these fantasies as the sequels reach ever-more absurd heights. The original shark was never quite an animal in the wrong place at the wrong time. It needed to be a more active combatant than that. Yet it never rose to the levels of its successors: strategic masterminds playing the long game as they hunt down the Brody family. The overarching plot that develops throughout the franchise endows sharks with clear and legible motivations: a desire for revenge. Sharks become narrative agents, not mere forces of nature. 61 Each Jaws sequel has its own strategy for handling the question threatening to dismantle its premise - Why does the Brody family keep encountering killer sharks? Without fully committing itself, Jaws 2 hints at an explanation with the veneer of biological grounding. As bodies pile up, Chief Brody confronts a marine biologist with his theory that there is a new rogue shark. “I know dolphins communicate,” Brody says, “I mean, they send signals. You don’t think that if a shark was destroyed, that another shark could come and…” The biologist cuts Brody off before he can suggest the ridiculous: “Sharks don’t take things personally, Mr. Brody.” The marine biologist does not object to Brody drawing erroneous connections between dolphins and sharks in terms of intelligence, communal empathy, or communicative ability. She simply suggests that he misunderstands their motivations. The shark’s attacks do appear personal, as it pursues a group of local teens that includes Brody’s two sons. Still, Jaws 2 never explicitly states that the shark targets this group because of the Brody connection; it simply throws out the suggestion as a possible explanation for its narrative’s impossible coincidence. Jaws 3-D takes this reticence farther. When a great white arrives at the aquatic theme park employing the now-grown Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid), Mike opposes plans to adopt the shark as an attraction. “White sharks are killers,” he insists. “I know them for God’s sake. My father, my brother, myself. They’re murderers.” Despite Mike’s moral assessment of the species, one that deems them culpable for their “crimes,” he never elaborates on his near-fatal encounters with two separate great whites in his youth. He also never expresses surprise that yet another shark should arrive to imperil his life. Actually, Mike encounters two sharks in this entry; it turns out that the first shark’s even-larger mother also roams the park. To its credit, Jaws 3-D takes the franchise in a more interesting direction than the other sequels. The first two films focus on a coastal community struggling to exploit its proximity to 62 an unpredictable natural resource. Jaws 3-D relocates the action, engaging a different, but related example of humans attempting to manage the natural world for fun and profit. The ambitious park’s artificial lagoon connects to the sea. Officials monitor everything from an underwater control center, the glass walls of which provide a panoptic view of the various attractions. The park features a host of well-trained human and non-human performers. This regimented park falls apart when the sharks sneak in from the wild sea, destroying the underwater hub from which the park owners presume to control their recreated natural world. Jaws 3-D also comes the closest to embracing camp through its use of 3-D gimmicks, its outlandish story full of over-the- top characters, and its gaudy ‘80s palette. 26 Perhaps because of its difference, the franchise disowns the third film. The final film resets the series, ignoring everything established in Jaws 3- D. Jaws: The Revenge, unlike the previous films, explicitly addresses the reason for the shark’s return. In so doing, it pushes the material to its breaking point. Jaws: The Revenge takes place after Chief Brody’s death from a heart attack. Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) attributes his death to fear of the sharks plaguing their family. Sharks play a more direct role in the death of her son Sean (Mitchell Anderson), who gets devoured right before Christmas in the waters off Amity. Ellen tells Mike (Lance Guest), now working as a marine biologist in the Bahamas, “It waited for him… It waited all this time and it came for him.” It is unclear whether she (and the film) means that this is a shark from the previous films that escaped its explosive fate, or whether all sharks are acting as a collective against the Brody family. Mike, a scientist, dismisses the idea. “Sharks don’t commit murder,” he assures Ellen. “They don’t pick a person.” 26 The third film almost went in an explicitly comic direction. Early in the project’s development, producers considered enlisting National Lampoon to make a parody film: Jaws 3 – People 0 (Siskel). 63 As in Jaws 2, the scientific expert disputes the layperson’s instinct to ascribe human-like malice and intelligence to the shark. Jaws 2 never endorses this idea. Jaws: The Revenge commits to Ellen’s theory. Her preternatural awareness of the shark’s presence creates a veritable psychic connection between the two. It allows her to sense that the shark has followed the family from the frigid waters of New England in winter to the warm seas of the Bahamas. As the film notes, neither of these are natural habitats for great whites. The shark’s presence is no accident. In Amity, the harbor obstruction that lures out Sean looks suspiciously like a staged scene. In the Bahamas, the shark continues its pursuit of Brody family members with discriminating single- mindedness, sometimes bypassing other nearby humans in order to go after its targets. Even as it reaches these absurd heights, Jaws: The Revenge, like the other sequels, claims a level of veracity both within the text and in discourse promoting the film. Animal Attack films regularly feature some diegetic voice of scientific authority. These experts offer a unique form of exposition. They explain to other characters (and to the audience) what to expect from the featured species. This allows the film to orient people to the supposed legitimate threat of these creatures, or to reveal the extent of their unnatural behavior’s deviance. They often also identify a “weakness” in the species, something people can exploit to defeat the animal. In Jaws, Hooper serves as more than a likable protagonist. He explains why audiences should believe the film’s scenario and be frightened by its villain. All the Jaws sequels also feature marine biologists in major or minor roles. In the post-Hooper Jaws sequels, the experts must simultaneously question the plausibility of the film’s events, while providing information to ground the story. In Jaws 2, Dr. Elkins (Collin Wilcox) only features in one scene. She dismisses Brody’s theory that sharks would seek revenge for one of their own. At the same time, she gives Brody key information. 64 Brody explains that he knows “sharks are attracted by blood and thrashing about.” Elkins adds: “And sound…. Like sonar or radar. They home in on unusual sounds, irregular sounds – almost any rhythmic low frequency vibration.” In the end, Brody applies this lesson. Beating rhythmically on an underwater power line with an oar, Brody attracts the rampaging shark. When it bites the cable, it electrocutes itself. The presence and possible motivation of this shark seem impossible, yet the film wants to keep it a real animal that responds to stimuli in predictable, instinctual ways. Scientist characters can also aid the story by saying nothing. Jaws 3-D takes place at a marine park teeming with sea life experts. Dr. Kay Morgan (Bess Armstrong) serves as the film’s primary authority on sharks, discussing the procedures necessary for keeping sharks alive in captivity and providing information on more esoteric topics, like distinguishing baby sharks from adults. Yet her real asset to the film comes from not mentioning glaring issues with its shark. While she deduces from the bite radius on a dead body that a shark is 35 feet long, she does not mention that this would make it considerably larger than the biggest great whites credibly recorded. 27 She also never draws attention to the shark’s habit of swimming backwards, allowing it to back out of traps and behave like a battering ram. In reality, sharks cannot perform the seemingly simple maneuver of reversing. These might appear to be petty quibbles leveled against works of silly escapism. However, the use of real threatened animals in these films produces ethical stakes different from what one encounters in works of pure fantasy. These films maintain a pretense of plausible deniability, one aided by their use of diegetic voices of authority and what these experts do (and do not) comment upon. Just as they play fast and loose with minor details about sharks, like their 27 There are two instances where individuals claimed to have spotted great whites that were 36 feet (reported in Australian in the 1870s) and 37 feet (reported in Canada in the 1930s). Neither of these were confirmed. Since great whites are not generally larger than 21 feet, both claims are regarded as dubious (“What Are the Biggest”). 65 ability to swim backwards, they also exaggerate the risk sharks pose to humans, a fiction with serious consequences. Even Jaws: The Revenge, where the shark ventures into environments wholly foreign to its species while pursuing the Brodys, plays this game. Its biologist characters concede the unlikelihood of its scenario. Yet, once these events come to pass, their discussions of monitoring shark heartbeats 28 , sharks’ response to electromagnetic impulses, and even peripheral matters of scientific research like grant applications attempt to lend these events a veneer of believability. Helping its case, the end credits of Jaws: The Revenge boast something unique in the franchise: a scientific consultant, Dr. John McCosker. This brings up another important element in these films. They not only try to appear authoritative based on the text’s content. The promotional discourse surrounding the films also tries to drive home their reliability. A frequent tactic for bolstering the credibility of these films involves discussing the quality of the shark models used in the production, and how accurately these models approximate the real thing. These discussions inevitably seek to reaffirm the abject nature of real sharks. One sees this in Jeannot Szwarc’s statements about the awesome force of a shark’s bite, 29 or Joe Alves decrying sharks as more monstrous than other unreasoning animals, given their cannibalistic ways. 30 This rhetoric also comes from scientific authorities. Dr. McCosker writes in 28 The heart rates of other shark species have been monitored, but this research has not been performed on great whites (Martin). 29 Szwarc uses his statement to position the shark as more formidable than other big predators. He explains: “When the lion bites, it has 750 pounds of pressure per square inch…. The great white shark attacks with 20,000 pounds per square inch. I read about a diver in California who felt this,” the reporter describes Szwarc brushing his thigh lightly, “and his leg was gone. That’s how powerful the shark is’” (Auchmutey). 30 Responding to the question “Why is the great white shark such a terrifying movie monster?” Alves first explains simply: “It can eat you.” He elaborates with reference to the alien mentality of animals, which I discuss above: “There’s no sense in reasoning with a shark, and that’s really frightening. With a killer like Norman Bates in ‘Psycho,’ you can try to talk to him.” However, even in the animal kingdom, Alves sees sharks as uniquely terrible: “Even with a bear – I was once confronted in the woods – there was some kind of reasoning. But a shark eats its own. The young will eat their litter mates…. Sharks… are really quite awful” (Siskel). 66 the Los Angeles Times that the makers of Jaws: The Revenge appreciated that “Carcharodon carcharias, the largest flesh-eating fish on our planet, requires no hyperbole.” McCosker claims that the script “reads like a PBS-TV special with teeth.” Having described the inherent monstrous nature of sharks, those involved in these productions suggest that their film’s mission is to recreate the shark’s intrinsic menace. The filmmakers claim that sophisticated special effects, informed by the physiology of real sharks, allow them to accomplish this simulation. 31 This inevitably leads to a discussion of the complex machinery being used, which invites comments about the difficulty of maintaining this equipment, particularly when shooting at sea. By revealing the production’s tricks and the effects’ imperfections, these comments burden the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief even before the film’s release. This puts a heavy strain on the film’s fantasies, which can be useful given the content and consequences of those fantasies. In order to illustrate the above process, consider the case of Jaws 2. As the first sequel, its mere existence foregrounds the cynical nature of the movie industry. The press also reported extensively on the troubles plaguing the production, including turnover among, and conflict between, key members of the production. 32 In addition to those human dramas, there were the problems with the shark. Or rather sharks, as the film required three models, each between 24-25 31 McCosker suggests that the special effects of Jaws: The Revenge would withstand all but the most expert eye: “mechanical-shark makers were carefully analyzing the films and photographs of living white sharks so as to capture every articulation and postural detail of the swimming and attacking shark. They examined shark carcasses…. No detail was ignored – save one, the sex of the shark. Bruce… like his – actually her – predecessors, lacks claspers, the pair of five-foot-long intromittent organs used by male sharks to inseminate their mates. The majority of the views in the film will not allow one to look from beneath and behind, but elasmobranchologists (ichthyologists who study sharks and rays) with a keen eye might catch that detail. Still other anatomical details, such as the size of the shark, are frighteningly accurate.” 32 Paul Rosenfield offers a summation of the numerous problems plaguing the shoot. Jaws 2 lost its original director and writers after shooting began. Szwarc, primarily known for his TV work (and the mutant cockroach film Bug, 1975) was far down the list of possible replacements. Szwarc had multiple run-ins with star Roy Scheider, who openly stated that he was only doing the film due to contractual commitments. 67 feet and weighing one-ton (“The Costs”). Even as production designer Joe Alves assures a reporter that the new film’s shark “is much more versatile and complex than in the first film,” the same story mentions how the models face threat from “salt corrosion and exposure to the weather” (“The Costs”). These models represent a predator perfectly evolved to its aquatic environment, an environment in which these models barely function. With knowing irony, one crewmember muses: “I guess you could say there’s never been a shark built the sea couldn’t destroy” (Auchmutey). These manufactured approximations, these shark-things, fall well short of the creature they endeavor to recreate. By investing so much in, and revealing so much about, these shark special effects, the filmmakers leave themselves open to attack on that front. This attack comes not only from critics, 33 but also from other filmmakers. It became a tradition for those involved in the latest Jaws film to boost their own project by deriding the efforts of the previous filmmakers, at least in regards to the quality of their shark models. 34 Given that the bodies of these sharks play such an important role in these films’ supposed veracity, I now shift focus to the peculiar nature of animal bodies on screen. In the Flesh: Jaws & Visualizing Viscous Animals Animals stimulate the audience’s mind and imagination, but they are not simply conceptually interesting. Animals are also visually arresting. Since the medium’s inception, 33 Vincent Canby describes the shark in Jaws 2 as looking “like something one might ride at Disneyland” (“Film”). Michael Blowen likens Jaws 3-D’s shark to “a bloated, gray balloon.” David Noh compares the Jaws: The Revenge shark to a “large, malevolent oven glove.” 34 Joe Alves worked as a production designer for Jaws. When he returned as production designer and assistant producer on Jaws 2, Alves said Jaws 2’s shark “is much more versatile and complex than in the first film…. Unlike before, it can go in more directions and attack from all sides” (“The Cost”). Talking to Gene Siskel to promote Jaws 3-D, Alves said that he “knows that he has at least one leg up on the first ‘Jaws’ film. His mechanical shark models are much, much better than Spielberg’s. ‘The shark gave us no problem whatever in this picture. After three times around, Roy Arbogast [the shark designer] really put it together’” (original emphasis). For Jaws: The Revenge, director Joseph Sergeant bragged: “Our [shark] is bigger, more flexible and more realistic looking” (Rosenthal). 68 filmmakers recognized animals as compelling cinematic subjects. Starting with the sequential photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge and Jules-Etienne Marey, people documented the vitality of animal bodies and movement. As discussed in the Introduction, early cinema audiences were also drawn to the drama and horror of animal violence and death. Seeing animal bodies on screen can have a powerful effect on viewers. This can work to the benefit or detriment of Animal Attack films. Let us consider first how this might enhance the impact of Animal Attack narratives. Earlier, I discussed the mysterious allure of animals and their alien consciousness. Since animals are neither entirely knowable nor predictable, the presence of real animals on screen can invest works of fiction with a visceral authenticity greater than their narrative content. Jennifer Fay highlights an essay by Andre Bazin about the adventure film Where No Vultures Fly (Watts, 1951). A moment of “screen cohabitation” strikes Bazin in particular; at one point, a real lion appears in the same shot as a human actor. Any number of formal elements lie at the filmmaker’s disposal for building tension in a scene. However, a simple long shot showing an actor next to a dangerous animal, like a lion, carries a unique impact. It introduces a level of danger beyond the diegesis (Fay, “Seeing” 44). No matter how trained (or sedated) that lion might be, the potential violence of that on-set encounter makes the moment disturbing. The scene leaves the audience with a palpable sense of what if – the violence that could have been, both on- and off-screen. The potential for real violence makes the threat of fictional violence resonate. Images of animals can have this effect due to their push-pull reality effect. Animal imagery breaks down demarcations between reality and fantasy, documentary and fiction (Burt, Animals 10-11). Animals on film have a disruptive quality. They gesture to a reality beyond the film. Jonathan Burt argues that the animal image ruptures the diegesis, pulling viewers out of the 69 narrative and causing them to think more broadly about the specific animal they are watching, and animals generally (Animals 11). The animal’s presence does not necessarily reveal some larger truth about the particular creature or species on display, or about animals broadly speaking. Nevertheless, it points to a world that lies outside the truth and logic of the narrative. In the scenario described above, this might make the Animal Attack scenario more effective. However, it also creates a potential problem for Animal Attack films. Since it is difficult to imagine the animal being part of the film’s fiction, the mere suggestion of violence being done against an animal can feel too real and disturbing. What does this mean for Animal Attack films, where the animal is an enemy that the human characters hope to (violently) defeat? Based on Frank Buck’s claims in the 1930s, audiences should be eager to see animal “monsters” get their comeuppance at a film’s conclusion. Audiences watching a modern Animal Attack film should also understand the artificiality of any violence done by or against the animals in these melodramatic fantasies. One might worry about the conceptual violence done to these animals (how are attitudes towards real sharks being affected by this negative portrayal of sharks), but presumably the animals on set were not actually hurt. However, the fictional status of these films and their simulated violence provides less comfort than one might imagine. Akira Lippit notes that most modern Hollywood films carry the reassuring American Humane Association disclaimer that, even if an animal gets hurt or killed in the world of the film, “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” (“The Death” 11). These warnings potentially rupture the diegesis in their own way, increasing awareness of the animal “actor” making the film. Still, audiences remain sensitive to the suggestion or simulation of animals being hurt or killed. Indeed, if an Animal Attack film ends with the death of its animal antagonist, one should note how the film presents that death and deals with the animal’s dead body. Often, as in Jaws, 70 these films favor an explosive end for the animal, or some other means of avoiding having to linger on the image of the animal’s dead body. Audience sensitivity to animal violence and the film’s need to actively reassure viewers of its artifice potentially put most Animal Attack films in a tricky position. Yet that reality effect can also make the threat of these animals feel more authentic. Such is the dilemma when a film features a potentially dangerous, but also potentially sympathetic real animal on screen. I will deal with this predicament at greater length in Chapter Two. Sharks, however, are a unique case. The sharks in the Jaws films and other shark attack movies offer a different set of considerations. First, most viewers respond to sharks very differently than they would to charismatic mammals. Filmmakers do not have to navigate audience sentiment so carefully, especially in terms of the violence done to sharks within the film. 35 Secondly, the sharks in these films are, by and large, not actual animals. Even if great whites could survive in captivity, which they cannot, sharks lack a temperament or mentality receptive to training. Sharks do not perform fun tricks at SeaWorld. As such, film productions could never depend on their cast and crew safely interacting with a great white in a controlled environment. 36 Indeed, there was an incident, shortly before Jaws, in which a great white killed a stuntman working with sharks during the production of a Samuel Fuller film – an incident luridly reported in Life and exploited by the film’s producers, who retitled the film Shark! (1969). 37 Given the challenges and dangers of working with real sharks, Jaws and 35 This is not a hard and fast rule. Rich Juzwiak does good work in the popular press holding films accountable for their misrepresentations of sharks. Upon the release of The Shallows (Collet-Serra, 2016), which features Blake Lively fighting a killer great white shark, Juzwiak took a clear stance with his memorable headline: “Nothing Can Convince Me That Blake Lively’s Life Is Worth More Than a Great White Shark’s.” 36 One does not expect to see humans occupying the frame with live sharks outside of documentaries and without obvious safety gear. That makes the low-budget thriller Open Water (Kentis, 2003) so exceptional. While not featuring great whites, that film is most effective when its leads appear on screen surrounded by real sharks. 37 Gregersdotter et. al. suggest that the shark that killed stuntman Jose Marco was being used by the production (“A History” 27-28). Actually, the original Life report notes that Marco was working with “a docile bull shark” (“Shark 71 most shark films cobble together an apparently organic individual shark that is, in fact, a shifting assemblage of inorganic materials. These shark-things combine animatronics, body part models, composite effects, CGI (in more recent films), and documentary footage of real sharks in the wild. Above, I discuss how working with real animals on Animal Attack films affects perception of the animals in question and their threat. What happens when a film must work around the absence of the real animal? It might amplify the impression of the real animal’s danger – great whites are too wild, too untrainable, too dangerous to be on set. However, the efficacy of these shark films still depends upon the artificial sharks being executed with a certain degree of technical skill, a constantly shifting benchmark. David Dowling positions Jaws as the culmination of a long history of cinematic efforts to artificially recreate aquatic animal life, thereby avoiding the difficulties and dangers of working with real animals. Early technologies severely limited filmmakers’ ability to visualize stories of animal-inflicted danger. Dowling’s account focuses on attempts to adapt Moby Dick primarily; he argues that the fearsome aquatic predators in Melville and Benchley’s works present similar challenges for filmmakers. Dowling describes how The Sea Beast, a 1926 Moby Dick adaptation, was hampered not only by “the absence of underwater photography,” but also by the crude tools available for creating a whale capable of ‘performing’ aggression (54). The whale is kept mostly off-screen; when it does emerge, it takes the form of what M. Thomas Inge describes as “a crude papier-mâché monster as best Hollywood could muster at the time” (Dowling 54). Thirty years later, attempts to simulate a formidable real-world aquatic predator were still severely Kills” 86). The great white that killed Marco was a different shark that “punched through a protective net strung across the seaward side of the set” (86). After the success of Jaws, Shark! was re-released as Man-Eater. For a full account of the production of Shark!, see Dombrowski, The Films, 177-180. 72 constrained. The whale in John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick adaptation was described as “a rubbery special effects whale… [which resembled] the Goodyear blimp” (54). These quotes speak to a representational obstacle facing Animal Attack films. They face a challenge different from if they featured fictional monsters, which require an immediate suspension of disbelief and cannot be gauged against the real thing (“werewolves do not look like that”). Recreating extant animals invites an often-unflattering comparison to the real-world referent. In contrast to earlier clumsy efforts, Dowling describes Jaws’s shark model as “the most lifelike mechanical sea creature in film history” (54-55). Of course, technology has come a long way since 1975. Modern digital effects can better approximate a shark’s speed and flexibility, as well as the subtle details of its physiology. Of course, not all digital effects are created equal. Digital effects can age poorly, or effects executed on a limited budget, time frame, and/or by an inept team might not look good even at the time of their release. Poorly executed digital effects can prove as distracting and estranging for audiences as weak or outdated practical effects. However, recent theatrical shark films, like The Shallows (Collet-Serra, 2016) and 47 Meters Down (Roberts, 2017), feature convincing models informed by the behavior and appearance of real sharks (Failes). These digital recreations might not be perfect, but they have the advantage over earlier films of being assembled in a less obviously piecemeal fashion. In approaching this new advanced generation of recreated animals, it helps to return to earlier iconic cases where the patchwork quality of the effects is more noticeable. Shark movies tend to offer extreme examples, but almost all Animal Attack films require some degree of artificial supplement to get the proper effect. Whether the animal in question is partially faked or never actually appears on screen, it warrants returning to Burt’s argument that animals on screen rupture the diegesis, pointing to the world beyond the film. What becomes of 73 the indexical quality of animals when an artificial construct appears on screen? Does the simulation disrupt the narrative with the same force? Does this depend on how closely the simulation approximates the real thing? These models, particularly poorly executed ones, are less likely to elicit an affective response than the real animal. However, regardless of their quality, I argue that these simulations have a similar cognitive effect. Through what these films say and show, they often keep viewers in mind of the real animals, something outside of the diegesis. Often the things said relate to how the narrative animal conforms to or departs from norms of behavior or appearance. These comments encourage viewers to compare the worlds inside and outside of the film. Such discussions, and the quality of the effects, determine the extent to which viewers remain aware of the machinations necessary to turn these animals into monsters. In Dowling’s account, technological advancements allow Jaws’s filmmakers to create a simulacrum convincing enough to compensate for their inability to work with real great whites. Jaws, and movies of its kind, use the tools available to create a shark-thing that maps onto popular conceptions of what a shark should be in ways that the real thing never could. Of course, however much Dowling praises the shark effects, Jaws largely works because its filmmakers employ creative solutions to build suspense while avoiding having to photograph the model in full. At this stage, I discuss how Jaws strategically conceals and reveals its shark. Understanding a film in relation to its historical context can increase one’s appreciation of the work. However, films are living texts; especially with successful and noteworthy films like Jaws, people continue to consume them long after their initial releases. Modern audiences inevitably understand older films in relation to contemporary works, which can leave them feeling put-off by different standards of acting, pacing, cinematography, etc. In the case of Jaws, modern audiences used to photorealistic digital effects are more likely to be actively aware of, 74 and potentially alienated by, the clumsy practical effects used for the shark. 38 Many contemporary Jaws fans will also have some awareness of the problems caused by the malfunctioning fake shark, nicknamed “Bruce.” Part of the saving grace of Jaws, and a reason it still works effectively, is that it does not rely upon Bruce to do much heavy lifting. Jaws works around its compromised special effects in astonishing ways. The most effective shark stand-in comes courtesy of John Williams’s deceptively simple and iconic theme, which aurally translates the shark’s essence. The music not only generates tension, it communicates an understanding of the shark as a creature completely unlike humans, a machine driven by its desire to eat and kill. Williams sought to create something “brainless… like the shark. All instinct” (Audissino 111). Williams purposefully avoids melody, “a product of artistic civilization, which by its nature brings traces of history and culture” (Audissino 111). Williams uses two notes and two chords to create “a brief repeating and hammering fragment, more rhythmic than melodic” (Audissino 111). The theme’s combination of two unrelated chords unsettles because it defies human expectations that pleasing music should operate according to a clear logic, allowing audiences to see where it is going (Brand). Instead of aesthetic legacies, Williams’s theme draws upon biological rhythms. Composer Neil Brand notes that the driving score calls to mind a beating heart; the music becomes “the muscular and blood-coursing rhythm of the shark.” In the buildup to moments of violence, the tempo of this musical heartbeat quickens. When the shark attacks, the score provides musical “bites” that work in a manner comparable to Bernard Herrmann’s screeching musical “stabs” in Psycho’s shower scene 38 In 1996, comedians Matt Stone and Trey Parker used Jaws to exemplify outdated cinematic technologies. In the mock Universal training film “Your Studio and You,” the animatronic shark bobs in the water next to a tram full of bored tourists. The narrator warns: “If we don’t keep in step with the times, things that once were neat and thrilling can become old and stupid” (“Short Film”). 75 (Brand). As in that famous scene, Williams’s music suggests terrible events, without the film needing to show them. The film’s environment facilitates these off-screen occurrences. The unique attributes of water both contribute to the scenario’s horror and explain the absence of a visible shark. The placid surface of the water belies and conceals what lies beneath. This creates opportunities to play with the viewer’s imagination. Throughout the film, objects on the water’s surface move unnaturally, under the apparent influence of something large and powerful below that surface. In this way, the shark operates like a spectral entity; its manipulation of visible objects indicates the presence of an invisible force. The opening sequence memorably utilizes this tactic when the shark mauls its first victim, Chrissie (Susan Backlinie). As Chrissie moves through the calm, shimmering sea, the film cuts to an angle below the waves as the camera advances on the woman slowly. These POV shots, where the camera plays the shark, signal the shark’s presence without showing the creature. They also reveal the unseen space surrounding Chrissie and indicate the presence of an approaching off-screen force. Returning to the surface, Chrissie disappears underwater suddenly. When she reemerges, she hurtles through the sea like a being possessed, changing directions abruptly as her upper body spasms violently and she emits a distressing series of screams and futile pleas. After this explosive event, she disappears back under the water without a trace. Jaws offers diverse points of graphic reference to keep the audience in mind of the off- screen entity exerting this force. Brody’s early research gives the audience an illustrated orientation to sharks. As Brody flips through a series of books, the audience sees different ways of visually understanding sharks: drawn diagrams of a shark’s sensory organs, sensationalistic paintings of sharks destroying ships, photographs of sharks in the wild, and images of shark bites 76 (See Figures 1.2-1.4). More interesting are the various ways the citizens of Amity struggle to represent this creature in ways that parallel the filmmakers’ own trials in that regard. The first of these is a textual sign, as Brody types out “SHARK ATTACK” on an autopsy report. This evocative phrase receives its own close-up, every capitalized letter emphasized by the sound of the typewriter (See Figure 1.5). Primitive iconic signs are also deployed. During a meeting to discuss the shark crisis, Quint drags his nails down a chalkboard featuring a cartoon shark with a stick figure person standing in its open mouth (See Figure 1.6). Later, pranksters deface a promotional billboard for Amity’s beaches by adding in a shark fin (a drawing that Hooper suggests is proportionally quite accurate) (See Figure 1.7). These imperfect depictions indicate the characters’ attempts to comprehend the terror and trauma of the ongoing crisis and the creature stalking the waters. As referenced at the start of this chapter, an especially apt Figure 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 – As Brody researches sharks, his literary sources provide different ways of visually understanding sharks. 77 moment occurs when the boys’ crude shark fin replica proceeds the audience’s first look at the film’s own crude shark rig – their imperfect machine playing the part of a real eating machine. It seems inevitable that, after all the buildup and dreadful hinting, the payoff disappoints. Jaws runs just over two hours, and the audience only gets its first quick look at the shark over an hour into the film (See Figure 1.8 & 1.9). Another twenty minutes pass before the shark reappears, quickly popping out of the water and prompting Brody’s famous warning about the Figure 1.5 – A textual sign marks the first time in Jaws that Brody has to reckon with the shark’s presence. Figure 1.6 & 1.7 – Crude and comic iconic signs are also used by the citizens of Amity to confront the threat to their community. 78 need for a bigger boat. This second time, the film telegraphs its appearance, priming the audience. Brody’s close-up takes up half of the frame, leaving the left side of the screen notably empty. Into this loaded space emerges the shark’s head for only two seconds (See Figure 1.10). The camera cuts to a close-up of Brody’s reaction before giving the audience only a shot of the shark’s nose disappearing back underwater, as if one looked back just too late to get another peek. After that, the shark appears more regularly and in more detail. Eventually, the shark launches itself out of the water and flops around on deck for all the world to see (See Figure 1.11 & 1.12). What impression does the shark model give? Figure 1.8 & 1.9 – The first time the film reveals more than the shark’s dorsal fin, the head is seen under the water, which continues to conceal the special effect. The head is then briefly glimpsed sticking out of the water. Figure 1.11 & 1.12 – By the conclusion of Jaws, the film makes little attempt to conceal the shark model and features extended close-ups showcasing the effect. Figure 1.10 – The second time the film reveals the shark’s head, the audience is primed to anticipate its appearance, though the model only appears on screen for two seconds. 79 Altogether, the shark’s body only appears in frame for about six minutes. That includes instances where only the dorsal fin is seen racing through the water. When the film reveals more than just the fin, the effect works best when glimpsed through the water. When the shark rises from the water, the illusion breaks down. Its surface appearances are often brief, but its deficiencies can still be detected. As the shark emerges from the water and swings towards the camera, water trickles out of the gap between its eye and the surrounding skin. As it lunges after Brody, air bubbles are visible where the fabric skin connects to the underlying structure imperfectly. These small details accentuate the overall rubbery effect of the shark, which moves stiffly and mechanically, its skin, eyes, and teeth all sharing the same dull texture. Each appearance further compromises the effect, which suffers most egregiously when the shark jumps onto the ship and gobbles Quint. While these shots do no favors for the film, they also do not sink it. By the conclusion, much has been done to get the audience invested in the narrative. Also, Jaws gives viewers a taste of the real thing, incorporating footage of actual sharks to supplement the creaky model on display. Near the film’s conclusion, Hooper descends into the sea in a cage, from which he attempts to stab the shark with a poison hypodermic. When Hooper enters the water, the audience gets its first glimpse of an actual, living shark. The footage comes courtesy of Ron and Valerie Taylor, a married pair of underwater wildlife photographers. 39 At the time, the Australian couple were best known for their work on Blue Water, White Death (Gimbel & Lipscomb, 1971), 39 The Taylors are interesting characters in their own right. By Ron Taylor’s own account, he was an enormously successful spear fisherman. Over the course of a weekend “he and a partner killed 50 sharks… using spears with hypodermic needles filled with poisons” (Kaufman). Apparently, “[i]n the 1950s, he had a change of heart in the midst of a spearfishing competition. ‘I just thought, “What am I doing down here killing these poor, defenseless marine creatures?”’” (Gelineau). He turned his attention to “hunting” with a camera lens. Like Peter Benchley, Taylor devoted his later life to conservation projects and expressed mixed feelings about his role on Jaws. Like the biologists cited earlier, he felt Jaws both increased unwarranted negative stigmas about sharks while driving popular interest in the species. Notably, many of his obituaries singled out his work on Jaws as his most noteworthy contribution to the world, despite his becoming a member of the Order of Australia for his conservation work. 80 a documentary about trying to capture footage of the elusive great white shark. 40 It bears noting that, at the time, there was a dearth of quality footage of great whites. The public had less of a frame of reference for how a real shark looks and moves. It was a visual ignorance matching the limited knowledge about the species. Based on their experience, the Taylors were entrusted with the $100,000 project of producing sixteen shots featuring real sharks planned out by Spielberg (Gottlieb 40-41). To get the material, they filmed near South Australia’s Dangerous Reef, halfway around the world from the primary Martha’s Vineyard shooting location. Viewed from a certain perspective, their ‘menacing’ footage has a sense of poignancy. The sharks filmed for this sequence are simply existing in their environment, coming to explore baits and lures introduced by the crew. They cannot understand that their images will be incorporated into a narrative about the wickedness of their species, a narrative that will contribute to the deaths of many sharks. This footage, shot over several days, uses multiple sharks as stand-ins for the central killer shark. This trick plays upon people’s inability to tell one shark from another. Any shark could be the film’s killer. The celluloid footage of these sharks becomes one more component of the inorganic multiplicity that makes up the film’s shark. This real footage provides a sense of the lithe grace and fearsome power of these animals. When the shark is simply swimming through the empty water, it is impossible to tell how big it is. However, the Taylors needed shots that appeared to show an unusually large shark harassing Hooper in his cage. To create this illusion, they shot with a 5/8-scale replica cage and Carl Rizzo, a jockey-turned-stuntman. Carl Gottlieb explains that this trickery was necessary to achieve Spielberg’s desire for a sense of realism unadulterated by “the usual movie magic… [that meant] 40 Like Shark!, Blue Water, White Death was re-released in the wake of Jaws’s massive success. Shark’s Treasure (Wilde, 1975) also benefited from what Variety dubbed “Shark Fever,” where any film tangentially associated with sharks rode Jaws’s coattails (“Pictures: Analysis”). 81 no long shots of a shark intercut with close-ups of faces reacting, no cutaways to miniatures, no models. The story and the movie required that you see a boat, and men, and a shark, all in the same shot, on the surface of an ocean with an open horizon. Further, underwater, you’d have to see a man in a shark cage being attacked by a giant shark” (41). However, as the crew prepared to shoot Rizzo in the cage, things went awry. Before Rizzo could enter the submerged cage, the shark they had lured became entangled in the cage’s ropes. In its frenzy to escape, the shark attacked the cage and the boat. Valerie Taylor reported that the shark’s flailing nearly injured Rizzo. Had he been in the cage, which the shark destroyed and sunk, things could have been much worse. 41 The incident illustrates the unpredictable risk of working around wild animals. Gottlieb put it succinctly: “the shark is not waiting for anyone to say ‘Action.’ He’s got two or three million years of evolution saying ‘Lunchtime’” (39). The incident makes for spectacular footage, as the trapped shark thrashes about violently, whipping the cage to and fro as if it weighed nothing. Indeed, the footage of the shark wrestling with an obviously empty cage was good enough that it contributed to the decision to keep Dreyfuss’s character alive (McBride, Steven 235). Not only does the footage demonstrate the physical power of the shark, it endows the film with that what if thrill of potential violence to which Bazin alludes. Carl Gottlieb suggests as much, pointing out that the film’s “Australian footage shows real sharks snapping at a live human. The illusion so necessary to the story is honestly arrived at, even though it remains illusion. Richard Dreyfuss was never in the water 41 Valerie Taylor provides a vivid description of the incident: “A huge head rose above the spray twisting and turning, black maw gaping in a frenzy of rage and pain. Triangular teeth splintered as they tore the restricting metal. The brute dove, his sickle tail whipping the air six feet above the surface. Carl [Rizzo] stood frozen with shock. As Rodney [Fox, a collaborator of the Taylors] pulled him back, the tail brushed Carl’s face. Had Rodney been two seconds slower, the little stuntman would have been killed, his head crushed to a pulp…. The great white shark’s body crashed into the hull. The noise was incredible, splintering wood, thrashing water, cage against boat, shark against boat…. A last mighty splash, then shark, cage, winch, and deck vanished in a boiling, foaming swirl. Had Carl been in the cage, he too would have vanished with no possible chance of survival” (McBride, Steven 235). 82 with a live shark, but folks scream just the same, because somewhere, someone was nose-to-nose with a great white” (41). Audiences, Gottlieb argues, get a unique thrill because of the film’s use of a real wild shark. Based on the challenges of the Australia shoot, Gottlieb chastises those who would poke holes in the illusion: “if your smart buddy, or your own smart self, wants to go back and look at the movie to pick out the mechanical shark shots, good luck, and remember people almost got killed making it look real to you” (90). Gottlieb expresses annoyance at the idea of people doing what I am essentially doing in this chapter. However, becoming too immersed in this fantasy can have negative consequences. Remaining conscious of the illusion and its construction curbs those harmful potentials. As discussed above, the reality effect of animals on film can work for and against these Animal Attack films. Gottlieb describes how this visceral footage enhances the film’s impact. Yet this footage might also contribute to rupturing the diegesis in ways that degrade the film’s overall impact. This footage, like so much in Jaws related to its engagement with real animals, simultaneously works for and against the film. In demonstrating the abilities of real sharks, the footage shines a particularly unflattering light on the film’s model. After the real shark’s initial approach to examine Hooper in his cage, it departs quickly. It glides gracefully back into the blue gloom from whence it emerged. Hooper watches it leave. After a moment’s pause, the shark model lurches into frame from behind Hooper, ramming directly into the cage. The graceful exit of the real and the abrupt entrance of the artificial provides a jarring contrast. Yet the moment can still startle because it is a well- conceived and executed fake out. Again, one returns to the ways Jaws’s strengths hide its imperfections. Its sequels all utilize the various techniques of showing and not showing the shark 83 discussed above. However, the way they handle these elements foreground the incipient fractures in the first film’s fiction. The Breaking Point: The Jaws Franchise & Deconstructing the Visualized Shark Jaws ends with an audacious display of its shark. This leaves the sequels struggling to reconcile a key element of the original’s success (its use of suspense and delayed gratification) with the anticipation that audiences want and expect more carnage and more shark. Jaws 2 tries its hand at creative strategies to avoid showing the model in full. It sets up its most intriguing attempt in the first scene. Jaws 2 begins with a pair of divers exploring the wreckage of Quint’s sunken boat. While one diver poses for photographs in front of the ship, the film cuts to a familiar POV shot and the iconic theme begins. When the shark attacks, its dark form appears for only a second before the film returns to its charging POV. As the photographer drops his camera, a series of bright flashes punctuate a frantic montage of fifteen shots over the course of twenty seconds. We see various angles and framings of the divers being spun about and dragged around by an off-screen force, as well as the flashing camera sinking to the bottom of the sea. Only one of these fifteen shots features the body of the shark, and that shot lasts only two seconds. Fifty minutes into the nearly two hour-long film, this becomes significant again as Brody learns that the recovered camera captured the attack. Still trying to convince town officials of the threat, Brody brings in a photograph that he views as an obvious extreme close-up of the shark. The town council members dismiss it as “seaweed, mud, something on the lens.” Astonished that they cannot see what he sees, Brody runs his finger along vague shapes: “Look at the outline! Look at the mouth!” He stabs his finger at a dark half circle in the picture’s upper right corner: “The eyes!” It is a potentially evocative moment, one playing upon the photograph’s tenuous indexical relationship to the real. What Brody sees as irrefutable visual evidence, others see as 84 seaweed (See Figure 1.13). Yet this plays out as a tiresome game of catch-up; after all, the audience already saw the shark in action – both in the previous film and in this entry. Twenty minutes before this attempt to puzzle out the difference between shark and schmutz, the audience witnesses the shark not only ramming a speedboat, but also catching fire when the ship explodes! Subsequent sequels would also gesture towards the evocative potential of the shark as an unseen menacing force, using POV stalking shots and rapid-fire attack montages. However, the sequels spend less time teasing the sharks and more time showing them in action. Like its predecessor, Jaws 2 uses real shark footage, again supplied by the Taylors. 42 Sometimes this works to great effect. Early in the film, the shark pursues a woman waterskiing. Through most of the chase, the film relies upon a dorsal fin model motoring through the water in pursuit, or a POV shot as the camera follows in the woman’s wake. At the moment when the shark strikes, the film cuts to a close-up of an actual shark. The shark raises its head. As it leaves the frame, it opens its mouth wide, appearing to bite something. When the shark lunges forward and up, a match action cut occurs. The camera rises from the water, continuing the previous shot’s upward motion as it approaches the woman’s leg. The disturbance of the water as the camera emerges conceals the edit between these two quick shots. The well-executed effect gives 42 Early in the production, Joe Alves boasted to a reporter: “I don’t think we’ll have to use any live shark footage in the sequel…. We can do the whole picture with the mechanical sharks we’ve got. That’s how much more improved they are over the ones used in the original” (Talbot). The fact that Jaws 2 makes extensive use of live shark footage throughout the entire film says something about the crew’s expectations versus their ability to execute. Figure 1.13 – Brody struggles to make skeptical members of the town council share his interpretation of what he views as an obvious close-up photograph of a great white. Brody does admit that he has a better frame of reference. 85 the necessary impression of the shark bite. In this chase, several techniques for suggesting the shark come together effectively. However, even as the film demonstrates the value of this technique, in the same sequence it compromises its ability to continue using the technique effectively. After eating the skier, the shark attacks the motorboat. The driver’s flailing attempts to fight the shark result in an explosion that turns half of the shark’s face into a blackened, blistered mass (See Figure 1.14 & 1.15). The scars visually distinguish this shark from the one in the previous film, while also marking it as monstrous. It gains a facial disfigurement, a visual cue that marks many iconic slasher villains as deviants. Of course, in those cases, the disfigurement signals the killer’s departure from the norms of humanity. Seemingly, the appeal of sharks as villains lies in the way their “doll’s eyes” and sharp teeth make them naturally frightening. Jaws 2’s superfluous flourish nullifies another advantage of using sharks that I reference above: the fact that distinguishing one shark from another is difficult. The singular and the multiple blend together. Spotting differences between sharks of the same species depends on details like size, distinctive scarring, or sexual dimorphism. On film, these things are easily missed or concealed. For the first part of Jaws 2, the wild sharks and the shark models appear similar enough to understand them as being the same entity. By introducing the facial burns, Jaws 2 loses that anonymity and interchangeability. Yet the film persists in using the technique of cutting between the model and documentary footage. Occasionally, that means cutting between two objects that notably do not match. As the shark begins its assault on a fleet of teenage sailors, the scarred prosthetic head clearly extends from the sea, ramming a boat and knocking a boy into the sea. As those onboard pull the floundering teen back aboard, the film cuts to a shot of an actual shark 86 swimming towards the camera. It is a clear full frontal shot that shows the unscarred face of an actual shark. In Jaws, the use of real footage works because the narrative shark is not supposed to be markedly different from the real thing. Starting with Jaws 2, the monstrosity of the film’s shark outstrips reality. The actual creature becomes a point of reference not up to the role, even as a stand-in. This carries over into Jaws 3-D. On several occasions, Jaws 3-D artificially speeds up footage of real sharks for its chase sequences. The naturally lithe movements of the shark in the footage become spasmodic as it “pursues” the protagonists. The movements of the actual shark do not appear fast enough to convey the terrific speeds of the film’s monstrous shark. The fourth film drops the technique almost entirely when portraying its hyper intelligent revenge-seeking machine. In Jaws: The Revenge, only very brief shots of real sharks eating are edited into the opening attack montage. While Jaws 3-D struggles to incorporate footage of real sharks, its extensive use of other real animals becomes another jarring component of its presentation. Figure 1.14 & 1.15 – In an early accident, the shark becomes severely disfigured. Its facial burns make it visually distinct. On one hand, they make the creature appear more monstrous and deviant. On the other, they make it difficult to use documentary footage of real sharks to supplement the model. 87 Jaws 3-D plays like a bizarre advertisement for Orlando’s SeaWorld. The film refers to its fictional park as “SeaWorld” and the production shot in the actual park. In promotional materials, the park, its exhibits, and the research done there were credited with inspiring the story (“The Making of Jaws 3-D”; Seale; Siskel). The story of unscrupulous park managers endangering patrons’ lives for the sake of profit sits uncomfortably at the center of a film that often looks “like a promo for the park” (Loyn 24). SeaWorld’s now-controversial use of trained animals 43 takes center stage in this promo, with two of SeaWorld’s dolphins being major characters. The dolphins are the first to sense the sharks’ presence. They try to warn the humans in their own way, but the humans ignore them. Still, when the shark imperils the lives of their beloved trainers, the dolphins put themselves at risk to help save the day. The film ends with them leaping into the air, ostensibly celebrating the shark’s death (See Figure 1.16). Animal Attack films often feature a companion animal that remains loyal to people, sometimes even in the face of all animal-kind mobilizing against humanity. It might seem incongruous to incorporate affectionate human-animal relationships into narratives about conflict between humans and animals. However, these companion species serve several important functions. When a protagonist cares for their animal companion, even in the face of mortal danger, it endears them to the audience. This shortcut for making protagonists likeable features 43 These programs came under increased scrutiny after the release of the advocacy documentary Blackfish (Cowperthwaite, 2010). In many ways, Blackfish plays like an Animal Attack horror film as it chronicles the human deaths caused by SeaWorld Orlando’s killer whale Tilikum. Figure 1.16 – In the final shot of Jaws 3-D, the dolphins join their human trainers in celebrating the shark’s death. In this image, one also gets an indication of the weakness of the film’s visual effects. 88 in narrative cinema regularly. 44 Demonstrating the capacity of these characters to care for animals also potentially justifies the violence done against other animals in these films – the bad animals. 45 That brings up the more insidious ideological function of these companion animals. Loyal animals represent the “good” side of the natural world; they balance out nature’s “evil” side, as represented by the dangerous animal. It is the Angel/Whore dynamic to which Randy Malamud refers (74-75). As Plumwood describes, one positive function of cultural depictions of alpha predators relates to the way their presence humbles humanity. They challenge the notion that humans are the planet’s dominant species, one insulated from the natural world. Non-human predators force humans into the ecosystem by making them part of the food chain, and not the top part. Good companion animals potentially perform the opposite function. They signify humanity’s ability to control and manipulate the natural world. These cute, pliable creatures do not challenge an anthropocentric view of the world. However, the trained dolphins of Jaws 3-D nevertheless play their own role in deconstructing the film’s illusion. I already discussed the disruptive potential of juxtaposing the real and the fake shark in a single scene. At least in that case the fake animal does not share a shot with the real creature. When the dolphins swim about and ram into the static shark puppet, it showcases more than the artificiality of the model. It vividly illustrates how humans have manipulated the entire situation. Humans have constructed a crude effigy of an uncontrollable part of the natural world and then commanded captive animals to abuse it. The real trained animals and the demonic animal model are different expressions of humanity’s attempts to create and control an anthropocentric vision 44 Screenwriter Blake Snyder labels moments where a protagonists’ kind gesture humanizes them “Save the Cat” moments and named a popular writing guide after this technique. These moments do not necessarily involve aiding cute animals, but that is one way to do it. 45 Not all films use companion animals to reaffirm the decency of their human protagonists. In Long Weekend (Eggleston, 1978), Peter’s dog remains loyal to him even as the rest of nature mobilizes against him. As the film concludes, the vile lead panics and leaves his loving dog in a locked car. In effect, this is the exact opposite of the endearing rescue. It is a betrayal that will leave many viewers enthusiastically waiting for Peter’s violent demise. 89 of the natural world, and in this scene they come together. This moment of extreme artificiality comes packaged in a film where the use of 3-D spectacle further disrupts the audience’s ability to experience the film passively. Jaws 3-D was produced early in the 1980s resurgence of the novelty trend and it illustrates the peril of special effects being viewed when they are anything but cutting edge. Recent home media releases of Jaws 3-D, when paired with the proper technology, replicate the effects of the original. Yet for most audiences viewing the film, the 3-D component is no longer available. This results in periodic lulls in the rhythm of the film, as the camera moves in odd ways or lingers on unimportant details in a clear appeal to an experience now lost for the majority of viewers. The camera pans in towards a dragon head sitting at the entrance of one of the theme park’s rides and stays on the image for several beats too long. An artificial eel popping out of the wall of a haunted house attraction gets an extended close-up. It feels like performers pausing in anticipation of a laugh that never comes. The film also features several primitive green screen effects, where objects with tones and textures completely different from their backgrounds move with unnatural smoothness through an environment completely alien to them (See Figure 1.17). This places an additional burden on the notably stiff shark model. The most egregious example of this comes during what should be the standout moment of the shark’s final assault. Figure 1.17 – Watching Jaws 3-D without its 3-D effects means witnessing multiple shots in which there are clear and unusual disconnects between objects and their backgrounds. 90 As the shark lays waste to the park, the heroes gather in the control center in front of a glass wall surveying the artificial bay. They look up and see… the cutout of a shark floating across the background. Its body remains still as it swims; it moves without moving, slowly getting bigger as it drifts from right to left. The film cuts to slow motion close-ups of the heroes reacting in horror. Suddenly, the shark stops as its nose appears to shatter the screen, sending shards of glass flying out at the audience (See Figures 1.18 & 1.19). In this scene, the stiff shark model does not aid the weak 3-D compositing. Of course, the shark model is a weak element in all the films. Despite producers’ claims of constant technological advancement, the quality of the artificial shark is a case of diminishing returns, culminating in Jaws: The Revenge. There are no objective standards of taste. Highly personal sensibilities influence the tastes of individuals, drawing them to certain texts and repelling them from others. As a result, one cannot definitively label Jaws: The Revenge a “bad” movie. However, when engaging a text, it Figure 1.18 & 1.19 – From an abstract and conceptual perspective, the monstrous shark’s destruction of the panoptic control center at SeaWorld is a powerful and intriguing moment. The rendering of the assault makes the moment more bizarrely comic in execution. 91 helps to consider what potentially makes it appealing to audiences. This means being open to the paradoxical possibility that it offers primarily paracinematic pleasures. Jeffrey Sconce describes paracinema as a reading protocol based around the ironic appreciation “of a film aspiring to obey dominant codes of cinematic representation,” but systematically failing in its execution (385, original emphasis). Unintentionally, these films create an invigorating and “aesthetically defamiliarizing” experience through their bizarre missteps and their excessive presentational strategies (385). Jaws: The Revenge does not receive the reverential treatment of the original Jaws. More often, viewers express their “appreciation” through mockery of its inept execution. 46 The absurdity of the film’s premise and the shark model’s exceptionally poor quality are frequently cited in discussions of the film’s unconventional pleasures. As mentioned above, Jaws: The Revenge virtually eliminates the use of documentary footage. This gives it a potential advantage, as it does not offer audiences a clear point of comparison against which to judge its model. However, the film places a considerable burden on its special effects in terms of how it presents them. After initially concealing the shark through quickly cut montages, the film makes no further efforts to hide its effects. Frequently, it showcases the shark in brightly lit and extended close-ups, which make the standard deficiencies of the earlier models more glaringly recognizable (See Figures 1.20 & 1.21). This presentational strategy robs the rubbery object of its ability to instill fear. 46 Straight-forward descriptions of the film’s plot can produce hilarity. Stand-up comedian Richard Jeni performed an extended routine in which he simply outlined the film’s many plot holes. Jeni offers a rephrasing of Sconce’s argument about the effects of paracinema when he compares the film’s ineptitude to being constantly slapped in the face. Jeni suggests that the constant assault makes it impossible to be absorbed in the experience – “you can’t even pretend” it isn’t a bad movie (“Richard Jeni”). Jaws: The Revenge is a frequent subject of comedy podcasts and web series dedicated to the dissection of bad movies, where it is similarly lampooned. 92 The shark again suffers from hopeless stiffness. In the first film, the footage supplied by the Taylors showcases a shark brutally thrashing Hooper’s cage. Jaws: The Revenge features its own underwater assault as the shark attacks Michael while he is in a submarine. The shark approaches the craft with its mouth hanging open, giving it a look of slack-jawed confusion. In lieu of its mouth, body, or fins moving, its whole body rocks slightly to the left and right as it gently nudges Michael’s sub. Actor Lance Guest increases the moment’s absurdity by incongruously flailing in terror during the subdued encounter. When the shark breaches the surface, which it does often, it appears to be on the verge of collapse. During its first encounter with Michael and his research team, it projects straight out of the water at a 45-degree angle to assault their boat. It chews on the boat in a mad attempt to reach the Brody onboard. As it opens its mouth, the fabric around its nose and the base of its head bunch up. As it rips apart the boat, Figure 1.20 & 1.21 –Jaws: The Revenge does little to conceal its model, frequently showcasing it in brightly lit close-ups that offer little opportunity to conceal its deficiencies. The model’s quality does little to help compensate for the absurdity of the film’s basic scenario. 93 the neat triangles of its teeth start popping out of its head, littering the deck (See Figures 1.22 & 1.23). Appropriately, given the franchise’s trajectory, the film saves the worst for last. In the climactic battle with the shark, Ellen Brody impales the creature on the splintered prow of a ship. Inexplicably, the shark explodes, the now-standard departure for sharks in a Jaws film. Before the screen fills with red viscera, the film shows the shark stuck on the prow. Even by the film’s low standards, this model’s quality is atrocious. It looks like a canoe wrapped in grey felt, with two triangles stuck to its sides for fins, a button eye, and a flap of material hanging off the flat belly to represent the mouth (See Figure 1.24). This image only appears for a second, but then it appears again. It is shown four times from different angles to give the moment of its death Eisensteinian emphasis. However, the only thing emphasized is the shock that this inept model is meant to represent the terrifying reality of a great white shark. Figures 1.22 & 1.23 – As the shark demolishes Michael Brody’s boat, the model’s teeth visibly begin to fall out of its mouth and litter the wreckage. 94 The shark on the prow might be the most egregious moment in the franchise, but all the sequels feature moments where the weaknesses of their models are hard to ignore. In Jaws 3-D it would be the static shark bursting through the glass wall. In Jaws 2 it comes when the shark lunges for a boy being pulled from the water. The shark misses and grazes the side of a boat. The shark’s head notably compresses as it connects with the hard surface. On closer inspection, one sees a crack in the “skin” on the shark’s nose (See Figure 1.25). Most damningly, inside the darkness of the shark’s mouth sits the visible mechanism working its jaws, rising as it pushes the mouth open and compressing as the mouth closes again (See Figure 1.26). In the Introduction I reference the value of looking beyond Animal Attack films considered to be canonical classics. The moments described above demonstrate the advantage of also looking at Animal Attack films of lesser quality. Figure 1.24 – Though it only appears on screen for a moment, Jaws: The Revenge ends with the franchise’s weakest recreation of a great white shark. Figure 1.25 – As the shark lunges for a boy, its head compresses noticeably and the skin of its nose begins to split. 95 It can be difficult to resist a film of Jaws’s quality. Admittedly, given the subjective nature of taste, some audience members will inevitably not understand the original’s appeal. Yet it has an enduring appeal for many viewers. It potentially resists critical engagement by being a compelling, absorbing, and well-crafted film. When a film evinces a problematic or reactionary viewpoint, as Jaws arguably does in its depictions of sharks, this shutting down of critical thinking can be dangerous. Yet the mechanism in the shark’s mouth in Jaws 2 is a detail that makes such immersion difficult. It functions like a higher tech version of the visible zipper on a Z-Grade Movie’s cheap monster suit. When a narrative reaches the limits of what can be rendered on screen effectively, one begins to see more easily the (in this case literal) cracks in the work. The rise of special features associated with home media make an understanding of how films are manufactured a more common component of film viewing and appreciation. Yet those features ideally pull back the curtain after-the-fact, revealing what the production conceals and answering the “How did they do that” question. Typically, such information should not be evident during the initial viewing. The weaknesses of these films allow them to approach the Brechtian potential of paracinema identified by Sconce, “an anti-illusionistic aesthetic… [that] compels even the most casual viewer to engage it ironically, producing a relatively detached textual space in which to consider, Figure 1.26 – A YouTube video helpfully points out the mechanism working the shark’s mouth during its assault (“The most”). 96 if only superficially, the cultural, historical and aesthetic politics that shape cinematic representation” (393). When the artifice shines through glaringly, films open themselves up for a larger than usual portion of the audience immediately understanding the construction, artifice, and fantasy that goes into the work. It creates an estrangement from the text that facilitates critical audience engagement. Given the risks commonly associated with Jaws by ecocritical scholars, dismantling this illusion can have a positive effect. Conclusion As one of the most well-known Animal Attack films, Jaws signifies what is wrong with these films for many critics. Its immediate and long-term effects demonstrate the harm Animal Attack films can do through the propagation of negative stereotypes about real animals. If Jaws garners ecocritical condemnation for its reactionary implications, its increasingly poor sequels receive little serious scholarly attention at all. However, these different forms of dismissal do a major disservice to the ecocritical examination of cinema. Despite what many critics might say, Jaws is a film about a shark, at least to some extent, and its relationship to the species that it vilifies is not as negative as it superficially appears. Understanding that Jaws presents an outlandish fantasy about sharks, rather than an accurate depiction of the species, can create a gateway to a rich and productive fascination with the depicted species. The logic behind the decision to build a film around great white sharks, and the difficulties of doing the same, can also offer insights into broader discussions of how and why animals fascinate humans. One way to breakdown the illusion of Jaws and understand its artificial nature is to look at instances where the same tricks are being done less effectively. Jaws inspired a host of inferior exploitation films. Among these were a collection of sequels, each bizarre and illustrative in their 97 own way. In seeking to carry on the legacy of the original film, these sequels only serve to demonstrate the convoluted machinations necessary to turn living creatures into movie monsters, both on the page and on the screen. As referenced throughout, sharks are a unique case. They are physically imposing, but it is easy to assume that there is not much going in their heads. In Quint’s famous monologue in Jaws, recounting the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, he says: “You know the thing about a shark – he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes… When he comes at you, he doesn’t seem to be living.” Taken together with Hooper’s declaration that the shark is a machine, it almost makes sense when the creature is revealed to be a creaky model. Yet animals are not merely blank automatons. This chapter dealt with the physicality and corporeal presence of the monstrous animal. In the next chapter, I address the interior lives of the creatures featured in Animal Attack texts, as it manifests within the film and outside the text. In order to illustrate this discussion, I will focus on films featuring a species much closer to most viewers’ hearts than sharks. 98 Chapter 2: “He Had Always Tried To Be A Good Dog” Simulating & Confronting Animal Agency, Intellect, and Cognition Show, Don’t Tell. For writers, it “was the mantra in the nineteen-forties and fifties” (Menand). It remains a standard (downright clichéd) piece of advice for aspiring screenwriters. 1 If information can be conveyed visually, no need to belabor the point with talky exposition. Heeding that admonition comes with risks. Viewers might miss or misinterpret a visual detail, which could impact their understanding of the material. It may be inelegant when a character verbalizes their feelings or motivations, but it minimizes the potential for confusion. Yet “telling” might not be an option, for reasons unrelated to aesthetic standards. When an animal plays a major role in a narrative, its motivations and reactions can be as significant as those of human characters. Chris Noonan, the director of Babe (1995), explains the challenge of building a film around animals: “The audience has to get into the head of these animals and then completely believe the emotions that these animals are going through” (Puig F10). One way Babe overcomes this obstacle is by having its animals speak. However, outside of children’s entertainment, animals tend not to say much – at least not in a language that humans can understand. Exclusively conveying important information about an animal’s state of mind through non-verbal cues presents a challenge to filmmakers. To illustrate how a filmmaker might confront this problem, consider the following example from Cujo. Cujo (Teague, 1983) adapts Stephen King’s novel of the same name. Cujo is a domestic dog that contracts rabies. Driven mad by the disease, Cujo terrorizes a woman and her young son, 1 Variations of this advice can be found in many how-to screenwriting guides. Michael Tierno writes: “The actual incidents of the story must convey the nature of what’s ‘causing’ the character’s actions: You have to ‘show it’ not just tell it” (28). Complaining about the phrase’s ubiquity, Bill Mesce, Jr. blames its proliferation on the popular guides of Robert McKee and Syd Field: “Field doesn’t even get out of his Introduction before defining a screenplay as ‘a story told with pictures’” (153). 99 both of whom are trapped in a broken-down car. Cujo is a horror text, but there is a tragic element in its tale of a good pet gone bad. In order to convey that tragedy, the text must present a transformation from one state to another, from sweet dog to monster dog. One of the most important scenes, in both the novel and the film, is the good dog’s final appearance. In this scene, Cujo approaches Brett, the son of the family that owns Cujo. Cujo’s rabies-addled mind makes him want to attack the boy. His residual love for, and loyalty towards, his owner stops him. First, I shall discuss how the novel handles this scene. Then I will describe its cinematic translation. King does not write directly from the dog’s first-person point-of-view, but his omniscient narrative voice provides insight into the dog’s mind. First, the narrator describes Brett’s perspective on the scene. A line break signifies a shift in focus as the narrator aligns with Cujo. King describes the world from a viewpoint that is already alien due to the difference in species. The disease’s malign influence makes it even stranger. King writes: “Cujo looked at THE BOY, not recognizing him anymore, not his looks, not the shadings of his clothes (he could not precisely see colors, at least as human beings understand them), not his scent. What he saw was a monster on two legs, Cujo was sick, and all things appeared monstrous to him now” (156). The quality of vision differs from that of humans. King suggests a mind that understands the world as much through smell as through sight. King articulates the dog’s sense of the world for the audience; it now perceives a world full of monsters. The reader understands that the dog misinterprets the world due to its madness. Understanding Cujo’s confusion explains why the dog feels justified in acting violently. It is a form of self-defense. King continues: Cujo “wanted to bite and rip and tear. Part of him saw a cloudy image of him springing at THE BOY, bringing him down, parting flesh with bone, drinking blood as it still pulsed, driven by a dying heart” 100 (156). Cujo not only demonstrates intent, he has an imagination – he plans his actions and anticipates their consequences. However, before Cujo can act: the monstrous figure spoke, and Cujo recognized his voice. It was THE BOY, THE BOY, and THE BOY had never done him any harm. Once he had loved THE BOY and would have died for him had that been called for. There was enough feeling left to hold the image of murder at bay until it grew as murky as the fog around them. It broke up and rejoined the buzzing, clamorous river of his sickness…. The last of the dog that had been before the bat scratched its nose turned away, and the sick and dangerous dog, subverted for the last time, was forced to turn with it. (156-157) Cujo has memories and emotional attachments. He feels a sense of loyalty and duty. Those qualities allow Cujo, through heroic effort, to best overwhelming forces and save someone he loves. The internal struggle King describes lends pathos to a horror story about a killer dog. King sketches a complex internal world for his novel’s canine antagonist. This chapter’s title comes from an epitaph offered in King’s novel. It suggests that the dog, in its right mind, understands the difference between right and wrong and strives for morality and decency. Cujo “never wanted to kill anybody,” but in the end he was “struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor” (484, emphasis added). As King describes it, Cujo is more than a dumb brute driven by instinct. He strives to be a “good” dog until madness takes control. Mark Browning notes that the literary techniques available to King for communicating this information are not available in cinema, unless the filmmakers wish to employ “an aesthetic like Disney or films like Babe” (234). Here, Browning mockingly evokes the talking-animal as a juvenile trope. 101 Though the cinematic adaptation must utilize different formal techniques, Browning fails to acknowledge how Teague’s translation of the above scene manages to convey similar information. King’s prose can describe Cujo’s violent intent, putting the reader on edge. In order to create a sense of danger, the film constructs an atmosphere suitable for a scene of classic gothic horror. It is a setting ripe for terrible events. Charles Bernstein’s eerie score and Jan de Bont’s murky cinematography establish the appropriate mood. As Brett pushes past dark, spidery tree limbs, navigating a thick blue fog that limits visibility, the music generates tension. Brett pursues Cujo’s whimpering howls, which indicate the dog’s distress. Brett stops to call out. He stands in the frame’s middle ground, facing away from the camera and occupying the screen’s left side. Cujo enters the foreground, dominating the screen’s right side. Brett spins around when Cujo’s whimpers become growls. Cujo’s vocalizations transform him from a pained victim into a potential aggressor. As Brett speaks to Cujo, trying to soothe him, the film cuts between close- ups of the boy and the dog. The juxtaposition of shots creates a tense standoff moment. Brett says: “Cujo, it’s me - Brett!” The film returns to Cujo’s close-up as the dog stops growling. Without returning to Brett, the film cuts to an extreme close-up on Cujo’s eyes. Cujo’s initial change in demeanor suggests that Brett’s words have registered. The subsequent focus on Cujo’s eyes implies thought. Supporting this, Cujo tilts his head from left to right, as if in internal conflict. Cujo turns away, then looks back over his shoulder at Brett (and the audience) in a poignant final gesture. To reinforce their connection in this moment, the film briefly cuts back to Brett, who steps towards Cujo. The film returns to a close-up on Cujo’s eyes before he turns and disappears into the fog. It is an exit and visual obfuscation marking the disappearance of the good dog that did not attack and heralding the appearance of the monstrous dog. Using a different set of tools, Teague also creates a sense of Cujo’s inner life and conflict. 102 *** In classic Western philosophy, the complex human mind distinguishes humans from other animals. The human mind is capable of self-consciousness, rationality, and abstract thought. Humans can express that complexity through language and speech. Rene Descartes helped initiate “the insistent segregation of the human and animal worlds in philosophy” (Lippit, Electric 33). Akira Lippit cites Descartes argument “in his 1637 Discourse on the Method that not only ‘do the beasts have less reason than men, but they have no reasons at all’” (Electric 33). Animals lack any “mental powers” (Descartes 59). Whatever abilities animals possess can be explained by the fact that they are essentially organic machines made for certain tasks (59). 2 According to this belief system, there is no need to question the planetary domination of the obviously superior human race. Indeed, this worldview makes concerns about ‘animal rights’ pointless. Convinced that animals only act as if they register pain, Descartes explored animals’ internal mechanisms through “forays into vivisection,” writing with enthusiasm about slicing into “the heart of a live dog” (Steiner 123). Writing in 1789, Jeremy Bentham objected to this tradition of degrading animals “into the class of things” (Gruen, original emphasis). Bentham called for a recognition of animal sentience, famously insisting “the question is not, Can [animals] reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Gruen, original emphasis). Such an argument does not involve a radical shift. It does not challenge the notion that only humans can reason, talk, and perhaps think. Yet it insists that the interior worlds of animals cannot be dismissed out of hand. In contemporary times, critical animal studies and various strains of posthumanist theory continue to push against old anthropocentric assumptions and consider other ways of being in, 2 By way of an example, Descartes argues that a clock’s ability to keep time is the result of its design, not its cognitive faculties (59). 103 perceiving, and impacting the world. Cary Wolfe argues that the humanities are “struggling to catch up with a radical revaluation of the status of nonhuman animals that has taken place in society at large” as revelations about animal “language, tool use, the inheritance of cultural behaviors, and so on…. have more or less permanently eroded the tidy divisions between human and nonhuman” (xi). In terms of both their narratives and their production practices, Animal Attack films offer an important venue in which to problematize how humans think about animal agency and cognition and struggle with the ethical ramifications of the same. The forms of formidable animal agency and intelligence on display in Animal Attack films are often fantastic and sometimes verge on the absurd. Still, they can offer useful provocations for disrupting assumptions about human dominance. These textual messages are in turn inflected by the implications of training animals for use in cinema and the “performances” animals give. Within the diegesis of many of these films, primitive instincts dictate the behavior of the animals. Hooper compares the great white shark to a machine designed to perform a limited number of tasks; it is a Cartesian description that should ease any guilt about the shark’s detonation at the end of Jaws. Yet in their quest for human prey, these animals display intellectual capabilities that make them formidable opponents. Sometimes, the intelligence they display seems equivalent, or even superior, to that of the human characters. Guided by their distinct interior worlds, these animals not only act independently of human interests, they actively oppose the humans around them. Intuitively, it makes sense that these intelligent creatures would be opposed to human life. When one recognizes and acknowledges the mental abilities of animals, even if it is just the basic ability to feel and respond to stimuli, it invites one 104 to reckon with humanity’s often oppressive and cruel treatment of other animals. In these films, humanity’s reckoning takes the form of violent retribution. One cannot take the representations of animal agency and cognition seen in Animal Attack films too literally. They represent cultural engagements with a complex and controversial topic. Chapter One conceptualizes the Jaws franchise as an expression of fascination in response to a powerful and enigmatic apex predator. That interest manifests in a caricatured presentation of the creature in question. In a similar way, by presenting heightened versions of animal cognition, Animal Attack films invite audiences to ponder important, and perhaps unanswerable, questions. How do animals experience the world? How do they regard humans; what, if anything, do they think about us? What are the implications of allowing for the possibility of relatively complex animal thought? What ramifications does it have in regards to how humans interpret and respond to animal actions, or how humans have treated and continue to treat animals? Even outlandish fantasies can prompt serious questions about animal cognition, as they invite viewers to consider what they consider believable or absurd in relation to animal intelligence. This conversation also requires analyzing the techniques used to train and mobilize performing animals, and the performing animal’s relationship to its trainer and the texts it helps create. Staging these fantasies often depends upon the careful control and regulation of animal behavior on set by human trainers. Trained animals need to be relied upon to perform certain tasks predictably. Again, one returns to the notion of the mechanized animal. How one interprets the ethics of this training and manipulation depends in part on how one thinks about animal cognition and agency. Writing in the popular press, Vicki Hearne notes: “There have been a few historically acceptable ways to think about what animals are like.” There is the Cartesian model 105 of the animal automaton and the utilitarianism of Bentham “that says animals can feel but cannot think.” Animal training in film presents a distinct model, which Hearne refers to as the “Rin Tin Tin theory of animal consciousness.” Named after one of cinema’s most famous dog celebrities, Hearne articulates this theory primarily in relation to dogs performing benevolence. Later in this chapter, I will explore the implications of this theory when applied to the performance of canine aggression. While Chapter One was organized around a franchise, this chapter focuses on several films connected by the presence of killer domestic dogs. 3 Villainous dogs offer an illuminating counterpoint to the sharks of Chapter One. As noted previously, sharks pose a statistically insignificant threat to human life, yet they inspire intense dread. Dogs are more likely to injure or kill people, 4 yet many people will regard even unfamiliar dogs with affection and trust. For those who keep and love dogs, the animal might feel like part of the family. Dogs possess a level of intelligence, which manifests most obviously in their ability to respond to commands and perform learned actions. Still, they often seem driven by fairly uncomplicated motivations, offering loyalty (love?) in response to care and affection. These Animal Attack films complicate the inner lives of dogs. In general, domestic dogs make intriguing subjects for conversations about animal agency and cognition. Breeds of dogs commonly kept as pets are associated with domesticity, obedience, and submission. Domestic dogs have been bred selectively and made receptive to training and conditioning. Part of what makes domestic dogs such a common feature in Animal 3 I distinguish Animal Attack films about domestic dogs from films featuring wolves – e.g., Frozen (Green, 2010); The Grey (Carnahan, 2011); Wolf Town (Reiné, 2011). Though dogs and wolves are both canines, their markedly different reputations cause films about these animals to register differently. Wolves have a long history in the West of being regarded as dangerous and wild. Indeed, wolves are emblematic of independence. 4 The Florida Museum of Natural History uses dog attacks as a point of comparison to emphasize the minimal threat of shark attacks. Looking at incidents from 2001 to 2013, the Museum reports 364 fatal dog attacks versus 11 fatal shark attacks (“Dog Attack”). 106 Attack cinema is that they are relatively easy to manage and train, an asset in terms of their use for productions. To make a shark ‘perform’ aggression, Animal Attack films typically have to construct a fake shark. In contrast to this, real dogs can be made to safely ‘perform’ fake aggression. The trainability of dogs muddies the waters in terms of coding their actions as natural or unnatural, or as intentional or unintentional. Dogs also complicate notions of animality. Some question whether domestic pets can be even considered ‘real’ animals (Berger 25- 26). Deleuze and Guattari express disdain for domesticated animals. They view these creatures as passive objects and affectations adopted by the narcissistic bourgeois. They go so far as to declare: “anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool” (240, original emphasis). They prefer “demonic animals, pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale” (241). The saving grace of domestic animals would seemingly lie in their ability to become part of the un-individuated demonic pack – something distinct from capitalist humanity (241). The poster for The Pack (Clouse, 1977) offers a useful illustration of this concept. The tagline states: “They’re not pets anymore.” Against a stark black background is a white silhouette of snarling dogs. These various animals blend together into a multi-mouthed, many-legged amorphous mass (See Figure 2.1). The individual pet dogs have become a singular anti-human mass. Figure 2.1 – The poster for The Pack offers a visualization of the individuated pets becoming a demonic, anti-human collective. 107 Donna Haraway attacks Deleuze and Guattari’s characterization as ungrounded in the reality of animals, and uninterested in the same (Haraway, When 29). Haraway argues that dogs and other domestic animals, “companion species,” are obviously animals, despite being an accepted part of what might normally be considered the “human world.” If people object to the animal status of pets, that might be because they dismantle romantic notions about clear borders separating humans and animals, as well as the natural and civilized worlds. When humans connect with dogs, they are “drawn into the multispecies knots that they are tied into and that they retie by their reciprocal actions” (When 35). Haraway makes an excellent case that companion animals, like domestic dogs, play an important role in awakening humans to the ways they are entangled with the non-human world. However, it is important and necessary for people to be reminded of their companions’ animality. Household pets can easily be infantilized or over-anthropomorphized. To some extent, those processes are a necessary part of forging the affective ties that bind. If it can be difficult to recognize the Animal in the individual animals that people love, Animal Attack films can help illuminate those qualities. They do not merely reflect and confirm our affective bonds, the way so many films focused on people and their pets do. Instead, they estrange humans from their pets; they present domestic dogs operating not only autonomously, but also in opposition to their human companions. They emphasize the decidedly un-human nature of these animals and reveal the demonic pack animals inside our furry friends. While this potentially makes these killer dog films disturbing, it also leaves them open to critical engagement and deconstruction. In Chapter One, I argue that weak special effects can prevent viewers from becoming too immersed in a narrative and make them more critically engaged with what they watch. This would be true even if they were inclined to accept the 108 underlying premise of the narrative. They might find sharks frightening and believe that they are dangerous, but the way the action unfolds on screen can make those beliefs seem laughable. A different, but related, effect might apply to these killer dog films. While they might be competently executed, audiences are likely to experience heightened cognitive dissonance at witnessing a beloved species behaving monstrously. Even breeds believed to be more prone to aggression have ardent and affectionate human defenders. Audiences are also likely to experience greater discomfort at witnessing any retaliatory violence done against these bad dogs. This sympathetic response disrupts what critics identify as the problematic potential of audiences enjoying an evil animal’s punishment. Using killer dogs as the primary reference point, this chapter explores how Animal Attack films create and present the inner lives of their antagonists. First, I address the narrative construction of the animal antagonist as an opponent worthy of challenging human supremacy. This usually involves a degree of anthropomorphization, as the films alter and exaggerate the animal’s mental abilities and motivations. The ways in which these films frame the animal’s intelligence and agency differ, and their framings can influence how these films judge the animal’s behavior. What are the respective moral responsibilities of the animals and humans in these scenarios? The answer to that question depends in part on whether the animal is controlled by external factors (either human or non-human) or whether the animal controls its own behavior and destiny (in ways either believable or fantastic). In order to provide a basic overview of the different ways in which Animal Attack films tend to frame their animals’ agency, I discuss four notable killer dog films: Cujo, White Dog (Fuller, 1982), The Pack, and White God (Mundruczó, 2015). 109 After discussing the animal as a narrative construct, I consider the flesh-and-blood animals used to enact these fantasies – the canine “actors.” In this section, I deal with the ambiguous agency of animal actors. The filmmakers manipulate them so that the animals might manipulate the audience. However, while people seem to have great control over the animals on set, their guileless nature can detract from the overall horrific effect of the text. Animals do not have a concept of staying “in character,” and this potentially allows a reality beyond the film text to shine through. First, I discuss how animal trainers position their work in relation to animal consciousness, and the ethical implications of using trained animals in general and in Animal Attack films in particular. I then address the ramifications of how these films variously credit these dogs (or not). My discussion focuses on White Dog primarily, a film set in the world of animal training. Its meta-fiction makes the audience unusually conscious of the realities of its production. The final two sections of this chapter deal with how these films convey what their animal characters are thinking. The first deals with animal language, broadly defined. However fantastic they might be, few Animal Attack films allow their animals the ability to speak like humans. I use one of the rare exceptions to this rule, the black comedy Baxter (Boivin, 1989), to explore the potential of giving these animals a human voice and also to consider why few films go this route. Most films rely exclusively on physical cues or non-verbal vocalizations. This chapter closes with a discussion of the place of animal eyes and vision in these films. Philosophers like Berger and Derrida have discussed the profound and disquieting effect of being looked at by animals. Even the simulated cinematic experience of being looked at by an animal can be a provocative encounter. Many of these films focus on the eyes of animals in order to imply what 110 is going on in their heads. A few go a step further, going behind the eye and literally into the animal’s head through point-of-view shots. Narrative Framing Chapter One addressed how there is often a disconnect in Animal Attack films between the behavior of the on-screen animals and their real-world counterparts. Varying degrees of anthropomorphization tend to factor into the way these cinematic animals depart from the reality of their species. In order for these animals to fill their antagonistic roles properly, these narratives typically endow the animals with levels of intelligence and agency beyond the capacities of actual animals. As will be discussed in Chapter Three, this even applies to animals that humans consider especially intelligent, like primates and cetaceans. Since these animals behave unnaturally, these films will often provide an explanation for their behavior. In this section I identify four recurrent rationales given in Animal Attack films in order to explain the animals’ unorthodox behavior and consider the implications of each strategy. First, however, I wish to address further how and why these dangerous animals undergo anthropomorphization. Classic narrative cinema tends to focus on an active protagonist seeking to achieve or reach a goal. In order to make their struggle compelling, they require a formidable oppositional force. In his screenwriting guide, Syd Field claims that the essence of conflict, and therefore drama, “is having the character or characters be in opposition to someone or something” (246, original emphasis). One problem with using animals as that antagonistic something is that their motivations and reactions are not necessarily analogous to those of humans. At several points, Field positions Newton’s Third Law of Motion, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” as a guiding principle of drama (41, 96, 106, 205). With animals, there does not tend to be such a neat correspondence. 111 When an animal attacks a person, its actions typically stem from some form of desperation (fear or hunger) or confusion (mistaking the human for a more typical prey animal). Furthermore, an approaching animal might be easily frightened off or an attacking animal might relent quickly when retaliated against. If a person were to appear aggressive or fight back against a predator, most animals would likely move on to another, more convenient, prospect. It would be unlikely to develop a grudge or take malicious pleasure in the challenge. Accordingly, animals in these films cannot act like real animals. Imagine if Jaws ended with Chrissie punching the great white on the snout, sending it swimming off into the depths. No, these villainous animals need more grit and determination; they need drive and focus. They must be active oppositional narrative agents, the equals of their human counterparts. However primitively the film chooses to manifest it, they must appear to possess some level of intellect and cognition. I mention Jaws, and it is worth returning to that touchstone for narratives about unreasoning animal ferocity. The franchise’s shark would eventually become an evil mastermind, but in the original it seems to operate as a terrifyingly single-minded “machine” driven by biological necessity. Yet even there, Katrina Gregersdotter and Nicklas Hållén observe that the shark “acts as an antagonist rather than just a dangerous animal in the narrative logic of the film. It is an adversary, and its relation to the human world is therefore more complex than a predator’s relation to its prey” (209). The shark’s function as an adversary (not a mere animal) becomes especially noticeable after the men enter the shark’s domain and begin hunting it. Out at sea, the humans and the shark “begin to think alike, anticipating each other’s moves, entering the same psychological space of instincts and reasoning” (209). There is a possible explanation for the dynamic that develops in the second act, one that maintains the shark’s animal qualities. The men harass the shark in its claimed territory. Instead of being able to move on to an easier meal, 112 the shark feels compelled to respond to these intruders aggressively. Yet the shark plays with the men in unexpected ways. It even baffles Quint, a seasoned fisherman. In response to the shark’s novel maneuvering, he marvels: “I don’t know if he’s very smart or very dumb.” Whether the shark is smart or dumb, whatever that means in the respective worlds of sharks and men, we know how things play out between Quint and the shark. Jaws has its own means of creating a shark that functions as an active antagonist, but there are several recurrent strategies that one finds in Animal Attack films. The world of killer dog films provides a good sampling of the different types of animal agency on display in Animal Attack films. Sometimes, a force beyond the animal’s control causes its aggression. A non-human external force may be to blame; this is the case in Cujo, where rabies drives the dog mad. Though Cujo opts for a plausible explanation 5 , there are a host of films in which the external cause of the animal’s violence is fanciful (e.g., mutating pollutants, extraterrestrial influences). The animal can also be manipulated by an external human force. This is the case in films where humans intentionally manipulate animals into committing murderous acts, either through training or scientific experimentations. In White Dog, the animal acts monstrously due to training by a malicious human owner. In other instances, the animals have more direct control over their actions. There are films in which the animals are presented as being naturally aggressive and dangerous. In The Pack, feral dogs form a formidable canine collective that acts at the behest of a fearsome alpha dog. In The Pack, the dogs’ behavior is affected by human actions, as the owners of these dogs abandon them in the wild. However, the dogs respond to a situation created by humans in their own way 5 King’s novel implies that something beyond rabies might explain Cujo’s madness. The book contains hints of a possible supernatural connection. In his commentary for the film, Lewis Teague mentions that earlier drafts of the script tried to incorporate these elements, but they were ultimately excised. 113 and revert to their killer instincts in order to survive. In all of the films referenced above, the agency of the killer animals manifests in a nominally plausible form. There are also cases in which the anthropomorphization of these self-directed animals reaches fantastic and outlandish levels. These films sometimes involve an organized animal army, as in the case of White God. White God plays like a heightened version of The Pack, as poorly-treated street dogs revolt against humanity. In White God, the animals’ agency and intellect, especially that of the army’s leader, Hagan, border on levels of sophistication normally considered exclusive to humanity. The above categorization matters because the manner in which a film presents the animal’s agency and intellect plays a role in determining how the film and its audience understand and respond to the animal characters. Is the film’s scenario presented as being believable or purely fantastic? The answer to that question speaks to how the film conceptualizes animal agency and cognition, and how it suggests that its audience should think about those subjects. What motivates the animal’s actions? Are its actions determined by something within its control or by external forces? Those questions help determine the ethical and affective stance these films take in relation to their animal subjects. They often influence how the animal gets judged and punished, and whether the film presents that punishment as a triumph (as in Cujo and The Pack) or a tragedy (as in White Dog and White God). The way these films potentially pass judgment on the actions of animals speak to an interesting topic in debates about animal agency: the question of animal crime. If an animal kills someone, can that (at least in some circumstances) be classified as murder? Particularly before the Enlightenment, there were documented instances of animals being tried in court and even executed for committing crimes, including murder. 6 These animals could be held accountable for 6 When illustrating discussions about animal executions, writers tend to gravitate towards several incidents in Medieval France, in which pigs were tried in court for mauling infants to death and sentenced to death by hanging. 114 the things they did and punished accordingly. Peter Dinzelbacher notes the strange logic underlying such cases. An animal trial “consists not only of attributing guilt to animals, both in a moral and juridical sense – thus implying their free will – but also supposing that animals could have understood a judge’s sentence” (Dinzelbacher 405). Even during periods when animal trials were being conducted, some pushed against the logic underlying such trials. Akira Lippit notes that Aristotle concluded that animals were “lacking in logos and are therefore incapable of ethical behavior and thus of crime” (Electric 28). Oh course, an animal does not need to be deemed consciously malicious or morally culpable to be punished for hurting a person. Even today, when few would subscribe to the notion that an animal could commit murder in the same way that a human could, animals are punished and even killed for their violent actions. A dog that kills or harms a person might be euthanized. Jen Girgen notes that “executions” of vicious dogs are not infrequently carried out in informal, swift, and brutal fashion on the spot (127-129). The animal’s lack of reason and self-control can also make it dangerous. Questions of human and animal ethics tend to be central to Animal Attack narratives. Can the animal be judged guilty of consciously committing a crime, and can it accordingly be punished righteously? If an animal hurts a person, does the question of intent matter? If an animal acts dangerously without reason, how justified is its punishment? How terribly would an animal have to act before an audience would feel OK about witnessing (simulated) violent acts being done to it? Of course, different standards apply to different species. More people would likely feel bad about seeing violence done to a dog than to a shark, for instance. For that reason, These cases, while bizarre, tend to be fairly similar in terms of their basic details. Surveying several articles on the subject, different authors reference different cases spanning a considerable period of time. One incident took place in 1386 (Girgen 98), another in 1403 (Dinzelbacher 406), and another in 1567 (Srivastava 128). While the practice does tend to be associated with Medieval Europe, there have been incidents around the world and up into the early twentieth century (Srivastava 128). 115 films about killer dogs tend to be especially conflicted about how to process the exact nature of the dogs’ actions. At this point, I shall consider how the individual killer dog films mentioned above present the actions of their bad dogs and weigh the respective guilt of the animals and the humans in their stories. It should be noted that all these films use their dog stories to engage different forms of human alienation and conflict. Cujo deals with familial tensions, White Dog with racism, The Pack with class and regional distinctions, and White God with xenophobia. This invites consideration of another ethical dimension: the instrumental use of animals as metaphors. However, as discussed in Chapter One, metaphorical concerns do not negate the animality of the monstrous figures at the center of these narratives. It also bears mentioning that, while the narrative strategies employed by these individual films when explaining their animals’ actions do appear in other Animal Attack films, the ways these specific texts play out do not necessarily reflect consistent patterns in other Animal Attack films utilizing the same tropes. For instance, the way White God presents its animal army differs from what one sees in the environmentalist films addressed in Chapter Six. However, by going through these interrelated cases in depth, one can observe how the general considerations outlined above play out in individual examples. As the result of his rabies infection, Cujo’s killer dog functions like a zombie, transforming from a loving pet into a relentless killing machine. This potentially excuses the audience from dwelling on the ethical ramifications of how the film depicts and treats the animal. After all, the film does not have a problem with dogs per se. Cujo begins the film as a gentle giant. When the St. Bernard first approaches the toddler Tad (Danny Pintauro), Brett reassures Tad’s mother, Donna (Dee Wallace): “Cujo won’t hurt him, he likes kids! He’s safe.” Instructing Tad to be gentle, Donna allows the little boy to stroke Cujo’s head. Cujo, in response, licks the 116 boy’s face. Cujo only become a bestial maniac after he contracts rabies. The change is so dramatic that Tad mistakes the dog for the monster that he imagines lives in his closet (See Figures 2.2 & 2.3). While Cujo’s presentation might be heightened, rabies is a frightening real-world disease. The specter of rabies was sufficient to provide narrative justification for killing Old Yeller, one of fiction’s most iconic good dogs. Once the fatal disease takes hold, Cujo loses control. The dog’s death is inevitable, and his aggression makes killing him unavoidable. Audiences can be expected to understand and sympathize with the violent actions Donna takes against the rabid dog when it threatens both herself and her child. When Donna kills Cujo at the film’s conclusion, an unambiguous necessity, it should be an energizing moment of triumph. However, in his commentary for the film, director Lewis Teague notes that, whenever Donna strikes the dog, the film switches to the dog’s POV shot. Figures 2.2 & 2.3 – The above image shows Cujo as he appears in his first scene. The bottom image shows Cujo as he appears in the final scene. The sweet dog at the beginning of the film and the demonic dog at the end of the film are effectively different entities due to the extremity of its transformation, both in terms of appearance and behavior. 117 This is in order to avoid showing the dog being hit. However mad and monstrous the dog appears, Teague anticipated that audiences would be “horrified” at seeing even simulations of a dog being hurt, and not in a good way. Teague explains: “People love animals, especially dogs… and they would not want to see a dog getting hurt.” Teague makes a similar observation to Lippit and Burt in Chapter One. He observes that viewers can suspend their disbelief in relation to humans suffering horrible violence on film, “but when it comes to animals getting hurt on screen, people aren’t willing to suspend their disbelief that much.” Teague’s “temptation… was to try and make [the film] as realistic as possible, and it would have been easy to use a mechanical dog head [or a man in a dog suit] to show [the dog] actually being hit, but I knew that that would horrify the audience.” No simulation or substitution would allow Teague to present the image of a dog being hit, even a monstrous one. Teague recalls director Joe Dante telling him: “When it comes to attacking the dog, reality is your enemy” (emphasis added). After all, Cujo is not a bad dog; however terrible he becomes, he is a sick and pathetic creature not responsible for his actions. Audiences are likely to be even more sensitive towards the plight of bad dogs in Animal Attack films when humans are responsible for causing the animals to behave badly. In Cujo, the dog’s behavior stems from a misfortune beyond human control; however, Cujo’s transformation does work as an allegory for human indiscretions. Donna cheats on her husband with a shady character, imperiling their happy middle-class domesticity. Though she ends the affair, she must still demonstrate her commitment to motherhood by protecting her child against a corrupted version of a family dog. Though the dog is narratively sacrificed for this morality parable, no human in Cujo is responsible for, or could have stopped, the dog’s illness. The other films considered here all place the onus for the animal’s behavior on humans more 118 directly. This is arguably the case in most Animal Attack films. Despite that similarity, these films differ in terms of how they process the implications of that responsibility. As in Cujo, White Dog features a single dog with a dual nature. However, in White Dog the animal’s Jekyll and Hyde personalities are not distinct entities but are instead coexistent. White Dog features a young actress, Julie (Kristy McNichol), taking in a lost dog. Julie, a white woman, only sees the dog’s affectionate side. Eventually, the dog’s violent tendencies emerge. The dog’s fur is literally white, but it is also a figurative “white dog,” conditioned to fly into a murderous rage when it sees African Americans. 7 The racially targeted nature of the dog’s violence makes it seem particularly reprehensible initially. 8 However, the audience learns that a previous racist owner trained that violence into the dog through lifelong abuse. White Dog focuses on how noxious human ideologies and actions warp the world around them. Its dog was not born a monster, nor is it consciously responsible for its violence. It was purposefully programmed to be a monster. Seeing black people evokes a Pavlovian response. Though its behavior has been manipulated to some extent, its underlying nature has not been corrupted. The dog’s essential goodness and its desire to be a companion to humans remains. This is evident in its affection towards Julie, who nurses it back to health after an injury. If 7 White Dog’s use of genre tropes to engage the sensitive topic of racism in the U.S. made it controversial even before its release. Part of the problem stemmed from its incendiary source material, Romain Gary’s 1970 fictionalized memoir, which “builds a conflicted and ultimately unflattering portrait of liberal Hollywood’s guilt- driven embrace of radicalism [and] the black power movement” and ends with “a cynical African-American Muslim [retraining the dog] to attack whites” (Dombowski, “Every”). Fuller and co-writer Curtis Hanson’s adaptation substantially alters the text. However, activists’ anticipation and perception that the film would itself be racist caused it to be shelved in the U.S., though it was well-received in Europe. Part of what angered the NAACP was the fact that the film was being made during “a larger, ongoing campaign to increase the number of Hollywood films made by and for black people” (Dombrowski, “Every”). It struck leaders as especially objectionable that a questionable and ghoulish novel would get adapted while black artists could not get films made. 8 Compounding the taboo of the dog’s actions, at one point it kills a black man in an empty church. Ironically, the murder plays out under a stained-glass window of St. Francis of Assisi surrounded by gentle creatures. 119 humans are responsible for intentionally corrupting this animal, the question becomes whether well-intentioned humans can undo that harm. Since humans manipulate the world around them, White Dog implies that humans are also responsible for the benevolent stewardship of the natural world. When Julie needs to rehabilitate her dog, she takes it to a training facility called Noah’s Ark, referencing the iconic narrative of a good human given the divine duty of caring for the world’s diverse menagerie. White Dog presents the world as a malleable environment in which humans are the dominant force. That force can work for good and ill. If human action creates something terrible in the world, it falls on humans to right that wrong. However, White Dog ultimately refuses to exonerate humanity. It warns that sometimes a situation might be past the point of amelioration. The characters in White Dog struggle to rescue the loving dog from its terrible learned behavior. At multiple points the characters are tempted to give up on the dog and euthanize it. However, doing so would require ignoring humanity’s responsibility for the dog’s behavior. Throughout the film, the characters discuss the potential risks of trying to undo the dog’s racist training. Breaking the animal in this way could drive the dog mad; at that point it would become an out-of-control, Cujo-like creature that must be killed. These warnings foreshadow that the dog will ultimately prove too far gone. Despite being cured of its racist pathology, the dog’s rage instead fixes on individuals resembling its former abusive owner (old white men). The dog ends up being shot. Despite the animal’s terrible actions and monstrous presentation, White Dog encourages viewers to understand the blame as lying with humans – most obviously the person who trained the dog, but also with those individuals who failed to save it. The dog is a pawn in opposing games, driven to the breaking point. The film presents its death as a tragedy. As plaintive music 120 plays, the camera’s presentation of the dead dog lying in the dirt alternates between close-ups, which encourage audience identification and sympathy with the dead animal, and extreme long shots, which diminish the creature and make it appear pathetic (See Figures 2.4 & 2.5). While White Dog holds humanity responsible for this dog’s actions and fate, human culpability does not always exonerate the animal or encourage audience empathy in these films. Figures 2.4 & 2.5 – White Dog uses a combination of close-ups and wide shots of the dead dog’s body to drive home the poignancy of humanity’s inability to redeem itself and save the abused animal driven mad by manipulation. Though The Pack identifies humans as being partially responsible for driving the film’s animals to commit terrible acts, humans do not intentionally cause the film’s chaos. Also, while violence might not be inherent to the modern dog’s nature, The Pack does not present its dogs’ violence as being unnatural. It is a dormant quality that can be unleashed in extreme circumstances. The Pack takes place on a remote rural island used as a vacation spot by affluent city dwellers. Things on the island go awry when a pack of feral dogs starts killing livestock before moving on to people. To explain how this situation came to pass, The Pack features an illustrative subplot. Early on, a family of vacationers prepares to return home. First, they must decide what to do with their dog. The film reveals that the collie their son is hugging was taken from a shelter, though the family had no intention of keeping it. They simply wanted it to complement the rustic cabin 121 they rented. This living creature was a prop for their idyllic rural getaway. They decide to leave the dog on the island. To keep it from following them, they tie the dog to a tree. They leave the rope loose enough that the dog can break free, but after that it will be left to fend for itself. They do not care whether it lives or dies. After it escapes, the dirty collie continues to trail the rope used to attach it to a tree throughout the film. It cuts a pitiful figure. The whimpering abandoned dog makes its way to a derelict barn used for shelter by the pack. In an extended sequence, it approaches the mangy, snarling alpha dog. The pack’s terrible leader examines the collie and allows it to join their collective. This subplot hints that all these killer dogs might share a similar backstory. One can therefore read an element of generalized anti-human animus into the pack’s actions. However, the demonic pack starts targeting humans primarily because they are hungry and humans offer an easy source of prey on the island. In many ways, the humans present a considerably less sympathetic group than the dogs. The Pack uses its scenario to activate class tensions. The island’s working-class residents are decent people. Jerry (Joe Don Baker) works for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which suggests that he has heightened sensitivity towards environmental matters. He also takes good care of his own dog, which loyally sticks by his side as he fights the wild dogs. The problem lies with the thoughtless vacationers. As will be discussed at greater length in this project’s second half, tourists tend to be the scapegoats in tales of deadly nature. They have no connection to the land and so they behave irresponsibly towards it. This can be seen in the family at the opening, thoughtlessly introducing a non-native species to the island’s ecosystem. When a new group of rich outsiders arrive, they make a bad situation considerably worse by not cooperating or communicating with their fellow humans. They butt heads with the local population, while also sniping at other members of their group. Social and personal barriers separate the threatened 122 humans and inspire petty squabbles that prevent them from working together. This makes them easy prey for the coordinated coalition of dogs. Still, the film ends in human victory. The Pack is unique among killer dog films for not pulling its punches when punishing the dogs. It does not keep the violence off-screen, as Cujo does. The Pack ends with Jerry, the de facto leader of the human survivors, squaring off against the pack’s leader. After trapping the dogs in a booby-trapped house, Jerry must wrestle with the lead dog in the attic as he tries to escape. Jerry manages to jump out of a window. The alpha leaps after him in mad pursuit, only to impale itself on a piece of trash in the yard. 9 The rest of the dogs meet an equally brutal end as the house in which they are trapped is set on fire. In the end the dogs are defeated by their inability to strategize as well as their human prey. The Pack attempts to balance out its violent conclusion by offering a happy ending to the collie subplot. As the dogs rush towards the death trap, the rope around the collie’s neck (a reminder of its pitiable abandonment) gets caught on a branch. After the other dogs die, the human survivors find the trapped collie. One of the unsympathetic city dwellers lifts a branch to beat it to death. Jerry shouts the man down and approaches the dog slowly. In a sequence that parallels the collie’s vetting by the dog pack, Jerry, an alpha in his own right, offers food to the scared dog. After the dog eats, Jerry offers it his hand. The final image, over which the credits roll, is a freeze frame of the dog licking Jerry’s hand (See Figure 2.6). 9 There are certain trends within the Animal Attack subgenre regarding how animals die. As mentioned in Chapter One, often an animal will die in a way that destroys its body or otherwise removes it from view quickly (as it sinks into the watery depths, for instance). Another important trend involves the animal impaling itself, or otherwise being betrayed by the momentum of its attack. This can be seen in films including Shakma (Logan and Parks, 1990), The Edge (Tamahori, 1997), Rogue (McLean, 2007), and The Shallows (Collet-Serra, 2016). As in The Pack, these deaths display human foresight and planning. The human lays a trap that the animal fails to anticipate. It is too caught up in the moment and intent on destruction. Its momentum and force, which have been assets throughout the film, are used against it. 123 At the end of The Pack, the affective bonds between humans and dogs are reestablished. The violent deaths of the other dogs can be excused. They were too far gone in their hatred of humans; their individual identities were lost in their demonic collective. Their deaths can also be justified through the redemption of the pack’s newest member, who has managed to retain an individual identity. In White Dog, human contact and influence is the problem and it cannot be the solution. In The Pack, the problem is the loss of human contact. Unlike naturally wild animals, feral dogs hold the promise of returning to the fold, so long as they do not lose sight of the love that (the right) humans are always willing to offer. The Hungarian film White God offers a more sympathetic and fantastic tale of animal rebellion than The Pack. White God presents the most outlandish take on animal agency considered in this chapter. The film focuses on Hagan, who begins the film as an ostensibly normal family dog. Hagan is devoted to Lili (Zsófia Psotta), the adolescent girl who owns him. Dániel (Sándor Zsótér), Lili’s estranged father, abandons Hagan on the street in a fit of pique at his daughter’s rebellion. Struggling to survive on his own, Hagan falls in with the nameless street dogs. A small shaggy mutt becomes Hagan’s apparent guardian. It offers material aid, showing Hagan how to find food and water. It also offers emotional support. As they huddle together during a rainstorm, the smaller dog licks the whimpering Hagan. None of the humans Hagan encounters display anything close to this level of kindness. Figure 2.6 – At the conclusion of The Pack, the majority of the wild dogs are (brutally) killed. However, the dog that the audience sees abandoned at the film’s beginning is spared. The last image of the film is of the bonds between human and dog being re-forged. 124 Starting with his abandonment, humans subject Hagan to ever-greater forms of cruelty. This culminates in Hagan’s being captured and sold into an underground dog-fighting network. A criminal changes Hagan’s name to Max. With this rechristening, the criminal seeks to change Hagan’s behavior through abusive training. After programming this sweet dog to be violent, the criminal sets Hagan on his fellow dogs. After fatally attacking a Rottweiler in the ring, Hagan stands over the bloody dog’s body. The camera switches between close-ups of Hagan and the dying dog. As in this chapter’s opening example, these close-ups imply that the animal is processing information. In this moment, Hagan seems to recognize the situation’s injustice. Dogs are not his enemy; his quarrel is with humanity. After this, Hagan escapes and begins to take control of his own destiny. Herein lies the potential significance of White God’s inversion of White Dog’s title. 10 White Dog presents its dog as a pitiful pawn torn apart by conflicting human interests and harsh training regimens. White God tells the story of another abused dog, one radicalized by humanity’s thoughtlessness. Hagan breaks his fellow street dogs out of a high kill shelter and organizes them into an army. This army aids Hagan in terrorizing the human population and systematically taking revenge on those who wronged him. Given its use of outright fantasy, White God might be seen as being the least engaged of any of these films with real issues related to animal cognition and agency. At one point, a group of soldiers shelters behind a row of sandbags, ready to shoot down the dog army. Hagan sneaks up behind their ranks and begins barking. The panicked soldiers leap to the opposite side of the 10 Director and co-writer Kornél Mundruczó downplays the parallels between White God and Fuller’s film. Mundruczó attributes the title to the works of writer J.M. Coetzee, and particularly his novel Disgrace, in which dogs and shelters play central thematic roles: “It’s a Coetzee idea. In his universe, we are always colonizing the whole world, and he opens another perspective” (Dollar). At the same time, Mundruczó “acknowledges the connection to Sam Fuller’s controversial film” (Dollar). 125 sandbag barrier, turning to face an attack coming from their rear. Suddenly, the dog army charges from the direction they were originally facing. The dogs outmaneuver and overrun a squad of trained and well-armed human soldiers. White God, as previously mentioned, is not the only film to feature an unusually intelligent and organized animal collective, but it differs from many of the other Animal Attack films featuring animal armies. Typically, in films where armies of animals threaten humans, the audience is aligned with the human protagonists. The animal threat appears sudden and inexplicable to both the audience and the characters. White God splits its time fairly evenly between the humans and the dogs. As a result, the audience gets to see how and why the central dog changes. At the start of the film, Hagan does not display remarkable levels of intelligence. He is presented as an average loving dog. Change confuses and distresses him. When he finds himself in a new apartment, shut up in the bathroom and unable to sleep with Lili, he cries until Lili comes to comfort him and play music. By the end of the film, however, Hagan has developed spectacular intellectual abilities. The audience witnesses instances where Hagan starts to learn. However, these moments tend to be fairly unspectacular. For example, Hagan realizes that he can cross the road safely if he waits for the crosswalk signal. The film never explicitly marks the moment at which Hagan goes from displaying realistic or believable levels of intelligence to displaying fantastic levels of strategic cunning. His intelligence seems to result in answer to the recurrent threat he faces from a hostile human world. The way White God moves from reality to fantasy makes it a useful text for encouraging audiences to interrogate their own notions about the abilities of animals. If, by the end, they cannot believe what they are witnessing, can they identify the point at which they no longer believe that the events on screen could possibly happen? 126 Allowing the audience to stay with the animal characters for significant periods of time serves another important function. White God certainly plays its dog attacks and their gruesome aftermaths for horror. Even when the dogs stalk loathsome human characters, including Hagan’s abusers, these scenes unfold in a suspenseful manner by playing out from the humans’ perspectives. However, spending so much time with the animal characters allows the audience to understand and sympathize with the dogs’ actions. The film also crucially avoids punishing the dogs for their rebellion. White God ends with Hagan reuniting with Lili. At first, Hagan seems ready to attack, but then the girl begins to play her trumpet for Hagan. This moment mirrors the earlier bathroom scene, in which Lili plays music to calm down an upset and confused Hagan. As she plays, Hagan and his dog army all lie down. After finishing her piece, Lili gets on the ground as well. She places herself on the dogs’ level. Her father, with whom Lili has reconciled, comes over to lie with the collective (See Figure 2.7). As an onlooker readies to call the authorities, the film suggests that this idyllic moment cannot last. Yet in this quiet moment, the dogs and humans achieve a moment of communion. The film remains ambivalent about the extent to which individual kindness can compensate for and counteract larger societal evils. The ending does not feature the spectacular restoration of the human-dominated status quo that one sees in The Pack. Rather it is a détente brought about by a gesture of compassion, care, and understanding from the humans, an act born out of affection and recognition. Figure 2.7 – In the final image of White God, the humans put themselves on the level with the fearsome dog army in a moment of communion and harmony. 127 As demonstrated above, there is a great deal of internal diversity in the world of killer dog films. All of the above films position the agency and intellect of their dog characters differently, and accordingly are different in terms of how they suggest that their viewers should feel about those dogs. One sees a lot less diversity in these films in regard to what happens on set. This is true in a general sense: all these displays of rebellious animal agency, from the plausible to the fantastic, from the progressive to the reactionary, depend on the careful control of trained animals on set. However, it is also true in terms of the personnel involved in managing these animals and the techniques used within their trade. The Use of Trained Animals The great white sharks so central to the Jaws franchise and Animal Attack cinema in general cannot be trained or maintained in captivity; as discussed in Chapter One, this means that most shark attack movies must use artificial sharks. At the risk of stating the glaringly obvious: dogs are easier for film crews to work with than sharks. Animal Attack films featuring dogs do sometimes use tricks comparable to what one sees in Jaws in order to simulate the animal’s presence. In his commentary, Teague explains that Cujo used “a man in a dog suit for certain shots. We [also] had a mechanical dog head” to get the proper effect (See Figure 2.8). However, as a rule, these dog films can feature the actual animals in action and interacting with human actors more extensively. Figure 2.8 – Stuntman Gary Morgan poses in his dog costume during the filming of Cujo. Though actual trained dogs can be used on set, killer dog films still require tricks to simulate the presence of dogs for some moments (Image Source: Miska). 128 The effect of seeing the flesh-and-blood creature is different from that of seeing an artificial doppelgänger. However, it can similarly deconstruct the film’s illusion. It puts one in mind of the trained animal “performing” its role. In this section, I speak generally about the training of animals for film before analyzing White Dog in relation to its use of trained dogs. White Dog is a self-reflexive film about filmmaking that actively foregrounds the artificiality of its scenario. In so doing, it helps address the compromised (but not non-existent) agency of the animal actor. As mentioned above, the world of animal training in Hollywood is fairly small. There are a limited number of practitioners and institutions where one can get the proper training. 11 This can be illustrated by looking at lineages of prominent animal trainers. One of the most significant animal trainers for the purposes of this chapter is Karl Lewis Miller. Miller got started in animal training while working with guard dogs in the Air Force (Puig F8). He became one of several apprentices to Frank Inn, who worked with dogs on several Lassie and Benji films (Wolf 250n38). Inn, in turn, had learned from Rudd Weatherwax, who trained the dogs that played Lassie and Rin Tin Tin (Foster B10). Miller learned his tricks from trainers who were responsible for some of cinema’s most iconic good dogs. Miller trained a number of cinematic good dogs himself, working on family films including K-9, Beethoven, and Babe. Yet Miller’s “specialty” was “creating illusions of ferocity” (Puig F8-F10). Miller was the primary trainer for The Pack, White Dog, and Cujo. Miller’s daughter, Teresa Ann Miller, worked with her father on a number of films before becoming a significant animal trainer in her own right. White God is among her credits. 11 The insularity of this community can cause concerns and problems. A Hollywood Reporter expose on the lax regulations of animal safety on film sets notes that AHA monitors are sometimes personal friends of the trainers, since many of them “were classmates at the Moorpark College Exotic Animal Training and Management Program, north of Thousand Oaks” (Baum). 129 In interviews, Karl Lewis Miller suggests that the process and techniques used to train dogs to simulate good or bad behaviors are not terribly different. Both involve getting the dog to perform various “little tricks” (Inwood). Miller notes that the Saint Bernards used in Beethoven and Cujo were all “lovable pets who were ‘trained to act untrained’ before the camera in distinctly different ways” (Kowalick). The notion of ‘training a dog to look untrained’ comes up several times in Miller’s statements to the press (Inwood). Miller positions this as the primary thing that sets training animals for films apart from other forms of animal training: “Obedience trainers don’t do that. Guard dog trainers don’t do that. Sheepdog trainers don’t do that. But we train dogs to look untrained” (“The Man”). Miller notes that the animals are not acting, per se. Everything they do is based on the trainer’s instructions: “If they’re supposed to look lovingly at an actor, we’re telling them to…. If they’re supposed to be vicious to an actor, we’re telling them to” (Inwood). The note about aggression is especially important. The AHA’s guidelines for shooting state that if an animal “appears aggressive, stressed and/or charges, threatens, or bites any person or animal, it shall be removed immediately from the set and location” (Guidelines 11). On the same page, the guide notes that the AHA is especially wary about “dog bites and dog attacks [which] are becoming more common and are often severe” (11). If a dog were to perform aggression unprompted, it could jeopardize the shoot. The animal must be prompted, but the “art… is to make it look like it’s all [the animal’s] idea” (“The Man”). How one feels about the use of trained animals in film depends in part on how one thinks about animal agency. There is a school of thought that conscripting animals into doing anything they would not naturally choose to do is abusive and exploitative (Hearne). This criticism can be applied to important tasks like the training of service animals, and it certainly applies to the making of movies. One argument goes that there should not be living animals of any kind in 130 cinema. Certainly, the AHA “encourages the use of animal substitutes for live animals when scenes call for the depiction of dangerous action” (Guidelines 17). PETA goes further and argues that the presence of animals should always be simulated through special effects (“Animal Actors”; Baum). Vicki Hearne suggests that this perspective can be linked to a utilitarian point of view about simplistic animal cognition: This is the view of animals as wholly innocent, incapable of knowing the implications or consequences of their actions. Tradition has it that human beings are the only creatures endowed with reason and thus the only creatures who can know the difference between right and wrong. Animals cannot understand the things we have them do, so training amounts to forcing animals to do something that can have no meaning for them. Predictably, animal trainers do not adhere to the belief that animals should not be used in films. They justify that view by offering a very different impression of the inner worlds of animals. Vicki Hearne notes that animal trainers “are always referring to an animal’s knowledge, or plans, or decisions.” She notes that, according to traditional notions of animal intelligence, this language suggests “a wholly fantastic version of the animal mind,” and compares it to the view of animal cognition one finds in the fictional entertainment that the trainers help create. The trainers admit that the animals do not necessarily understand anything about movies or acting. However, the animals do have a concept of the task at hand when they are assigned their ‘little tricks.’ I quote at length from Hearne’s article as she lays out the “Rin Tin Tin theory of animal consciousness”: trainers do believe that it makes sense to use morally significant terms such as dutiful, responsible, irresponsible, sneaky, stalwart, courtly, mean, kind or honest to describe their animals, which means that they have a theory of animal consciousness that includes the idea that when you correct an animal… he responds in part because he has a concept 131 of the value of attending to his work, the concept of responsibility. The trainers also believe that animals are capable… of caring about a job well done, of taking pride in a good performance. On this view, animal actors enjoy their work not only because of the treats and praise and the relationships with their handlers but also because they enjoy the work itself, just as human actors do. Above, one sees another articulation of the concept of animal morality. In this version, it does not relate to the concept of animal crime. It describes something similar to what Stephen King suggests in Cujo: the animal has a sense of its duties and responsibilities. In the case of a dog, it understands whether it is being a good or a bad dog. This, in turn, evokes questions about the moral response of humans who recognize this quality in animals. Bill Koehler, a trainer for Disney, goes so far as to say that to oppose animal training “is to disenfranchise animals” by keeping them from being active and intellectually engaged, from exercising their mental and physical abilities (Hearne). Koehler references dogs when making this case: "Some animals are just plain born to be working fools. You take a really sparky little golden retriever…. You think it's kind to prevent her from learning to retrieve and jump? That's her God-given birthright" (Hearne). The obvious criticism of Hearne’s writing is that the animal trainers are articulating a self-serving conceptualization of animal cognition. If they are facing charges that it is morally wrong to train animals to perform, it is in their interest to argue that the real immoral thing would be not training animals to perform. Animal training for movies is a field that is frequently under attack or regarded with suspicion, and not without good reason. In his commentary for Cujo, Teague speculates that the reason audiences are especially sensitive to simulated violence against animals in film is because there is a long history of animals being killed or injured during the 132 making of films. Indeed, Hearne was interviewing animal trainers in the wake of a major scandal about alleged animal abuse during the making of Project X (Kaplan, 1987). Though Hearne acknowledges this context, it does not lead her to push back on the rationalizations being given by the animal trainers she interviews, including Karl Lewis Miller. Nor does she ponder the additional ethical concerns of having animals perform aggression, thereby potentially contributing to the demonization of their species. Yet the rhetoric deployed by the animal trainers at a time of scrutiny does offer an intriguing take on the traditional notions of animal agency and cognition explored in this chapter. If nothing else, it also offers insights into how they wish their profession to be perceived by the public. How do films acknowledge or efface the realities of animal training and the unconventional nature of non-human performers? There is no standardized way of crediting a dog for its work, and often multiple dogs will be required to play a single role. As a result, surveying a number of dog movies, one sees a variety of techniques used to acknowledge the dog(s), or not. The different ways these films address their use of animals create different impressions about the nature of the animal’s presence and involvement. This, in turn, can color viewers’ perceptions of the production process, as well as the fiction on display. The way a film presents the relationship between those two elements (the non-diegetic production and diegetic narrative) can affect the impact of these films. After all, their narratives about out-of-control animals depend on a wholly different and contradictory reality, one in which obedient animals respond to human commands in predictable and manageable ways. One should also remain conscious of Jonathan Burt’s argument that the animal on film can trouble the easy separation of reality and fiction for some audience members, so the way these films signal the relationship between the 133 text’s internal and external conditions could have a greater than usual significance. So how do these films variously present the relationship of these dogs to the production, and what are the implications of the manner in which they convey this information? In many films, only the animal trainer and/or those who supplied the animals receive credit, and those acknowledgments tend to be buried deep in the credits. One sees this form of credit on The Pack, Cujo, and Dogs (Brinckerhoff, 1976). 12 This represents a bare minimum acknowledgment and it works on a level similar to the AHA disclaimers that tend to come at the end of a film’s credits. They concede the reality of the production’s use of trained animals, but they are also easy to miss. They require audience members to stay for the duration of the credits and to pay attention. They also do not hint at the nature of these dogs outside of the text; they do not offer the audience a sense of the dog as an individual personality or entity that differs from the dog character on screen. This allows the film’s monstrous hounds to retain a level of mystique. In other films, a single dog receives credit alongside the human actors, its name often appearing at the very end of the list of actors. This type of credit features in Man’s Best Friend (Lafia, 1993) and Rottweiler (Yunza, 2004). On one hand, this method foregrounds information about the dog’s involvement and is more likely to register with audiences. It also acknowledges that the animal is affecting traits that might not be in its nature, but which are appropriate for its role in a fiction film, a “performance” analogous to that given by the human actors. Of course, suggesting that the human and animal performances are entirely equivalent is misleading. A 12 The Pack’s first credit relating to the dogs comes 41 seconds into a credit crawl that lasts just over a minute. First it credits the man who “furnished” the dogs. It then lists a main trainer and his assistant, as well as five additional trainers. Cujo’s first relevant credit comes 39 seconds into a credit crawl lasting two minutes and 38 seconds. It identifies its trainer with the phrase: “Animal Action by.” It is an additional minute before two animal handlers are also credited. Dogs’s relevant credits appear 55 seconds into the credit crawl. It identifies the company that “provided” the dogs, as well as three trainers. This is the last credit to appear, right before a notice about AHA supervision. 134 human actor is more likely to understand the larger narrative to which they are contributing. When they make independent choices or adjust to direction, they function as a collaborator in the making of the film. An animal actor cannot consciously make a character choice any more than it could consciously perform the malicious acts of strategic maneuvering often presented in these films. An animal performer tends to be manipulated into playing its part – it does not understand how its isolated actions will be recontextualized in order to tell the story in which it appears monstrous. However, even within this single strategy there are multiple approaches to presenting the credit. Man’s Best Friend offers an especially interesting form of acknowledgment for its dog “actor.” Man’s Best Friend’s credit is unique in several regards. It is one of the few films to refer to the animal actor and the killer animal in the film by the same name. The film focuses on Max, a mutated Rottweiler that functions as a Jekyll and Hyde figure. It is a loveable, protective, but genetically modified pet undergoing a dangerous psychotic break. The opening credits run through the roster of human actors before ending with the title card: “And Introducing Max.” 13 The credit itself plays on a trope used to acknowledge the debut of a promising new talent. However, the decision to give the dog character the same name as the trained performer is the main point of interest here. Typically, the credit listings for these dog actors create a clear distinction between the ferocious dog on screen and the trained animals on set. One of the key ways they do this is by providing the trained dog’s individualizing and endearing given name. While I say endearing, the animal’s name does not have to be “cute,” per se. Zeus plays Rottweiler’s cyborg dog, and that 13 The opening credit sequence of Man’s Best Friend is perhaps the most intriguing element of the odd horror- comedy. The credits play out over a montage of images from classical art of dogs, by turns serving as loyal pets or looking ferocious. It not only hints at Max’s schizophrenic nature, but also the different ways people regard dogs. 135 name implies imposing power and strength. Still, the fact that someone named the dog hints at a relationship that exists between Zeus and a human in the world beyond the film. It sets Zeus apart from the anonymous Rottweiler in the film. Even as Man’s Best Friend’s credit acknowledges the animal actor, the shared name allows the film to play with the way audiences confuse reality and fiction in relation to animals. This could be interpreted as reinforcing the sense of the dog’s overall monstrosity, suggesting that the dog is playing itself. The fact that Rottweilers are a breed sometimes stigmatized as being especially aggressive could make this an objectionable move. However, the fact that Man’s Best Friend combines horror with broad comedy suggests that the credit endeavors to create a humorous juxtaposition between its killer canine and the on-set Max, whom the film introduces to the world as if he were a rising star or a precocious child actor. This more charitable interpretation is supported by the fact that soon after Max’s acting credit, the credits provide an additional tag that describes its animal trainer’s contribution in an interesting way: “Max’s Behavior by Clint Rowe.” That is a very specific phrasing and it carries a different impact from the more anonymous and technical animal trainer credit one usually sees. It provides an important qualifier that acknowledges that the actions of the dog on screen depend on human commands. However, perhaps the most interesting and illuminating form of acknowledgment can be seen in White Dog. White Dog centers on a striking and distinctive looking white-haired German Shepherd. It seems like a unique animal. At the end of the film, one sees the familiar crawl listing all the human actors and the parts they played. The last of these actor credits notes each of the dogs that portrayed the individual central dog: Hans, Folsom, Son, Buster, and Duke. Reflecting on White Dog, Karl Lewis Miller explains why the film required multiple dogs: “The workload was so heavy you needed multiple dogs for insurance, to guarantee that production would shoot on 136 schedule, without worrying that a dog tired out or refused to work.” Complex actions might need to be broken down into beats, with different dogs tasked with performing different parts of the whole, their own “little tricks.” Miller recalls a particularly challenging scene early in the film, in which he plays an intruder who tries to rape the dog’s adopted owner, Julie. The scene is important, helping to forge a bond between Julie and her dog, while also offering the first glimpse of the dog’s capacity for violence. The scene begins with the dog sleeping on Julie’s couch. The struggle between Julie and her assailant wakes the dog, who attacks the intruder. When the man escapes the house, the dog leaps through a glass window in pursuit. In the film’s final cut, insert shots break up the scene. However, Fuller wanted to record the entire scene in a single tracking shot. As Miller recalls, this complex shot required three dogs to be seamlessly brought into play: “Each dog knew only his piece of the trick. One dog knew to lie down, eyes closed [appearing to sleep]. The next dog knew only to leap on me and bring me down. The third dog knew only to leap through a glass window” (emphasis added). Handlers switched out the seemingly identical dogs when they were out of view of the camera. Even with this breakdown, the crew only had three takes in which to get this complicated choreography down before they risked the dogs getting too tired to perform properly. Miller attributes the decision to offer screen credits to all the dogs involved to Fuller’s considerate nature and his respect for all of his “employees,” including the canine ones. 14 Regardless of the logic underlying this choice of credit, this mode of attribution gets away from 14 White God goes a similar route in terms of the tone of its credits. In addition to giving second billing on the actors’ list to the two dogs (Luke and Body) that played Hagan, the film’s crawl of actor credits includes a separate section acknowledging “Our Dog Colleagues.” While not all of the dogs in the massive crowd scenes receive individual credits, notable dogs are acknowledged – each having been played by two different dogs. White God also offers a qualifier at the beginning of the film stating: “All of the untrained dogs who perform in this film were rescued from the streets or shelters and placed in homes with help from an adoption program.” So, even as the film tells the story of wild street dogs turning against the humans who wronged them, the film makes clear that, in reality, all these dogs have found a home with people and become pets. 137 the idea of a skilled animal actor capable of playing a major part in a film, with all of its complexities and nuances. An audience watching the film could not necessarily identify the precise moments at which one dog was subbed for another. However, the decision to list the multiple dogs required to play the part hints at the complicated tricks necessary to create the spectacle of an animal doing everything required for the role. 15 Most films confine this information to their end credits. As a result, if the audience even sees the information, it does not necessarily impact their experience of watching the film. However, White Dog’s postmodern reflexivity not only makes viewers more conscious that they are witnessing a constructed production, it specifically focuses on cinema’s animal trainers. White Dog takes place in Los Angeles and the world of film production. Julie, an aspiring actress, realizes her dog’s monstrous nature while on a sound stage, when it almost kills her black co-star. Not yet realizing the nature of the problem, Julie sets out to get the dog properly trained. Being in Hollywood, she turns to a facility that trains wild animals for use in film productions. As Julie first approaches the Noah’s Ark facility, she stops short and the camera zooms in on her face. The next shot reveals that she is reacting to the presence of an unrestrained lion lounging on the grass. The camera starts on a close-up of the lion’s face; it then zooms in on the lion’s eyes. This focus on the lion’s eyes suggests that Julie is being seen and perceived by a dangerous predator – a cause for concern under most circumstances and certainly in a film about animal attacks. However, a female employee 16 greets Julie and nonchalantly begins to pet and 15 White Dog is not exceptional for having this be the case, it is simply more upfront about the fact than many productions. As mentioned, Cujo features fairly minimal credits in terms of their use of dogs. In his commentary, Teague explains that the film required Miller to train “about 11 different Saint Bernards, because each dog would have a different skill…. we also had… a Labrador Retriever in a Saint Bernard suit.” Teague also mentions having to swap dogs out for different takes if one got too tired. In part, this level of coverage was necessary because Saint Bernards are not the most trainable or active breed (Kowalick). 16 Adding to the meta-nature of the film, the woman introduces herself as “Martine.” The woman is, in reality, Martine Colette, née Martine Dawson – founder of Los Angeles’s Wildlife Waystation, an animal sanctuary where White Dog was partly filmed. 138 play with the lion, which acts like an overgrown housecat. After that encounter, Julie meets Carruthers (Burt Ives), who offers an extended lecture about all the films on which their animals have worked. Indeed, when Julia enters Carruthers’s office, he is on the phone trying to convince someone to use one of the facility’s panthers (“he’s safe and he knows every camera angle”). It is here that Julie will meet Keys (Paul Winfield), an African American trainer who takes on the special project of training the racism out of her “white dog.” The use of the Hollywood animal training facility benefits the film in several ways. Its training pen provides a visually striking setting for Keys’s reeducation of the dog. It is a chain link dome with a dusty red floor. During the dramatic training sessions, it looks like an arena for gladiatorial combat, an effect enhanced by the image of the dog viciously attacking Keys, who wears a bulky padded suit for safety (See Figures 2.9 & 2.10). The film’s setting also emphasizes the dog’s threat. We witness these trainers dealing with dangerous big cats and acting like they were kittens. Still, they balk at the notion that any attack dog can be made 100% safe. When Julie first meets Carruthers, he boasts of reaching into a nest of rattlesnakes while serving as John Wayne’s hand double for True Grit. When he realizes that Julie has brought them an attack dog, he blanches. He recalls a friend who lived with a supposedly reformed attack dog for eight years; they did everything together, until one night it “chewed my friend’s jugular out…. Can’t nobody can unlearn a dog. Nobody!” Even before realizing the racist nature of the dog’s aggression, Carruthers suggests euthanizing the dog for public safety. As the muzzled dog stands quietly at Julie’s side on the end of a leash, Carruthers says: “With that dog out of circulation, there’ll be a lot of people that’ll sleep better tonight.” In these ways, the animal training subplot enhances the effect of the narrative. The facility also foregrounds for the audience the fact that the animal behaviors they witness on screen are often the result of extensive and careful training. 139 Figures 2.9 & 2.10 – Filmed at an actual animal training facility, the large cage featured in White Dog provides a visually striking location for the scenes of the dog’s re-education. Jonathan Burt offers further insights into the ambiguous agency of the animal actor. As Burt points out, it is an ambiguity that applies to most forms of acting, acting being “both a form of agency and something done under the direction of someone else” (Animals 32). The animal actor simultaneously gets manipulated and manipulates. Humans control animals on set with the ultimate aim of making their actions legible to human audiences in the context of a story. Burt notes that animal agency in all arenas “needs to be qualified by the lack of power animals have in relation to that which humans have over them” (Animals 31). White Dog explicitly puts audiences in mind of this by demonstrating how the Noah’s Ark trainers turn alpha predators into docile creatures and obedient performers. Inversely, malicious human manipulation transforms the dog, which should be a loving companion species, into a murderous terror. In order to present this scenario to its audience, White Dog itself depends upon animal trainers like those depicted in the film. Although it requires caveats and disclaimers, Burt argues that critics should acknowledge an animal agency beyond human control, even if it may be hard to detect. The concept of animal agency seeks “to outline the impact animals have on humans rather than always seeing animals as the passive partner, or victim” (Animals 31). This requires a sensitive balancing act. It is one analogous to a perspective necessary in much of ecocriticism. One does not want to exonerate 140 humanity from its culpability in environmental degradation. Humans must reckon with the awesome responsibility that results from creating and using technologies that affect the world. To grant the non-human too much agency can lead to the false romantic notion that, thanks to the world’s self-regulating systems, everything will work out in the end without humans changing or needing to intervene. However, in order to encourage respectful attitudes and actions, humans cannot imagine themselves as the ultimate masters of the world, even if that mastery takes the form of benevolent stewardship. Achieving a balanced perspective on animal acting requires taking “into account not just the mechanics of training, but the whole network of interactions between animals and humans including the general effects sought by the filmmakers and their impact on an audience” (Burt, Animals 32). The dog’s response to its training allows the animal to work in concert with the filmmakers to elicit an emotional response from the audience. The animal plays a role in “regulat[ing] its symbolic effects” (32). However, animals are not always cooperative tools in an anthropocentric meaning-making process. Without intending to, a dog on film might work against the filmmaker’s intent. The guileless nature of animal performers can undercut the image of them as mere pawns in the production of these narratives. It is easy to conceptualize the animal performers in these films as hapless participants, obliviously contributing to a text that demonizes their species, and potentially the larger non-human world. When dogs respond to a command on set, they do not know whether their actions will be recontextualized to tell a story about a vicious killing spree or a heartwarming relationship with a child. However, their oblivious natures also mean that animals do not understand the importance of staying ‘in character.’ This can be more noticeable in films using animals that, unlike dogs, are not especially receptive to training. It can also be an issue for low-budget exploitation films, which have less time and money for multiple takes or 141 effective post-production manipulation. However, even in big-budget films with well-trained animals, there can be moments of slippage. For some viewers, an animal’s mere presence frustrates any attempt to portray it as a monstrous brute. For example, Cujo is an effectively constructed horror film, and when its dog is on screen it snarls and growls and acts vicious. At the same time, given the general fondness many people have for dogs, especially an affable breed like the Saint Bernard, even as the dog performs ferocity some viewers simply see a good dog covered in slime. Writing for Newsday, reviewer Alex Keanes expresses sympathy for the animal, describing “Cujo, with his gunky, sad and red-eyed face, snuffling and howling… is as pathetic as he is menacing. Sharks, even mechanical ones, are a good deal more awesome.” Eleanor Ringel with the Atlanta Constitution similarly expresses empathy for “the uncredited four-legged thespian…. forced to spend most of the movie all gooked up with mud and blood and pus and other slobbery stuff.” Ringel finds it impossible to accept the dog as a monster, seeing instead “a big lovable dog (Saint Bernards are among the sweetest breeds around).” Of course, the sympathy one feels towards these animals can be influenced not only by personal affective inclinations but also by the formal presentation of the animal’s agency. Having already discussed the narrative presentation of this topic, it is time to consider how the medium of film can formally convey that an animal is thinking, and perhaps even what it is thinking. The Limits of Language Dogs can respond to voices. Karl Lewis Miller notes that auditory cues are often used to trigger an animal to perform an action on set (Puig F10). Some animals respond to clickers, buzzers, or whistles. Dogs respond to their trainers’ voices (Puig F10). In addition to prompting a physical response, the tone of the human voice can prompt the animal to convey an emotional 142 response. Lewis reflects on how Weatherwax, Lassie’s owner and trainer, would use “a voice that could tempt, terrify or deliberately confuse” (“The Man”). At the same time, there are limits to how much of the meaning of what humans say that an animal can understand. This is why (controversially) the ‘correction’ given to a trained animal might be physical. Hubert Wells, the trainer who got in trouble for Project X, explained that animals primarily understand physical communication because animals are physical. They express themselves through cuddling, purring, rubbing, jumping, prancing and licking, or by shoving, kicking or biting. “Lectures on ethical theory and protestations of love don’t do you any good with a chimp that’s about to bite your finger …” Wells says. “I think that all trainers are attracted by the animals in part because of the sheer wonder of the beauty and power of their physicality, but that means dealing also with the fact that animals, unlike people, cannot be repressed or inhibited by words alone. You can’t embarrass a lion into changing his behavior.” (Hearne) So what is the relationship of animals to language, and how do films present that relationship? At the beginning of this chapter, I suggest that many Animal Attack films are constrained by the fact that their non-human antagonists cannot speak. While this is generally true, there are Animal Attack films in which the central animals talk. The Planet of the Apes films are probably the most notable examples of this. The franchise’s original iteration features highly anthropomorphized ape creatures that speak English fluently (or as fluently as thick prosthetics and makeup allow). The recent reboot of the series, beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Wyatt, 2011), limits the apes’ linguistic abilities. However, the apes in these new films still carry on extended conversations using human language. Sometimes they communicate through 143 stilted speech, sometimes through subtitled sign language. The apes’ command of language enhances their uncanny closeness to humans. Indeed, the Ape films are unique among Animal Attack films for effectively turning their central animals into humans. Portrayed by human actors, the apes function like human characters, with legible motivations and arcs. Even when concealed by sophisticated effects, the humanity of the actors portraying these apes remains evident. 17 The fact that the apes in these films are meant to be unusually close to humans might explain why few other Animal Attack films feature talking animals. As referenced above, talking animals are not uncommon figures in the media, particularly in materials aimed at children. However, whether aimed at children or adults, texts prominently featuring talking animals are often regarded as primarily allegorical. Rachel Poliquin expresses this overarching categorization when she observes: “From Aesop’s fables, to Beatrix Potter’s stories, to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and, more recently, movies such as Babe and Bambi, animals have talked, and in talking they have told us about human proclivities and transgressions” (172). When animals begin speaking, they lose their animality. Instead, they are primarily conceptualized as representing human traits and characteristics. Steve Baker argues that the prevailing disinterest in confronting the animality of these talking creatures reveals important details about how people regard animals. Baker argues that the “notion that talking-animal narratives are not really about animals – that the worthwhile ones, at least, must surely be about something more important than mere animals – is quite consistent with the far wider cultural trivialization and marginalization of the animal” (Picturing 138). 17 Johan Höglund argues that, even as the apes in these films become more advanced, they “remain unmistakably apes” (233). This holds especially true in the most recent films, where the sophisticated special effects mask the performers’ humanity. Unlike in the original films, these digital apes are “obviously not [human actors] in disguise” (232). Actually, that is precisely and clearly what these digital apes are. Part of what makes the special effects so impressive is the way they conceal the actors’ bodies while capturing their expressions and gestures so accurately. The fact that much of the discourse surrounding these films centers on the skill of actor Andy Serkis and the recognition he deserves makes it difficult to ignore the thinly veiled human actors. 144 Baker feels that the tendency of critics to either demean media featuring talking animals as infantile and/or deny the animality of those fictional creatures is a defense mechanism. The talking animal creates the potential for identifying with animals and imaging their analogous interior lives. This threatens the perception of animals “as absolutely other” (Picturing 124, original emphasis). Baker’s argument also explains the decision not to have animals talk in most Animal Attack movies. As discussed in Chapter One, the monstrosity of these animals depends in large part on their status as an absolute other, and on people’s inability to understand or communicate with them. While these films might not be afraid to alter their animals in dramatic and fundamental ways, they will often keep them mute. Allowing animals to speak might ease narrative burdens. However, letting the animals speak would take away a key part of their villainous appeal: their lack of humanity. There is a long tradition in Western thought of viewing language as a key feature differentiating humans and non-humans. Aristotle insists: nature… does nothing without purpose; and man [sic] alone of the animals possesses speech. The mere voice, it is true, can indicate pain and pleasure, and therefore is possessed by the other animals as well… but speech is designed to indicate the advantageous and the harmful, and therefore also the right and the wrong; for it is the special property of man in distinction from the other animals that he alone has perception of good and bad and right and wrong and the other moral qualities. Again, issues of morals and ethics haunt this discussion. Aristotle declares that only humans have speech, and by extension logic and morals. Yet he must concede that animals do possess a form of communication; they can legibly convey meaning and emotion, if only crudely. Lippit 145 argues that the long tradition of denying language to animals stems from “Philosophical conceptions of language, linked to untenable notions of subjectivity, consciousness, and self, [that] have failed to accommodate the language of animals as language” (Electric 11-12). While it takes a very different form from human speech, animals do possess language. Acknowledging animal language does not necessarily resolve the underlying issue of anthropocentrism. Citing Derrida, Haraway notes that the problem is not just those who deny certain attributes and abilities (like language) to animals. There is a larger tendency to assume that the language abilities of humans are inherently superior (When 79). The fact that human language marks the apes in the Planet of the Apes films as especially advanced and sophisticated can be viewed as backhanded human exceptionalism. 18 There are Animal Attack films that explore the idea of alternative forms of animal language; I shall discuss those at greater length in Chapter Three. First, I want to highlight the work done by Baxter, one of the few Animal Attack films that maintains its villain’s animality and alterity while giving it a human voice. Baxter centers on a bull terrier willing to kill in order to find the perfect owner and living arrangement. Baxter never speaks to the human characters. The croaky voice of actor Maxime Leroux provides the titular dog’s running internal commentary. While the voiceover expresses the dog’s perceptions through human language, it evokes an alien view of the human world. Appropriately, given dogs’ heightened senses of smell and hearing, Baxter’s descriptions privilege scent and sound as a means of understanding the world. Sometimes Baxter allows the viewer to share the dog’s perceptions. As Baxter begins to fixate on a young couple, he notes with pleasure that he can hear them having sex, despite being across the street and in another building. As he describes this, gazing out the window, the film cuts 18 At the same time, these films use people’s lack of speech (Planet of the Apes) or their losing the ability to speak (War of the Planet of the Apes) to indicate humanity’s decadent decline and degradation. 146 to a shot of the couple’s window as the sound of their lovemaking becomes audible. Yet Baxter also mentions things that are harder to translate. Expressing frustration at the limitations of people’s senses, Baxter complains about the various noises his owner cannot hear at night, including the sound of “birds tossing in their sleep.” Baxter’s sense of smell is even more difficult to translate. In part this is due to the nature of cinema as a primarily audiovisual medium. However, Baxter’s ability to perceive scent goes beyond smelling physical objects. He describes smelling people’s emotions and mental states. The idea that these intangible things have a scent seems odd, but Baxter discusses them as if they were obvious. At several points, Baxter refers to the smell of fear without providing descriptive details, as if that were something everyone could recognize and understand. Conversely, things that seem obvious to people baffle Baxter. Baxter’s confused descriptions of the actions and attitudes of the people around him make the familiar seem strange. After a beloved owner gets pregnant, Baxter senses the delighted woman’s condition and interprets it as a “sickness.” Upon being introduced to the couple’s baby, Baxter feels disgust: “I’d never seen anything so weak and mindless. It was damp, toothless, and almost hairless. I thought they were ashamed of it, that they were apologizing. But when I looked at them, they seemed happy.” Baxter views the beloved infant as pathetic; he fails to understand how it could bring pleasure. Baxter cannot even recognize the baby as human. To Baxter, the couple that owns him are “the Woman” and “the Man;” the baby is “the Creature.” Baxter’s running commentary nuances the audience’s understanding of the dog’s motivations and it affects how they interpret the image of the dog. It can ascribe ominous intent to the dog even in seemingly benign moments. At one point, Baxter flops on the ground in front of the baby, allowing the happily cooing infant to pet his head. It is a sweet visual, but all the 147 while Baxter’s voiceover details his plan to murder the infant and make it look like an accident, so that he can once again get his owners’ full attention (See Figure 2.11). As deployed in Baxter, the dog’s dry voiceover is an evocative device. On the one hand, it can be seen as part of the dark comedy’s overall playfulness, appropriating a trope from children’s media to tell a grim story. The device also resonates with the film’s thematic interest in the ways people fail to understand or communicate with those around them. Baxter is the confused, impartial observer of bourgeois repression. He is also a figure emblematic of that repression, being physically incapable of communicating with those around him. The voiceover in Baxter allows the audience to understand the dog as a character while preserving and even enhancing its animalistic alterity. Part of the reason this technique works so effectively is that it maintains the communicative barrier that prevents mutual comprehension. The dog’s capacity for human language remains confined in its head. Direct communication is not possible. The humans in Baxter can only pick up the resource available to people in the real world (and most killer dog movies): the animal’s body language and crude vocalizations (whimpers, growls, barks, etc.). Since domestic dogs are fairly widespread, many people are familiar with the ways in which dogs express themselves. The average person is more likely to be attuned to the expressions of domestic pets, like dogs, than they are to recognize the significance of a wild Figure 2.11 – In Baxter, a sweet image is twisted by the voiceover as the central dog contemplates murder. 148 animal’s expressions. The positioning of a dog’s ears or tail gives insight into its mental and emotional state. A whimper or growl lets people know how it feels. Therefore, films with dogs in them have an easy shorthand that they can use to keep the audience informed about the state of mind of their canine characters. Cujo provides a clearly legible arc for the dog all through the animal’s physical and vocal expressions. Cujo begins the film as a gentle and loving creature. When he first approaches the mother and son he will eventually terrorize, his tail is erect and wagging. He approaches the people cautiously, before gingerly sniffing and licking the young boy. Later, as the disease begins to take hold, the audience needs to understand that the dog is in pain and unraveling mentally. Early on, the dog keeps his head down and tucks his tail between his legs, whimpering in response to loud noises. When those loud noises start to elicit low growls, it indicates an ominous turn in character. Finally, the audience needs to understand that the dog has gone completely mad and become irredeemably violent. After the rabies takes hold, Cujo’s teeth are perpetually bared in a snarl, his ears are pinned back, and he barks loudly. Of course, other formal elements convey the dog’s transformation. The music, the framing of Cujo, the makeup effects used on the dog – all these factors play a role in transforming the loveable Saint Bernard into a monster. Yet the dog’s “acting” also helps convey the necessary message. 19 There are limits to a dog’s emotive abilities. During the post-production process, the production “brought in a guy, who was very good doing vocal sound effects to do a lot of the dog growling and stuff, to give [Cujo] more of a personality” (Teague ). 20 While a dog speaking in the voice of a human 19 Babe’s director noted that Karl Lewis Miller “had the guile to be able to work out strategies to make the animal project [the necessary] emotion” (Puig F10). His description suggests that the animals need to be tricked into performing correctly. 20 This is not an isolated technique. Prolific voice actor Frank Welker is credited with providing vocal effects for a number of species in Animal Attack films, including monkeys (Monkey Shines), dogs (Man’s Best Friend), snakes (Anaconda), and mutant spiders (Eight Legged Freaks). For The Grey, Joe Carnahan mentions mixing the bellows of MMA fighter Quinton Jackson into the chorus of the aggressive wolf pack’s howls to make them more intimidating. 149 might disturb or distract an audience, a human making dog sounds works as an effective enhancement. It brings the dog’s vocalizations closer to what people imagine they should be like in that moment. While an audience’s familiarity with dog communication can be an asset to these films, vernacular understandings of dog behavior can betray the film’s desired effect. For instance, in most people’s experience, a wagging tail indicates a happy, friendly dog. In Eleanor Ringel’s review of Cujo, she notes that the dog “can’t resist wagging his tail after mauling his latest victim.” She sees this as the essential sweet nature of the trained dog shining through the fiction. Samuel Fuller appears to have anticipated this interpretation. Karl Lewis Miller reports that, during the making of White Dog, Fuller complained that when the dog was attacking, its “tail is wagging like he’s having fun!” Miller explains that, actually, “all dogs attack with their tails up and wagging. It’s like a rudder, for balance. Even a bad dog or a police dog, they all attack that way.” At the same time, Miller concedes that, for the film, “the tail up and wagging takes away a degree of viciousness.” The wagging tail ruptures the drama of the attack scenes, making them register as a trained dog enjoying some pleasurable roughhousing. In order to work around this problem, the animal handlers on White Dog used a harness to restrain the dog’s tail for certain shots (Miller, Karl L.). This prevented it from engaging in a natural behavior (wagging its erect tail while attacking) that would not have read correctly to the audience. The contents of these films must make sense to their human audiences and conform to their understanding of how these animals look, sound, and behave. Therein lies the real challenge of these films. They endeavor to communicate a truly alien understanding of the world in a way that humans can easily comprehend, using a medium intended for humans. Some of the most interesting ways in which these films handle this challenge is through the various ways they treat the animals’ eyes. 150 Different Ways of Seeing What does a non-human animal see when it looks at its surroundings? How does it understand or feel about what it sees? The answers to these questions could provide valuable insights for understanding the interior world of the non-human. Those answers, however, are largely beyond the ability of humans to answer definitively. This enigma plays a role in people’s fascination with the animals’ gaze. It is a preoccupation that extends beyond the world of Animal Attack films and cinema in general. The philosophers John Berger and Jacques Derrida both notably wrote about the profound effect of being seen by an animal. Berger approaches the topic in a broad, theoretical sense. Derrida’s engagement with the animal’s gaze is more grounded and tangible. Despite the differences in their accounts, they agree that the experience of recognizing oneself as the subject of a non-human’s gaze offers a new perspective on what it means to be human. Berger points out that humanity’s planetary co-inhabitants do not necessarily share humanity’s privileged sense of itself. From the non-human animal’s perspective, humans are simply another wholly unspectacular part of the larger world. Berger describes how: The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognized as similar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look…. when he is being seen by the animal, he is being seen as his surrounding are seen by him. (13-14, original emphasis) Being seen by the animal, and being aware of being seen, places humans in their environment. It decenters them as the most important element of the world. If humans possess a special quality, 151 it lies in their ability to recognize the significance of their being seen by an indifferent observer. They can be sent down the conceptual rabbit hole by such an encounter, their constructed worldview shaken badly. As mentioned, while Berger and Derrida both acknowledge the significance of the animal’s gaze, they disagree about how humans might encounter this gaze, and the possibility of such an encounter. Berger presents the reciprocal animal’s gaze as an abstract relic, something lost to time. Berger speculates that seeing and being seen by animals played an important role in how humans came to understand themselves. However, that was before modernization and industrialization. Modernity drove real animals out of our day-to-day lives (21). Society replaced these animals with various simulacra, but these are insufficient replacements. Animals became spectacles to be looked at only. They no longer look at humans, and thus a significant part of human life has been lost (26-27). Berger concedes that animals have not completely disappeared from the human world. Many people regularly interact with or encounter domestic animals, like dogs. These interactions can be important and meaningful. For many people, their pet “completes” them, “offering responses to aspects of his character which would otherwise remain unconfirmed. He can be to his pet what he is not to anybody or anything else…. The pet offers its owner a mirror to a part that is otherwise never reflected” (25, original emphasis). Yet Berger maintains that interacting with a pet does not provide the same experience as interacting with a wild animal, which is an absolute other. In people’s relationships with their pets, “the autonomy of both parties has been lost… the parallelism of their separate lives has been destroyed” (25). Although Berger expresses the opinion in a different way, he offers a line of argumentation similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s, discounting the real animality of the domestic pet. 152 Derrida offers a different account, one that sees the potential for impactful encounters with animals in modern life. Derrida cites an encounter with his pet cat as inspiring his own reflection on this topic. While pets might not be wild, they still constitute a strange non-human presence in the domestic realm. Derrida recounts getting a new perspective on basic questions of identity after finding himself naked (and embarrassed) in front of his cat. Derrida feels ashamed of his nakedness in front of this animal and its “insistent gaze,” but also ashamed that he feels shame (4). After all, the cat does not scrutinize his genitals in particular; it simply looks in his general direction. Indeed, the unclothed cat has no concept of its own nudity. Derrida notes that the animal can allow itself to be looked at, no doubt, but also – something that philosophy perhaps forgets, perhaps being this calculated forgetting itself – it can look at me. It has its point of view regarding me. The point of view of the absolute other, and nothing will ever have given me more food for thinking through this absolute alterity of the neighbor or of the next(-door) than these moments when I see myself seen naked under the gaze of a cat. (11) Berger’s claim that the animal gaze is simply a relic of the past might not necessarily constitute the type of calculated obfuscation Derrida describes above. However, Berger’s argument neglects the fact that non-human animals are still a key part of the world, and humans can still encounter them in meaningful ways. In Derrida’s case, the encounter occurs in the home with his pet, a creature whose animal status some might call into question. Jonathan Burt contends that such an experience can also occur in the cinema, when confronted with simulated and spectacular animals. 153 Burt views cinematic encounters with animals as a viable “point of entry for our engagement with the natural world” (Animals 47). Burt understands the argument that “[f]ilm, the medium of representation in modernity par excellence, encapsulates many of those things seen as responsible for alienating man (and animals) from nature…. And yet, film also reasserts the moral importance of the bonds between human and animal” (Animals 21-22, original emphasis). Film presents a different kind of contact than what one might have experienced in the past, but it is not an inherently lesser form of contact. Meaningful connections can still be made through the medium. One of the key ways in which cinema “marks the point of contact across species” comes from a preoccupation with the animal’s gaze (Animals 56). Burt explains that “[t]he look need not necessarily communicate anything as such but sets in play a chain of effects that reflects at the very least some form of shared understanding of context between human and animal” (Animals 40). Even as the exchange of looks helps prevent alienation from the non-human, the camera does not “demystify” the alterity of the animal’s gaze (Animals 56). Indeed, part of what makes the animal’s eye such an intriguing cinematic object relates to that which Berger and Derrida found so compelling about the animal’s gaze. It signifies a radically different way of perceiving, seeing, and understanding the world. An interest in seeing the world differently factored into early fascination with the camera 21 , so cinema offers an apt venue for exploring the mysteries of animal perception. The impartial lens was thought to be capable of showing the world in ways that the unaided human eye could not see (Burt, Animals 53). The camera lens functions as an inorganic alternative to the animal eye. It can “see,” but not in the same way that humans see. 21 Dziga Vertov celebrated the kino-glaz (“cinema eye”) and the “victory of film over the limitations of the human senses and the world they perceive” (Elsaesser and Hagener 85). Andre Bazin’s seminal “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” positions the mechanical camera as the impartial mediator between biological humans and the natural world they inhabit, offering a new way of seeing that was like and unlike human perception (7). 154 Burt points to this long-standing fascination in cinema with other ways of seeing to explain the tendency in films featuring animals to fetishize their “eye – and often it is the single eye rather than the pair” (Animals 54). By focusing on the reflective surface of the single eye, the animal’s “look merges with the look of the camera lens…. [this] effectively turns the animal into a camera, a non-human recording mechanism” (Animals 54). These shots, and the way they are incorporated into the film, indicate that the animal sees and engages the world around them. If a film pairs the image of an animal’s eye with another shot, this pairing implies that the animal sees and reacts to, or thinks about, something around it. Sometimes these films make it obvious that their focus on the eye is meant to indicate animal understanding. An extreme example appears in Orca, when the whale emerges from the water to confront its hunter foe. The film cuts to an extreme close-up of the whale’s eye. For an instant, the reflection of the hunter on the eye comes into sharp focus, as if the eye were a literal camera taking a snapshot (See Figure 2.12). With this shot, the audience understands that the whale is marking the hunter and committing his image to memory. However, this can be implied more subtly, without spelling out for the audience what the animal thinks or feels, or whether it truly understands what it sees. There is also room for misinterpreting the meaning of the animal’s gaze. This can be seen in White Dog, when Julie takes the trained lion’s stare to be the hungry gaze of a predator. Figure 2.12 – In Orca, the animal’s eye functions like an organic camera lens as it ‘takes a picture’ of a character. 155 The ambiguity of these shots of eyes is an important part of their nature and effect. Burt notes: “the image of the animal’s eye reflects the possibility of animal understanding by emphasizing animal sight. This does not mean that the eye gives any access to what is understood but it does signal the significant participation of the animal in the visual field” (Animals 71, original emphasis). The animal is active and engaged, but its intent and sentiment remain a mystery. By only focusing on the eye of these silent creatures, “the point of contact across the species is not itself demystified. It is still a point of resistance but one that does not entail a radical alienation between human and animal” (56). Sometimes, particularly in films centered on benevolent relationships between people and animals, a space of identification can be forged in this visual encounter, as two beings occupying a shared environment recognize each other. One can see this deployed in White Dog and White God, both of which feature humans who love (and are seemingly loved by) the central dogs. In these films, shots of the dogs’ eyes can be paired with matching shots of human eyes to create a sense of connection, as they recognize another intelligent, living creature. 22 However, in these same films, that combination of shots can also signal confrontation and animosity. These shots can resist the notion of human- animal identification and communion, or demonstrate its limitations (64). The moments in which connection and understanding fail or break down, or frightening disconnects are revealed, are often some of the most important moments in these Animal Attack films. Something Berger, Derrida, and Burt do not discuss is the different stakes of exchanging glances with different animals. It is one thing to feel shame when standing naked before an 22 White God director Kornél Mundruczó identifies the eyes of the central dog as playing an essential role in the audience’s ability to identify with the animal. He explains that the key to the film, “the only and most important guarantee, was Hagan’s eyes. That this dog was truly alive…. for those who can [commit to watching a dog], they meet a living soul that is beautiful…. Hagan’s eyes have to be alive, because if they’re not, then see ya!” (“Behind the Scenes”). 156 indifferent house cat. To become the object of an alpha predator’s gaze can mean something else entirely. It can mean understanding and recognizing oneself not simply as a complex creature enmeshed in the larger world, but also as a food source. That is a very different kind of unsettling and humbling ecological revelation for a human. The animal’s gaze plays an important role in Val Plumwood’s account of being attacked by a crocodile. Plumwood describes how the crocodile’s “beautiful, flecked golden eyes looked straight into mine” (“Surviving”). Immediately before it strikes, its “golden eyes glinted with interest” in response to her ineffectual attempts to scare it away. Berger theorizes that visual encounters determined how humans came to understand themselves. David Quammen points out that predators played a role in that development of self: “Great and terrible flesh-eating beasts have always shared landscape with humans. They were part of the ecological matrix within which Homo sapiens evolved. They were part of the psychological context in which our sense of identity as a species arose” (3). Plumwood and the crocodile met each other’s eyes. Plumwood understood herself as being seen by the crocodile. The crocodile regarded her from a unique point of view, and, in her estimation, found her of “interest.” That interest stemmed from hunger apparently, and their moment of connection was the preamble to a brutal, near-fatal assault. Exchanging glances with an antagonistic animal requires regarding the animal with considerably more respect and caution than one might show towards a friendly animal, or an indifferent creature that poses little threat. Sharing space with a formidable and dangerous animal means regarding it as an equal. Perhaps even as a superior. It puts considerable pressure on the human to figure out the animal’s intent, so that its actions can be anticipated. Understanding and responding to those cues properly could mean the difference between life and death. The inscrutability of their gaze therefore can represent a great liability and frustration. However, the 157 close-up of the eye can precede the film’s transition to point-of-view shots. In these moments, the film takes the audience behind the eye and into the head of the killer animal. These POV shots are a common and especially intriguing trope in Animal Attack films. The strained logic of the animal POV shot does make the ubiquity of its use strange. Arguably, humans can never truly understand what it is like to be anything other than a human (Nagel). 23 However, the cinematic experience struggles even to approximate what it would be like to experience the world as a non-human. As a medium, cinema privileges the visual and the aural. While sight and hearing are key senses for humans, they are not necessarily the primary way other animals understand and perceive the world around them. For instance, smell plays an essential role in how dogs make sense of their surroundings. A film like Baxter can pay lip service to this, as the dog’s voiceover describes the world using scents. Yet whenever Baxter wants to put its audience in the dog’s body, it must settle for a primarily visual experience. A close-up of the dog’s eyes precedes a cut to a low-angle handheld shot. Only the camera’s placement and its movement differentiate these shots visually from any other shot in the film. Of course, the difference between how dogs and humans see the world amounts to more than height and movement. A dog’s eyes perceive the visible light spectrum differently from humans 24 ; something similar applies to many species. 23 Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” points out that “the fact that [any] organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism” (436, original emphasis). However, “every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view” (437). In regards to his essay’s titular question, Nagel argues that, while we might understand that bats “perceive the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation,” this sensory experience “is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine” (438). Our imaginations are constrained by our experiences. In the case of imagining what it is like to be a bat, the resources available to humans “are inadequate to the task” (439). 24 The American Kennel Club notes that there exists a long-standing misconception that dogs only see the world in black-and-white. They attribute this belief to a 1937 manual, Training the Dog, by Will Judy. Judy wrote: “It is likely that all the external world appears to [dogs] as varying highlights of black and gray.” Recent research suggests that dog vision is more similar to someone with “red-green colorblindness.” The AKC notes that there are websites and apps available that simulate dog vision and let you “see what your dog is seeing at any time” (AKC Staff). 158 Despite this disconnect in terms of the quality of vision, few films featuring animal POV shots use filter effects to give these shots a different visual quality than other shots in the film. Of the several dog films considered in this chapter, only Rottweiler uses a special filter to distinguish its POV shots. When the film cuts to a POV, the image becomes desaturated and the frame’s edges blur, giving the image an iris effect (See Figure 2.13). 25 A similar filter is used in The Ghost and the Darkness (Hopkins, 1995) to simulate a lion’s POV during a hunt scene (See Figure 2.14). The repeated use of this particular filter makes a kind of sense. It not only suggests a difference in terms of visual perception, it also indicates the limited mental world of the animal in question. The iris effect directs audience attention, indicating the object of the gaze. When applied to the POV of a predator, it suggests a single-minded concentration on the animal’s prey. Still, Rottweiler arguably uses the effect not to emphasize the animal nature of its non-human antagonist, but rather its inorganic quality. The central dog in Rottweiler is a cyborg. In the film’s climax it emerges as a Terminator-like metal skeleton, but throughout most of the film, its unnaturally glowing blue eyes provide the primary marker of its robotic identity. Rottweiler’s use of the filter connects it to other deployments of the technique in films like Terminator or Robocop, where digital interface overlays images indicating the vision of a robot or cyborg. The use of such filters for a “natural” animal’s POV remains fairly uncommon. More often, the shift in perspective will simply be communicated by the position of the camera, the way it moves, and the way subjects interact with it. Actually, a useful illustration of how easily the unmarked camera can play the animal’s role comes from a particularly effective fake-out in Cujo. 25 The iris effect was used in some of cinema’s first POV shots to distinguish them from other shots. In 1900, George Albert Smith experimented with POV in a pair of short films showcasing the then-novel close-up. These films (Grandma’s Reading Glass and As Seen Through a Telescope) feature shots of characters looking at objects through magnifying devices, followed by enlarged views of these objects framed by circular masks. 159 Figure 2.13 – Though the point-of-view shot is a common trope in Animal Attack films, they rarely use filters to visually distinguish shots taken from the animal’s perspective from any other shot in the film. Rottweiler is a rare exception, possibly due to the dog’s robotic qualities. Making this moment even more intriguing, the character being watched taunts the dog. While looking at the man from the dog’s point-of-view, the audience hears the man scream: “You’re just a fucking mutt! You don’t even understand a word I’m saying, do you?” It is unclear whether this moment implies that the dog actually does understand human speech. Figure 2.14 – A similar filter is used to mark a POV shot in The Ghost and the Darkness. Ghost features other apparent POV shots that do not use this filter. Taken during a night hunt, the black-and-white may suggest the feline’s night vision. The iris-like effect also communicates the single-minded intent of the hungry predator that has spied a meal. When Donna’s car first breaks down in Cujo, leaving her and her son stranded at a remote auto garage, only the audience knows a rabid dog is loose. Oblivious to the danger, Donna fiddles with her son’s stuck seatbelt, her car door open and her leg sticking out into the yard. As Donna wrestles with the seatbelt, the camera cuts away to a distant shot of the car from 160 a low-angle; the camera dips lower still to peer out from under the loose wooden slats of a shed door. The film cuts back to the mother and son, entering a conventionally shot back-and-forth dialogue scene. It then cuts to an angle similar to the previous low shot, only the camera has left its previous hiding place and stealthily glides towards the woman’s turned back and up towards her shoulder. Suddenly, with an explosion of noise, Cujo pops up at the window on the opposite side of the car. Part of the sophistication of this jump scare comes from the series of assumptions it relies on the audience to make. For the scene described above to work, the audience needs to believe that the shots they are seeing, which are no different in terms of image quality from any other shot in the film, may be coming from a dog’s perspective. It helps that Cujo’s previous attack scenes both feature shots from the dog’s perspective as well, so the use of POVs has been established and is associated with the dog’s violent behavior. 26 The audience would be able to recognize those earlier shots as POV shots because they use a fairly standard mode of presentation. For most of the film’s shots, the camera is at a human’s eye level and either remains static or moves smoothly. It becomes noticeable when the film features extended shots from a lower angle and features less graceful motion. In these moments the camera seems to stop being a passive recording mechanism used to convey visual information clearly. Instead it appears to function as an active (and potentially literal) player in the scene. In most instances, in Cujo but also in the larger world of cinema, the visual presentation in the above fake-out signifies a POV shot. The filmmakers exploit the audience’s apparent readiness to take on the position of the animal. What 26 As Cujo charges towards his victim in the first lethal attack, the camera takes the dog’s place. The camera rushes down the hall at a low angle before gliding up towards the terrified victim’s face. The film then cuts to a leaping Cujo crashing into the victim, bringing him down. Later, as a man tries to avoid Cujo, the camera appears at a low angle, trying to maneuver around a table standing between it and the actor. It again goes up towards the man’s face as he pleads with the camera, addressing it (and by extension the audience) as Cujo. 161 does that apparent readiness say about potential audience identification with the animal, and what do these shots say about the animal’s experience of being in and perceiving the world? POV shots from the villain’s perspective are a cliché in horror cinema, particularly in the wake of the iconic openings of Jaws and Halloween (Carpenter, 1978). This camera trick became a piece of evidence deployed in condemning such films. Critics decrying slasher films cited the frequent use of subjective camera shots that put the viewer in the killer’s position, claiming that they foster identification with the murderer. 27 Carol Clover argues that critics presume this identification too easily and at the expense of other evidence within the films. In essence, these critics assume that first-person images overrule standard narrative and visual techniques for encouraging audience identification with a film’s protagonists. To undercut critics’ arguments, Clover specifically cites instances of animal POV shots in horror films. Referencing the use of such shots in The Birds and Jaws, Clover states: “either… the viewer’s identificatory powers are unbelievably elastic or [these] point-of-view shots can sometimes be pro forma” (“Her Body” 79). Clover argues that it would be absurd to presume that audience members would identify with a shark or a flock of birds rather than a human character, simply because they were put in the animal’s position. Clover uses this as a jumping off point to question the ability of POV shots to align the audience with the characters whose vision they simulate. Others have similarly argued that slasher films, which featured beast-like human villains, were simply taking cues from Jaws, a 27 Roger Ebert wrote an extended essay on this topic, warning that “new horror films encouraged audience identification not with the victim but with the killer” (“What” 55). He pointed to the use of POV shots in films like Friday the 13 th , arguing “that, all else being equal, when the camera takes a point of view, the audience is being directed to adopt the same point of view” (“What” 55). Ebert finds it additionally telling that these killers remain shadowy, off-screen presences for most of the film, enabling the audience to better imagine themselves in the role. As a result, “the lust [to kill and rape] is not placed on the screen, where it can be attached to the killer-character; it is placed in the audience…. we are all invited to be [the killer/rapist], and some… gladly accept the role” (“What” 56). 162 hugely successful film about a literal beast (Nowell 92). POV shots just became what one did, a technique proven to build suspense effectively. Just as Jaws did not presume to communicate a deeper logic motivating the shark’s actions or create empathetic connections with the shark, Halloween and many films of its ilk write off their deranged killers as evil and monstrously inhuman. These moments serve a chilling function, linking viewers to these killing machines by putting them in the place of the camera, a literal voyeuristic machine. I agree with Clover’s assessment that POV shots do not automatically override other outlets for audience identification in these narratives. However, I think Clover dismisses too quickly the mutability of, and play with, cross-species identification that attends the deployment of this technique. Admittedly, POV shots offer limited opportunities to connect with the animal antagonists in these films. Yet that is part of their appeal. They acknowledge that these animals have a unique perspective on the world, which gestures towards their larger inner life. Yet while the camera can momentarily place the audience in the animal’s headspace, the technique cannot convey what (if anything) goes on inside the mind of an animal. The technique does not reveal any deep truths or build much in the way of empathy. It brings the viewer tantalizingly close to the animal, while keeping them at arm’s length and leaving a great deal of mystery. It is an appropriate gesture for these films, in which the animal remains a hostile and alien force, one that cannot be neatly made part of the human world. Yet these shots also make it harder to respond to the rebellious animal with hate. There is something exhilarating about the way the technique breaks with the standard visual conventions of the film. The camera moves with uncharacteristic vitality. It also breaks the fourth wall; when characters notice the camera, they acknowledge it (and the audience) as a terrifying presence. One might not identify with the demonic animal, but it is fun to get to assume the role for a moment. Without diminishing the 163 alterity of its subject, these shots allow the audience briefly to be the animal and regard the human characters as the other. CONCLUSION The American Humane Association’s Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media begins with the declaration: “Animals appearing in film and television are testaments to the human-animal bond, through their interaction with their trainers, their cast and crew members, and ultimately through their effect on audiences” (1). With this sweeping gesture, the AHA allows for an intriguing paradox. On a narrative level, Animal Attack films present a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between humans and animals. Behind-the-scenes, Animal Attack films may be evidence of the exact opposite relationship, as humans and animals work together closely. Of course, the AHA’s true commitment to safeguarding animal welfare during the production process has occasionally been called into question. Others might look at the appearance of animals in film and television as evidence of humanity’s thoughtless exploitation and domination of the non-human world. Again, this clashes with the images presented in Animal Attack narratives, where the animals are fiercely independent and formidable opponents to humanity. In Chapter One, I discussed how the unknowable alien intelligence of animals made them prime candidates to be horror film antagonists. All the same, casting animals in those roles requires projecting a great deal of intelligence and agency onto them. They must be active characters, capable of offering a worthy challenge to the human protagonists. It also requires connecting the audience to these anti-human characters. The audience should be able to understand what the animals are thinking and feeling at any given moment. And all of this is dependent on the animal mind actually being knowable and malleable, to a certain extent at least. 164 In order for these films to be made, the animals must be able to execute certain tasks predictably and safely, including the simulation of aggression. These films present their animal characters as monstrous, but also grant them greater abilities than they have long been assumed to possess. In so doing, they can raise important questions about how humans think about the mental capabilities of animals. Animals in real life might not operate like the creatures in these films, but they are in the world. Even if they do not have complex thoughts and emotions, they can feel, sense, and perceive. How great do these abilities have to be before it requires rethinking traditional ways of interacting with and treating animals? And how does one’s perception of the narrative change when one takes into account the practices used to make these films happen? These questions raise important questions about the ethics of humans, animals, and their relationships. As mentioned above, part of what makes the animals in these films disturbing is that their ability to think seems too great. In some cases, they approach levels of cognition and strategic thinking that seem almost human-like. I argue that this makes them frightening not just because it makes them more dangerous, but because they begin to challenge the divisions separating the human and the non-human. They reveal the constructed nature of that division. In the next chapter, I look at several films that focus on the disturbing and liberating potential of challenging and deconstructing the border between humans and animals. 165 CHAPTER 3 “We Were Being Changed and Made Part of Their World”: Complicating the Relationships Between and the Status of Humans and Animals Chapters One and Two focus on the animal as an intriguing, but somewhat inscrutable and impenetrable, other. Animal Attack films are one cultural venue in which humans seek to construct, manipulate, project meaning upon, and understand these alien creatures. The alterity of animals makes it possible to position the non-human as a fascinating (and potentially frightening) Them to the Us of humanity. The notion that humans are distinct from all other creatures has deep roots in Western epistemology. Steve Baker explains: “the use of oppositions as a basic classificatory system in Western thought can be traced back at least to Aristotle, [and Keith] Thomas characterizes the human:animal opposition as one part of a larger coherent set of rhetorical oppositions operative within the culture” (Picturing 78, original emphasis). Citing Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway explains that this human/animal opposition is one of many Cartesian “Great Divides,” which include “nature/culture, organic/technical, and wild/domestic” (When 15). These binary oppositions have played, and arguably still play, a significant role in influencing how humans think about themselves in relation to the world. A key problem lies in the way this overly simplistic system for understanding the world gets invested with value judgements. There is nothing inherently worrisome about distinguishing between the human and the animal. Yet Baker notes that, when the world gets divided according to the human/animal binary, the animal category tends to be cast as “the negative term in the opposition: ‘the Other, the Beast, the Brute’” (Picturing 83, original emphasis). This demonization is especially problematic when one considers the tenuous and imprecise nature of these binary classificatory systems. The human/animal division provides a strong example of this concern. 166 Humans are undoubtedly animals, though they are a distinct kind of animal. The “Human,” as opposed to the non-human animal, initially appears to be a coherent and common-sense categorization. Yet distinguishing between Human and Animal has not historically been a matter of benign identification. Over time and between cultures, the line between human and non-human, or animal, gets drawn in different places. Human societies tend to categorize marginalized peoples as non-human, leaving them open to inhumane treatment (Agamben 37-38; Lippit, Electric 10). 1 Notions of human exceptionalism are connected to various forms of discrimination against human others, as well as the thoughtless treatment of the planet and its non-human occupants. Given the harmful legacies of traditional humanist philosophies, many question the value of such systems. Their disruption stands to benefit marginalized peoples. Jennifer Fay cites Cary Wolfe’s argument that the upending of humanism “is necessary if we are to be accountable to the social movements of civil rights, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, etc.” (“Seeing” 43). The erosion of “notions of human uniqueness and structures of knowledge that privilege the human over all other forms of life” would also benefit non-human animals and would forge a healthier relationship between humans and the environment (Fay, “Seeing” 43). Given the extensive legacies of humanist thought, any project aiming to expand, reimagine, or detonate the Human category must wrestle with basic questions of identity and being. How best to go about challenging traditional notions of humanism and human exceptionalism can be a source 1 There are any number of examples to which one could point of marginalized groups being reduced to the status of animals in order to justify their cruel treatment. Theodor Adorno argues: “the constantly encountered assertion that savages, blacks, Japanese are like animals, monkeys for example, is the key to the pogrom” (68). Adorno suggests that atrocities against humans are justified by the philosophy: “after all, it’s only an animal” which “reappears irresistibly in cruelties done to human beings” (68). In a recent example, the Trump administration repeatedly labeled Latino gang members “animals” in an article stoking racial and xenophobic fears in order to justify harsh immigration and deportation policies (“What You Need”). 167 of controversy, even amongst theorists heading in the same direction and hoping to achieve similar goals. A significant example of this can be seen by examining the different notions of becoming offered by Deleuze and Guattari and Donna Haraway. In Chapter Two, I touched on the dispute between Haraway and Deleuze and Guattari on the subject of pets and dogs. The issue between these theorists is more intense than that brief reference conveys. In When Species Meet, Haraway describes wanting to like Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal. Haraway sees the value in their idea, which “works so hard to get beyond the Great Divide between humans and other critters to find the rich multiplicities and topologies of a heterogeneously and nonteleologically connected world…. what we [Haraway and D&G] want seems so similar” (When 32). This perceived similarity makes the actual differences between their systems of thought register as a betrayal of the laudable project. Haraway does not just disagree with Deleuze and Guattari. Their description of becoming- animal leaves her “angry”: “writing in which I had hoped to find an ally for the tasks of companion species instead made me come as close as I get to announcing, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the enemy’” (When 32). Robert Leston notes that Haraway’s screed against Deleuze and Guattari has produced its own unproductive binary division within critical animal studies (356-357). Rather than wholeheartedly committing to either Team D&G or Team Haraway, the goal must be to address the tensions that divide Deleuze and Guattari’s becoming-animal and Haraway’s alternative concept: becoming with companion species. When considered properly, both conceptualizations have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the daunting task of reckoning with the implications of human exceptionalism and animal alterity. Deleuze and Guattari explain that becoming-animal has nothing to do with transforming into an animal; it is not a literal process, though it is also not imaginary (237-238). Becoming- 168 animal is a dynamic and ongoing process, it is a verb. It is not about endpoints or reaching a new fixed state of identity. Instead, it is about abandoning one’s faith in fixed identity. By recognizing the other, those outside the social order, one can recognize one’s own potential to transgress the norms and orthodoxies of bourgeois society (238). Becoming-animal is about dropping out of and challenging the social order, rather than becoming entrenched in or complacent with the system. There are multiple kinds of life with which one can enter relationships of becoming, so long as they are not powerful figures within the dominant social order. There is nothing admirable for Deleuze and Guattari about becoming-white male capitalist and they do not consider it as a possibility. Becoming does not have to involve animals; animals just represent one other outside the system. To put it more precisely, animals can be outsiders, so long as they are not coopted into bourgeois domesticity or national iconography. On one level, Haraway’s anger at Deleuze and Guattari is personal. As a passionate dog lover, she feels personally attacked by their comically polemical jabs at pets and their owners. Haraway writes: Little house dogs and the people who love them are the ultimate figure of abjection for D&G, especially if those people are elderly women…. Despite the keen competition, I am not sure I can find in philosophy a clearer display of misogyny, fear of aging, incuriosity about animals, and horror at the ordinariness of flesh, here covered by the alibi of an anti- Oedipal and anticapitalist [sic] project. (When 30) In her visceral reaction to Deleuze and Guattari’s statements about pets, Haraway is arguably taking their writing too literally. Yet in listing their “incuriosity about animals,” Haraway makes a valid critique. Steve Baker notes that the concept of becoming-animal is unique among “the critical examination of questions of identity which runs through so much poststructuralist and 169 postmodern thought” because it ties “any creative reimagining of the human so closely to that of the animal” (“What” 67). Yet Baker concedes that their use of the animal as a figure for thinking with is not especially invested in living creatures: “Animals, for Deleuze and Guattari, seem to operate more as a device of writing… than as living beings whose conditions of life were of direct concern to the writers” (“What” 95). The animal is just a convenient figure of alterity that facilitates “the unthinking or undoing of the conventionally human” – a conventional humanity aligned with the social structures of which Deleuze and Guattari disapprove (“What” 80). Yet thinking and working with animals works best when it actually engages the animality of the creature. Haraway brings that care for the real animal to her theoretical work, but her thinking on the subject is also crucially limited. Haraway criticizes Deleuze and Guattari for expressing “scorn for all that is mundane and ordinary and [their] profound absence of curiosity about or respect for and with actual animals” (When 27). Haraway’s sense of becoming with and becoming worldly is all about “grappling with… the ordinary” (When 3). She wants to soothe the reader to a certain extent. She notes that there are more microbial organisms in and on the human body than there are human cells. She refers to these as our “tiny messmates” and notes: “To be one is always to become with many” (When 4). These are some of humanity’s ‘companions.’ People need to recognize that their companion species are distinct and different from themselves, but these should be recognized as “mundane differences – the kinds that have consequences and demand respect and response – rather than rising to sublime and final ends” (When 15). When giving another example of a companion species, Haraway again reaches for an example that will be easy for most readers to accept: the domestic dog. She notes that she is a dog owner, and that she and her dog: “make each other up… Significantly other to each other, in specific difference, we signify in the flesh a nasty 170 developmental infection called love” (When 16). Becoming with, as the name implies, involves a reciprocal, co-constitutive relationship between the human and the non-human. Haraway offers this conceptualization: “we are in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down. Response and respect are possible only in those knots, with actual animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their muddled histories” (When 42). Haraway’s theory offers a positive example of ecological sensibilities. The animal is not reduced to the status of an absolute other with whom humanity has nothing in common and no contact. Everything on the planet is connected to everything else and that fact needs to be acknowledged and respected. While Haraway’s argument has many strong points, it is hampered by the fact that Haraway is only willing to engage a small subsection of the non-human. It is easy to imagine that Deleuze and Guattari would not be fans of Haraway’s concept of becoming with, which is almost aggressively nice. One gets a sense of that in the above synopsis, with its cute reference to microbes as “tiny messmates” and its emphasis on positive sentiments like love and respect. That is a thread running throughout When Species Meet. Haraway puts an emphasis on compassionate action and well-being (134). She notes the value of “being ‘polite’ (political/ethical/in right relation)” (72). There is nothing wrong with being polite, compassionate, respectful, and generally nice (this is true of all elements of life, not just in regard to ecological matters). However, Haraway is also making a specific strategic move. Haraway notes that the Cartesian Great Divides created many others, and that “these ‘others’ have a remarkable capacity to induce panic in centers of power and self-certainty. Terrors are regularly expressed in hyperphilias and hyperphobias” (9-10). One sentiment bred by these Great Divides is the “fantasy of human exceptionalism. This is the premise that humanity alone is not a spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies. Thus, to be human is to be on the 171 opposite side of the Great Divide from all the others and so to be afraid of – and in bloody love with – what goes bump in the night” (11). Haraway wants to tone down those extreme sentiments and make everyone relax. However, one does need to confront the extremes eventually. And quite apart from that, it is disingenuous not to engage the fact that not everything in nature is nice. Some creatures are dangerous or annoying or dirty or ugly. Haraway talks about dogs, but what about rats and ants? Are these pest species that have managed to adapt so well and thrive in human settlements not also our messmates? Our (unwanted) companions? Herein lies one of the great advantages of Deleuze and Guattari: they skip right to the hardest part of the project. They are not valorizing the beloved pet, they are celebrating the nastiest, meanest animals they can. If one wants evidence that the nasty part of Haraway’s project must be engaged, one can look at how those hyperphobias are expressed in the culture. Perhaps the overt or subconscious understanding that humans are not so different from the animal other explains why disruptions and transgressions of the human-animal border play such an important role in horror. What does it mean to describe a human being as bestial or animalistic? As alluded to above, that labeling suggests a bigoted and demeaning reaction to human difference; it can imply that the person so-categorized is less than human. It also suggests a phobic reaction to someone whose behavior falls outside the norms of convention and decency. When a human violates civilization’s constructed social contracts, it can be viewed as a release of some primitive or savage pre-civilized self. It unsettles not just because of the code violation it represents, but because it requires acknowledging that the “non-human” resides within all humans. It highlights the tenuous nature of divisions between humans and other animals. In the horror genre, concerns over this porous border can manifest through monstrous humans who possess animal-like qualities. The extent to which those lines blur varies from case 172 by case. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde offers a classic narrative about a man’s civilized veneer concealing a terrible, bestial interiority that is always- already present. 2 This carries on into modern fiction, with other iconic human monsters like Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The ways Lecter blends high cultural refinement with animalistic qualities makes his character particularly compelling and disturbing. Lecter’s animalistic qualities manifest not only in his proclivity for eating human flesh (an activity he pursues with perverse gourmet snobbery) but also in subtler non-human touches, such as his unnaturally acute sense of smell. 3 Other monstrous characters hybridize the human and animal in more obvious ways; one can think of films like Cat People and The Fly, as well as countless werewolf movies. Those instances of human-animal hybridity often make manifest some human failing, such as excessive hubris, anger, or sexual desires. 4 Of course, those unnatural hybrids differ from the non-human antagonists in Animal Attack films, a sub-section of genre cinema that plays with anxieties about the thin line separating humans and animals in unique ways. At the very least, Animal Attack films question the notion of human supremacy by offering narratives in which humans are not only killed, but often eaten by animals. However, some Animal Attack films disrupt the relationship between humans and animals in ways extending beyond the negation of human privilege by turning people into prey. This chapter 2 Stevenson’s descriptions encourage readers to think of Mr. Hyde in non-human terms. Hyde is described as attacking a victim with “ape-like fury” (37). Hyde “drinks” in the pain of others “with bestial avidity” (116). Dr. Jekyll refers to Hyde as “the animal within me” (128). 3 Both Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs and Jonathan Demme’s 1991 cinematic adaptation of the same introduce Lecter through his impossibly acute sense of smell. After Miggs, a fellow inmate, hisses at Clarice Starling that he “can smell [her] cunt” (Harris, Thomas 12), Lecter admits: “I myself cannot” (16). Lecter immediately follows this up with an unsettling catalog of everything he can smell: “You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L’Air du Temps, but not today. Today you are determinedly underperfumed” (16). In the novel, Starling’s first visit ends with Miggs throwing semen on her. This agitates Lecter; Harris writes: “She knew that [Lecter] could smell [the semen] on her. He could smell everything” (22). 4 Stephen King suggests that all horror stories of monstrous human behavior, from fantastic narratives like Dr. Jekyll to more realistic narratives like Psycho, can be considered variations on the werewolf narrative (Danse 73-77). 173 focuses on four films that use intimate relationships between humans and animals to interrogate the nature of the human and the non-human, the borders separating them into neat binaries, and the possibilities of crossing those borders through acts of becoming. Willard (Mann, 1971) and Monkey Shines (Romero, 1988) center on the formation and dissolution of alliances between people and animals. These alliances go awry in part because the humans become too attached to the animals, which brings out the human’s interior non-human qualities. As they become animalistic, they lose control of themselves and their animals. Orca (Anderson, 1977) and Phase IV (Bass, 1974) deal with antagonistic relationships between people and animals. The humans enter these contests assuming that their animal opponents will be no match for them. As these contests progress, the animals display human-like attributes that cause the protagonists (and viewers) to question their initial assumptions. The choice of species in these films makes them each uniquely positioned to interrogate the lines separating human and non-human. A similar dynamic also exists with both pairings. Monkey Shines deals with an evil capuchin monkey and Orca deals with a killer whale. Primates and cetaceans are charismatic and sophisticated mammalian species. They are also animals frequently cited when questioning human treatment of animals, and the validity of considering animals different and inferior. Willard features rats and Phase IV has ants. Many people have negative feelings towards these ubiquitous and fast-reproducing pest species and their mass extermination raises few ethical concerns. Yet, whether humans like it or not, these creatures adapt to and exploit human development easily and have become a kind of omnipresent, symbiotic companion species. What does it mean to interrogate the concept of the human-animal division and humanism itself within the horror genre? As indicated above, critical animal studies and 174 posthuman theory suggest that it would be beneficial to recognize the divisions separating humans and animals as illusory constructions. The aim is not to ignore differences but to deflate the destructive and deeply engrained arrogance of (certain segments of) humanity. However, in at least three of the films indicated above (Willard, Monkey Shines, and Orca), the troubling or dismantling of those divisions seems neither good nor desirable. It makes the human protagonists monstrous, enables terrible deeds, and leads to gruesome fates. Only the protagonist of Monkey Shines survives the breakdown of these borders, and much of that film centers on the horror and anguish of interacting with a transgressive animal. These films may ultimately reify the division between human and animal, even as their narratives and imagery challenge it. They suggest that these borders typically function as expected and that tampering with them results in extreme chaos. However, it is worth considering how the audience potentially processes that chaos. Horror often deals with a carnivalesque disruption of the status quo, something both spectacular and temporary. 5 Often the resolution requires the restoration of order and the punishment or destruction of the transgressive force. While things may be put right in the end, horror is also notorious for denying or undercutting such resolutions. There is always the chance that the antagonist will spring back from death or defeat for a final jump scare (and the potential for a sequel). Part of why horror can deny a neat resolution comes from the genre’s unique pleasures. The primary pleasure stems not from restoring the status quo, but from the madness and disorder that make up the majority of the text’s action. As a result, even films that deny or 5 Mikhail Bakhtin draws on Rabelais’s work on the medieval carnival when describing the carnivalesque. The medieval carnival was a “utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance” (9). The carnival is associated with play, laughter, and “an escape from the usual official way of life” (8). It may therefore seem odd to invoke the carnivalesque in relation to the horror genre. Yet the carnival is also associated with the grotesque, the unruly, and the bodily (19). The carnivalesque can also be characterized as the “world-out-of-kilter” as established order is suspended and “notions of propriety and civilized conduct” are violated and affronted (Morgan 143). The horrific, particularly in the potentially playful and entertaining world of genre fiction, can be understood to have overlaps with notions of the carnivalesque. 175 disavow their anarchic qualities in their conclusions might linger in viewers’ minds as radical texts. Willard’s punishment for communing with rats is to be torn apart by the rebellious creatures. Yet Willard serves as the introductory example for illustrating Deleuze and Guattari’s celebration of becoming-animal. Tellingly, the authors preface their description by explaining that their “memory of [the film] is not necessarily accurate” (233). What follows is an idiosyncratic half-remembered synopsis. What resonates with them are not the finer details of the plot or Willard’s punishment, but its broad-strokes images and concepts. These are the things most audiences, casual and otherwise, ultimately take away from any film. This preamble revolves around providing caveats that qualify the contributions these films make in deconstructing the notion of human-animal binaries. There is the suggestion that they serve this purpose despite themselves. I do not intend to deny the elements in these films that undercut their radical potential or feed into a reactionary conceptualization of the human versus the non-human. Therein lies the value of including Phase IV in the conversation. Phase IV, the concluding case study, offers a fine example of how the unique horror found in Animal Attack films might engage these concepts in open-ended ways that are genuinely productive and generative. This chapter consists of close readings of the four films under consideration. Each film deals with the relationship between humans and non-humans in unique but interrelated ways. My analysis begins with Willard, the earliest of the films considered here and a significant work of Animal Attack cinema. Willard Willard focuses on a young man taking revenge on those who wrong him by using an army of trained rats, and it was essential for the development of Animal Attack cinema. After the heyday 176 of the giant creature features of the 1950s, production of Animal Attack films in the 1960s was spotty. 6 There was the obvious highlight of The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963), but that did not spark a wave of imitators. An independent production, Willard’s phenomenal financial success 7 kickstarted a wave of “small animal” horror that sustained the subgenre until the even greater success of Jaws. 8 Willard also opened important conceptual doors. Deleuze and Guattari use Willard to introduce and illustrate the concept of becoming- animal (233). As mentioned above, the basic idea of Willard compels the theorists; they are less concerned with the finer details. Their analysis leaves one wishing that they had attended to the text more carefully, as it might have nuanced their theory in productive ways. Becoming-animal does provide a useful framework for understanding the significance of the human characters in the film. Yet it misses the mark in terms of addressing the animal side of the equation. It is a lop-sided focus that feeds into the general criticism that their work does not properly engage the animal. Haraway provides a better framework for understanding the rats. Applying her concepts to a text like Willard also accomplishes the necessary task of moving her theories into less polite territory. 6 Roughly twelve Animal Attack films were produced during the 1950s. Only four films were produced in the 1960s. This number would jump to thirty during the 1970s, following Willard’s success. 7 A 1976 Variety article compiling “All-Time Film Rental Champs” put Willard’s total rentals at $9,250,000 for the U.S.-Canada market (“All-Time” 44). The box office website The Numbers puts Willard’s ultimate domestic box office take at over $14.5 million (“Willard (1971) – Financial”). To offer comparison, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 1971’s highest earning independent film and an inspiration for the Blaxploitation phenomena, just beat out Willard with $15.2 million (“Sweet Sweetback’s”). 8 According to Mort Briskin, a producer on Willard: “after ‘Willard’ every studio sent out memos to literary agents looking for ‘small-animal monster scripts’” (“Rats Beget”). The Variety article citing Briskin explains that Willard’s success “spawned at least three other creature features from the major distribs.” In addition to Willard’s sequel, Ben, these included AIP’s Frogs and MGM’s Night of the Lepus (then called Rabbits). Lepus producer A.C. Lyles explained: “the idea of nature rebelling is popular now and that he’s planning other projects about ‘the monsters that live among us.’” In the introduction to a 2013 reprinting of Stephen Gilbert’s Ratman’s Notebooks, the source material for Willard, critic and author Kim Newman explains: “the success of book and film made rampaging vermin a major horror theme of the 1970s and ‘80s” in print and film (“Introduction”). Newman credits the novel and its adaptation with “putting the terror-by-animal sub-genre of horror on the map,” thereby paving the way “for the book and film of Jaws, another lasting publishing and movie phenomenon” (“Introduction”). 177 I begin my analysis of the text by addressing how Willard exemplifies elements of the becoming- animal concept. In Animal Attack films where humans control and command dangerous animals, some deficiency or dysfunctional quality typically marks the animals’ human master as deviant. At the very least, they tend to be isolated outsiders that exist apart from mainstream society. Their outsider/other status places them closer to the fringes of humanity and facilitates their communion with the non-human. They face lower barriers when it comes to dropping out of the system and becoming. Willard’s failures relate to his inability to meet societal standards of class and gender. The film’s opening illustrates the various ways Willard allows those around him to emasculate or infantilize him. This treatment prevents him from measuring up to his dead father, a successful businessman. The opening credits play over a montage of factory work and manual labor. The workmen in this sequence contrast with Willard (Bruce Davison), whose suit and slight physique suggest an office weakling. Willard is introduced leaving work to catch a bus. His boss, Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine), cruises past in his personal car to harass Willard about some unfinished work. Martin’s bullying condescension demonstrates Willard’s low status in the professional world and the contempt his coworkers feel towards him. The difference in the men’s modes of transportation also indicate the class distinction separating the two. Initial assumptions about Willard’s lowly status are nuanced when the film introduces his home: a large and once-stately structure, now overgrown and shabby. This decaying structure represents the last remnant of the family’s wealth and status. To drive home the family’s decline, Willard must kick away the long grass covering a plaque inscribed with the family’s name that sits at the base of a lion statue. Willard enters the home to a surprise birthday party more appropriate for a small child than a grown man. In lieu of friends his own age, the guests are elderly friends of 178 his overbearing mother (Elsa Lanchester). They alternate between doting on Willard and scolding him for not having a girlfriend and allowing Martin to bully him, details suggesting Willard’s multiple failings as a man. Their chatter reveals that Willard holds a menial position at the company that his father started and that Martin “stole.” It is a theft Willard essentially allowed by being too “weak.” Oppressed at work and home, Willard embodies the Oedipalized individual. For Deleuze and Guattari, the Oedipal signifies “all that is most timid, petty, conformist, and conservative in human understanding” (Baker, “What” 77). Willard is a loser in an abusive capitalist system and he “lives with his authoritarian mother in the old family house. Dreadful Oedipal atmosphere” (Deleuze 233). Willard’s only peer is a new female coworker, Joan (Sondra Locke). Joan is presented as a possible love interest, someone who could offer Willard a conventionally normal life within the system, but Willard’s awkward interactions with her demonstrate his inability to function socially or romantically. Narratively and thematically, these elements pave the way for, and explain the significance of, Willard’s developing relationship with the rats. Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of becoming-animals offers a tripartite categorization of animals. There are the “individuated animals, family pets, sentimental Oedipal animals,” which they loathe and which “invite us to regress, draw us into a narcissistic contemplation” (240). As mentioned earlier, Haraway takes great personal offense at this, but their essential argument is that treating animals like humans negates their potential to offer revelations through their alterity. An animal that does not challenge the system or human identity does not have the qualities that interest Deleuze and Guattari in animals. Then there are “State animals; animals as they are treated in the great divine myths” (240). Again, these offer little challenge to the system. In fact, they can offer the system symbolic support. Finally, there are the demonic and the pack animals; these are the 179 creatures that Deleuze and Guattari value most. They are too different from conventional humanity to be appropriated into the system. Instead, they present the system with a radical challenge (241). The fact that Willard’s domineering mother hates the rats is a clear indication that the rats belong to this troublesome third category. The rats signify Willard’s failure to meet societal standards and perform his duties as an upper-class man. Willard’s mother feels that their presence in the garden is indicative of Willard’s neglect of both her and their home. She warns that the presence of rats will cause outsiders to think that their home is falling apart, as if the structure were not already in disrepair. In dictating Willard’s chores, she draws a connection between Willard’s need to kill the rats and to demand a raise from Martin. The rats are made emblematic of a host of Willard’s problems that must be destroyed in order for him to succeed. At first, Willard goes along with his mother’s wishes. Willard devises a convoluted plan to exterminate the rats. He conditions them to travel along a wooden plank to collect food on a low platform in the middle of an empty concrete pool. One day, after the rats gather to feed, Willard removes the plank and starts filling the pool to drown the rats. He is delighted at tricking the rats, perhaps accepting his mother’s thesis that killing these symbolic embodiments of his problems and deficiencies holds the key to improving his life. At the last second, however, he decides to spare the rats’ lives. The scene’s formal presentation allows the audience to understand Willard’s change of heart. One challenge facing Willard lies in many people’s dislike of rats. 9 Wild rats in particular 9 Jonathan Burt’s Rat offers an in-depth study of cultural attitudes towards rats. Rat deals with positive and ambivalent attitudes towards rats, but also addresses negative attitudes towards the species. Burt argues that the reason rats are “the target of so much hatred and loathing” must be about “more than the simple answer that they are parasitic little creatures that live in sewers, spread diseases and steal our food” (9). Burt’s slim volume begins in the horror genre with a discussion of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls.” In Lovecraft’s story, the narrator descends “through layers of cultural and natural evolution to the most primeval, base, and horrific level of human activity. What we reach at the bottom of this descent, however, is not the basest of human simian ancestry, but the rat” (8). Burt uses Lovecraft’s story to introduce not only the ubiquity of rats in horror, but also their association with the basest levels of (in)humanity, something often tainted by racist connotations (as in anti-Semitic 180 are seen as an undesirable pest species. People’s dislike or fear of rats need not stem from the concern that they might inflict physical injury, although rats can bite or scratch. Rat infestations can be associated with the destruction of property or the spread of dirt and disease. Their dreadful reputations allow them to meet Deleuze and Guattari’s demonic needs suitably, but this narrative film also needs to create an affective connection between the audience and the rats. Willard deals with a man very fond of rats, and the film needs to help viewers understand, and perhaps share, his affection. The first step in building audience affection for the rats lies in explaining Willard’s change of heart in this extermination scene. It helps that the rats are an identifiable family unit. Willard’s mother has set him after another mother figure (a rat he names “Queenie”) and her babies. The rats’ plight unfolds like something out of a silent melodrama. The score becomes tense as they realize the waters are rising and begin to race about. Queenie gets a close-up which the film juxtaposes with a matching close- up of Willard. This creates a visual equivalency between the two, as Willard recognizes and connects with the animal’s plight. Willard replaces the board bridge, allowing the rats to escape. Before disappearing into the brush, Queenie faces Willard and gives a set of squeaks that suggests the two-syllable phrase “Thank you.” It is the first signal that the rats in Willard have an uncanny relationship to human language. Willard’s decision to spare the rats, after nearly taking their lives, solidifies Willard’s God-like power over the diminutive creatures, something in stark contrast to his impotence in human relationships. After saving the rats, Willard starts teaching and remolding them. Queenie becomes his first pupil. Here, one begins to see the ways Deleuze and Guattari’s faulty memories twist the comparisons of rats and Jews) (8-9). Burt notes that “the rat is often understood to be a twin of the human, thriving on those areas of human activity which are themselves deemed most problematic, such as war and imperialism…. the rat [acts] as the shadow of man, following parasitically on the trail of waste and destruction” (13). Rats’ association with negative human tendencies allows them to function like humanity’s “evil twin” (13). 181 film’s significance. In their version of the story, Willard saves and educates Ben (233). In fact, the creature that initiates Willard’s transformation is Queenie, whom he names and with whom he shares an emotional bond. This wild rat might not be a conventional pet, but neither does she seem particularly demonic. Willard begins the education process by explaining to Queenie the difficulties of inter- species communication. He holds Queenie up to his face and speaks slowly at her, his monologue punctuated by her occasional squeaks: “I know what the trouble is Queenie. You don’t know what speech is. You know I make noises, and I know you make noises, but I can’t make any sense out of your noises, and you can’t make any sense out of mine.” Implicitly, Willard understands that his monologue can hold no meaning for the animal. He also acknowledges that the problem lies in both of them. It is a mutual failing: the rat does not understand how humans communicate, and the human does not understand how rats communicate. This suggests that Willard is open to a program of meeting the other on its own terms and working with it, becoming with it. However, right from the start, one can detect the potential ulterior motives that could poison this relationship. Willard starts to teach Queenie concepts and commands using simple words. Willard, who is frequently talked down to and infantilized, has found a being that he can be superior to and educate. Two rats emerge as key figures within the narrative. After their lessons begin, Queenie presents Willard with a white rat. He names it Socrates and it becomes his favorite. As Willard becomes bolder about bringing rats into the basement of the house, another rat emerges from the pack. In contrast to the loftily named Socrates, Willard simply dubs this large black rat Ben. The white and black color-coding allows Socrates and Ben to be read as externalized manifestations of Willard’s conscience. They can be seen to represent his good and bad sides. Willard dotes on Socrates, suggesting Willard’s desire to foster his best qualities. At the same time, 182 his kindness towards this animal illustrates his capacity for decency. Even after his mother dies and Willard assumes free reign of the house, he allows only Socrates out of the basement. Despite Willard’s attempts to keep the other rats hidden away, Ben repeatedly sneaks out to join Willard. However, it is more than Ben’s coloring that suggests that he is bad news. Socrates’ origins are clear. The intelligent and gentle mother figure Queenie introduces him as a gift. Ben simply emerges from the undifferentiated rat hordes, and the film has already suggested that the rats are emblematic of Willard’s socially undesirable traits. The film supports the idea that the rats are indicative of Willard’s deviancy based on the destructive ways he ends up using his rats. Willard trains a rat army, and they embolden him to strike back against those who wrong him. Importantly, however, Willard does not use his outsider collective for meaningful or revolutionary ends. He uses them to act on his impulsive desires and personal grievances. Martin humiliates Willard for not sending out invitations to a private party, rubbing his excessive wealth in Willard’s face. In response, Willard brings his rats to the party and unleashes them on the fancy gathering. When Willard begins to drown in debt after his mother’s death, he overhears one of Martin’s clients bragging about cashing a big check in order to have spending money for a lavish vacation. Willard sends his rats into the client’s home, driving out the man and his wife while Willard steals their money. These acts offer cathartic revenge against unpleasant rich people, but they do not represent Willard’s overcoming the Oedipal timidity that many in the film identify as his primary character flaw. Rather, he finds a way to lash out in escalating passive aggressive criminal actions that satisfy on a visceral level and soothe his ego. Things reach a turning point with the death of Socrates. Smuggling Socrates and Ben into the office becomes Willard’s way of coping with the toxic environment. Ben finds cover when an employee discovers the pair, but Martin kills Socrates by jabbing him with a stick. This murder of 183 Willard’s beloved rat, the symbol of his decency, plays out in an effectively horrific manner. Shrill squeaks accompany a quick series of cuts of Martin’s violent thrusts and the white Socrates smeared with bright red blood. Afterwards, Willard faces Ben’s silent scrutiny. As the film offers increasingly tight close-ups of Ben’s beady eyes, Willard begs Ben to understand why he did not defend Socrates from Martin. Instead of blaming himself for his inaction, Willard links Martin’s killing of Socrates with the “murder” of Willard’s father. Willard then sets out to get revenge. In the evening, Willard confronts Martin at work. As Martin’s office fills with rats, Willard enumerates Martin’s terrible actions. Willard explains: “You made me hate myself… Well, I like myself now.” Willard’s line underscores the change that has occurred in his psyche. Willard’s alliance with the rats signals that he has accepted and embraced those qualities for which others scorn him. After Willard describes Martin’s cruelty towards him, the final (the ultimate) crime laid out is the killing of Socrates. Willard pokes Martin with the same stick used to kill Socrates, demanding that Martin feel what the rat felt. It reiterates the affective ties that bind Willard to the non-human; Martin’s greatest sin was his inability to empathize with a creature that Willard understood to be special. Martin never took the time to imagine how the rat might feel, seeing a pest instead of a possible companion. Willard then instructs his rats: “Tear him up,” a command previously reserved for inanimate objects. As the rats assault Martin, he falls out of his office window and to his death. After Willard’s first truly revolutionary act, he suddenly reverses course. Having killed his boss, Willard says goodbye to Ben and closes the office door, leaving behind his rats while Ben squeaks angrily. Abandoning the rats marks the first step in Willard’s plan to divest himself of the rodent horde that signifies his connection to the non-human. Back home, Willard loads the rats into crates and takes them out to the now-filled concrete pool. Where he once spared the lives of a 184 rat family, Willard methodically holds the boxes under the water until the rats are all dead. He dumps the boxes of dead rats into a single grave in the garden unceremoniously. He then covers the grave over with vegetation and debris in an attempt to remove all traces of the rats’ presence. Mass extermination of rats is not an unfathomable act in modern society. While Willard’s methods seem odd and inefficient, they are not unusually cruel or monstrous. 10 And, if one conceptualizes the rats as manifestations of Willard’s base instincts, this moment can be seen as a necessary act of exorcism. Yet the film presents some of its rat characters as individuals with distinct personalities, giving an ugly edge to this wholesale destruction. Willard’s emotional connection with Socrates, and his willingness to exploit his rats, makes his callous killing register with the audience as a shocking betrayal. Willard’s actions reveal that he was never sincere or committed to his connections or his becoming. His motives were always compromised and dictated by self-interest and investment in human exceptionalism. Willard’s betrayal of his rats and the idea they represent does not go unanswered. Willard’s failing and downfall, in Deleuze and Guattari’s reading, lies in the fact that he attempts to achieve “professional, conjugal, or Oedipal reterritorialization” as he attempts to pause his “destiny” of “becoming-rat” (233). He underestimates the irresistible deterritorializing force the rats represent. After the extermination, Willard invites Joan 11 to his rat-free home, apparently 10 In a document outlining methods for controlling rats, including extermination, the UK’s Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) explains that “the consensus view of the UFAW Working Group is that drowning is not [sic] humane method and should be avoided” (“Humane”). However, it allows that “it is a matter of judgement whether one considers live trapping followed by drowning to be worse than other methods in current use.” 11 Deleuze and Guattari describe Locke as bearing “a strong ‘resemblance’ to a rat – but it is only a resemblance” (233). While they do not discuss Joan’s character at length, their (unkind) comment makes sense in terms of their larger argument. Joan represents a non-radical radical figure. She is a temp, a lowly figure in the capitalist system, and empathetic to Willard’s situation. She finds a palatable and accepted form of resistance: she tells Martin off and gets fired. Willard’s attraction to her can be seen as a way for him to be tricked back into thinking an unacceptable system is acceptable. Going along with this argument, Joan brings Willard a cat for company after his mother dies. It is the kind of pet Deleuze and Guattari scorn and one that threatens to kill Willard’s radical rats. Perhaps that detail would have struck Deleuze and Guattari more if they had been able to watch the remake. In the 1971 original, Willard hands the cat off to a confused bystander. In the 2003 remake, the cat gets eaten by the rat horde (in an extended sequence scored to Michael Jackson’s Academy Award winning “Ben,” the title track from Willard’s 1972 sequel). 185 ready to pursue a conventional romantic relationship with a human partner. This signals that Willard is “all set to be conjugalized, reoedipalized” (233). However, as Willard explains to Joan his hopes for a new and better life, he looks up and sees Ben on the stairs. In a dramatic close-up, Ben appears to glare at Willard. Ben disappears when Joan looks (supporting the notion that the rats represent a psychological as well as a literal force), but Willard peeks into the basement and finds it swarming with rats. Despite Willard’s best efforts, his animalistic nature bubbles up as he attempts to engage in civilized courtship. Willard drives Joan away and then tries to bargain with Ben, offering to feed him and his rat army once again. In preparation for another mass killing, Willard mixes rat poison into the food. Early in the film, Willard explains to Queenie their lack of a shared language. Apparently still confident in this fact, Willard leaves the box of poison out on the counter. Having previously expressed his tacit faith in the intelligence of rats, Willard forgets his own lessons and underestimates his opponent’s abilities. Ben may be an unspectacular member of the collective to Willard, but that is because Willard never understood the true nature of this exceptional and revolutionary figure. Ben examines the label and begins squealing. This alerts Ben’s fellow rats, who escape the basement and chase Willard into the attic. As the rats gnaw through the door, Willard screams out the obvious lie: “I was good to you, Ben!” This brings up an important point that Deleuze and Guattari do not address. Narratively, Willard’s betrayal of Ben is about more than betraying an abstract concept. Willard has rejected Ben’s attempts to be a companion to Willard and to enter into a mutual becoming with him. The affective and social dimensions of Willard are lost in Deleuze and Guattari’s conception and are best accounted for using Haraway’s theories. At the same time, Willard’s use of unpleasant and 186 potentially dangerous animals to illustrate these theories helps expand the purview and implications of Haraway’s writings. Willard’s relationship to his rat army is both too intimate and not intimate enough to consider them a traditional companion species. With the exception of Socrates, Willard does not form strong emotional bonds with these animals. The rats function as an extension of Willard’s body, enacting his will. One could think of Willard as a variation on the cyborg figure. He is a human, supplemented by non-human parts. In this case, those non-human parts are biological animal material rather than machines or technological devices. Donna Haraway notes that both cyborgs and companion species bring together the human and the non-human (Companion 4). The cyborg suggests a more intimate intermingling of those two categories: “The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. Far from signaling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling” (Simian 152). Not unlike the cyborg described in Haraway’s work, Willard’s bio-cyborg results from the alienating processes of late capitalism and complicates humanist notions of self. Willard is made more-than-human. He is made greater than himself through his ability to become part of a vital multiplicity. These benefits extend beyond the material gains of Willard’s criminal activities. With Socrates, Willard finds an emotional fulfillment denied to him by his human community. In Haraway’s conception, the cyborg is a positive figure. What then does one make of the fact that Willard’s cyborg relationship with his rats turns him into a monster and leads to his violent destruction? Willard’s downfall does not stem from his alliance with the rats. Willard destroys himself by betraying the posthuman collective in which he finds himself enmeshed in an attempt to satisfy an egotistical and arrogant humanist sense of self. 187 Willard’s character arc can be understood as the transformation from a man who spares the lives of a rat family, to a man who drowns and disposes of his rat companions. In his act of mercy, Willard recognizes the right of these animals to exist. In his subsequent interactions with rats, he learns that they can be intelligent and affectionate companions. As the rat population increases, Willard exploits them in order to preserve his ego and protect his property. The property, being the last remnant of his family’s status, can also be understood as part of Willard’s ego. Even as the rats help Willard, he complains about how the rats eat and multiply – their basic biological processes. Willard resists making meaningful connections with any rats except Socrates. Socrates’s white fur does more than allow him to signify Willard’s good moral sense. It distinguishes him from the rat horde. Socrates is himself a status symbol, an exceptional rat given as a gift and signifying Willard’s greatness. Ben’s dark fur makes it difficult to distinguish him from the multitude, and his appearance is not heralded like that of Socrates. He simply emerges organically from the horde. Deleuze and Guattari position Ben as an important archetype that frequently appears in fables about becoming-animal. Though they valorize the unindividuated pack, they claim: “wherever there is multiplicity, you will also find an exceptional individual, and it is with that individual that an alliance must be made in order to become-animal…. There is always a pact with a demon” (243). Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualization of these demonic gateway animals allows one to see such figures in most Animal Attack films. These exceptional animals differ from the individualized domestic pets that Deleuze and Guattari scorn. They are not being brought into the lives of humans and made like humans; they cannot be so controlled and transformed. They must be approached as outsiders in their element. Ben is positioned as one such figure. Willard’s relationship with Ben operates as a demonic pact, and Willard “only becomes-rat through his 188 relationship with [Ben]” (243). Within the text, however, Ben’s motivations seem to be of a very different nature. Ben does not act in a sinister manner throughout much of the film. His primary “wrong” is seeking affection comparable to what Socrates receives. Throughout the film, Willard rebuffs Ben’s efforts to get close to him, to be a favorite pet like Socrates. A desire to be accepted as and treated like a pet drives Ben. Ben never shows resentment towards Socrates. Indeed, Willard’s refusal to risk his safety or (low) status in the office to save Socrates begins to turn Ben against his master, though he participates in Willard’s assault on Martin, which he frames to Ben as a mission to avenge Socrates. Yet even after Ben leads the rats in the destruction of Willard’s terrible oppressive anti-father figure, Willard responds by trying to abandon and then kill Ben for what he has come to (been made to) represent. Ben only acts against Willard out of self-preservation and in the interest of his fellow rats when he realizes how disposable they are to Willard. A close-up of Ben’s face provides the final image over which the credits roll. Willard’s attempts to control the rats backfire, and when he underestimates Ben’s abilities and lets him usurp control of the rat army, it becomes his downfall. Deleuze and Guattari’s valorization of the alterity of animals prevents them from recognizing the ways in which Ben does not function as an absolute other. He is a non-human, but his motivations and personality are legible to audiences. Willard recognizes them as well, but he either disregards them or views them as an impediment. Ben emerges from the anonymous pack and seeks acknowledgement as a being with value. Ben is willing to kill for Willard and seems to want a signal of reciprocal respect and affection. Posthumanist ethics require, in part, the sense of the human as one among many living things, without assuming a position of dominance or superiority. Ben’s refusal to be less-than Willard angers Willard and leads him to scheme against 189 Ben. Willard’s underestimation of this supposedly inferior animal enables Ben to outmaneuver Willard and emerge victorious. The real source of horror and tragedy in Willard lies not in the posthuman collective, but rather in the ways humanist impulses poison a potentially utopic arrangement. Understandings of how genre cinema process ideas of becoming in relation to the animal can be nuanced through consideration of another text that focuses on close bonds between humans. In this case, those bonds are based on antagonism and conflict rather than potential kinship. Orca Made in 1977, Orca was one of the first big budget studio films to capitalize on the success of Jaws. Orca presents a similar scenario, featuring a dangerous aquatic predator that terrorizes a seaside town while battling a grizzled fisherman (Captain Nolan, played by Richard Harris). Both Jaws and Orca riff on Moby-Dick, although Orca’s focus on an anti-hero sea captain pursuing a cetacean make its parallels to Melville’s classic more evident. Despite some similarities between the texts, the animals at the center of these three texts are fundamentally different. In Jaws, a senseless animal attacks people because that is its inherent nature. In Moby-Dick, Ahab pursues the whale that injured him. Ahab reads meaning and intent into the animal’s actions, although it was simply lashing out in self-defense when the whalers tried to kill it. Those around Ahab suggest that he perversely misunderstands the animal. Starbuck chastises Ahab for seeking “vengeance on a dumb brute… that simply smote thee for blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous” (Melville 236). In his mania, Ahab forgets the distinction between Human and Animal and the qualities associated with each. 190 Orca presents a scenario that confirms Ahab’s suspicion. Its killer whale does actively target and torment Nolan after the man commits a terrible act against the animal. Like Ahab, Nolan hunts the whale for profit. He hopes to capture it and sell it to a marine theme park. When his plan goes awry, the male orca ends up injured and his pregnant mate gets killed. Orca presents its killer whale as a highly intelligent creature that was originally inclined to act kindly towards humans. Nolan’s carelessness and greed cause the whale to use its intelligence to become a calculating vigilante. The whale plays the Ahab role just as much as Nolan does. Orca and its whale have an interesting relationship to the different modes of becoming discussed in this chapter. The killer whale has the potential to serve as the kind of gateway figure that Deleuze and Guattari feel is essential for becoming-animal. After all, Orca has connections to Moby-Dick, which “is one of the greatest masterpieces of becoming; Captain Ahab has an irresistible becoming-whale… operating directly through a monstrous alliance with the Unique, the Leviathan, Moby-Dick” (Deleuze 243). Ahab has a high-status position in a lucrative industry, but Moby-Dick lures him away from the regulations governing his life and business (244). Moby-Dick starts Ahab on a course of becoming that destroys both the individual and his ship, which collects oil and facilitates industry. Yet Orca’s killer whale is too defined by its own affective and social ties to fulfill this enigmatic role properly. All the same, the orca remains an animal figure with qualities that unsettle fixed notions of human identity. Humans might not have a problem feeling distinct from, and superior to, a rat. Orca’s killer whale is a harder subject to dismiss as alien and inferior. This is not just because of the ways in which Orca endows its animal with unrealistic levels of human-like cunning. It relates to real- world qualities generally linked to the species being presented. Like primates, cetaceans are not human. However, they are more advanced than most other animals. This leads some to insist that 191 human treatment of cetaceans must be held to a higher standard than that which applies to the treatment of most animals. 12 Such demands raise larger question about how humans justify treating other organisms poorly. How and where does the line get drawn? When is it no longer acceptable to treat an animal like an animal? Why is it ever acceptable to treat one creature in a fashion deemed too inhumane for another? Orca raises questions about the moral and ethical implications of the human/animal divide through the character of Dr. Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling). As mentioned in Chapter One, Animal Attack texts frequently feature scientific experts who offer facts about the animals in question. Some films scatter this information throughout. Orca delivers its key information early on in an extended monologue, as Bedford delivers a three-minute long illustrated lecture. The use of this technique makes Orca ungainly and inelegant as a piece of art or entertainment. However, by making what might normally be subtextual into explicit text, Orca makes these elements impossible to ignore. I will use Bedford’s expositional speech to help guide this section, as it explains the film’s thesis and its positioning of the animal vis-à-vis the human. Bedford starts by highlighting the formidable qualities that make the killer whale “without challenge, the most powerful animal on the globe.” The film presents orcas as being the ultimate animal, and therefore a worthy challenger to humanity, if one thinks in supremacist, exceptionalist terms. Bedford teases the orca’s fearsome potential, noting that its Latin name, Orcinus orca, means “Bringer of Death.” 13 However, Bedford goes on to describe the whales as having a non- 12 Ethics professor Thomas I. White argues that cetaceans should be considered “non-human persons. Like humans, then, they have moral rights appropriate to their nature” (emphasis added). Several legal cases have tried unsuccessfully to get a formal recognition of primate and cetacean “personhood,” a distinction a number of animal rights groups try to make. 13 This is not a precise translation. SeaWorld, an organization associated with trained killer whales, explains “The Latin name Orcinus translates as ‘belonging to Orcus.’ Orcus was a Roman god of the netherworld, and this genus name is likely a reference to the hunting prowess of the killer whale” (“Killer Whales”). 192 threatening relationship to humans. They are closer to Haraway’s companion species than they are to Deleuze and Guattari’s demonic pack creatures. In her lecture, Bedford highlights the fact that killer whales can be made subservient to people. Bedford plays footage of orcas leaping out of the water at a theme park. She narrates: “here is a killer whale in what is probably his most familiar guise – tamed, on exhibition. One captured as a pup and brought up with men. Treated with kindness, there is no creature that is a greater friend to man.” This is a sanitized description of the controversial practice of raising orcas in captivity as performing animals. Later in the film, Bedford seems to contradict her lecture by suggesting that placing creatures as intelligent as orcas in captivity is cruel. However, in this lecture, her description suggests that captive whales, brought into the world of humans at an early age, learn to thrive and coexist with their human keepers. She even identifies killer whales as the non-human creature closest to humans, stating that our species has no “greater friend.” Orca offers a spectacular example of this friendship prior to Bedford’s lecture. While doing research at sea, Bedford encounters a great white shark. The references to Jaws in this sequence are clear. Orca announces the shark’s arrival with a piece of music imitating Williams’s score. By evoking Jaws, Orca also conjures up images of the shark as an awesome and vicious predator. Orca uses that stereotype to justify the shark’s random aggression – if people are in the water, sharks will try to eat them! As the shark approaches, an orca charges from the depths with a piercing cry. It rams the shark, launching it out of the water. 14 It is an obvious piece of one- upmanship. If audiences feared the shark in Jaws, they should know that it is no match for killer 14 The entire sequence is a rather baffling piece of editing that further illustrates the difficulties of working around the presence of dangerous animals. It requires manipulated documentary footage of sharks, provided by Rod Taylor, who worked on Jaws and Jaws 2, and a crude model of a shark. 193 whales, the sea’s true alpha predators. 15 This moment demonstrates the frightful potential of the killer whale’s strength when it is unleashed. However, it also signals how different this animal is from the sharks in Jaws. Even in the wild, killer whales are no threat to humans. They may actually be an aquatic ally. The film does not explicitly suggest that the orca attacks the shark in order to protect the humans. However, it has no other reason to kill the shark. It gives the impression that the orca, a fellow intelligent mammal, has humanity’s back against deadly fish. Orca explains to its audience that any monstrous behavior on the orca’s part will only come in retaliation for an injustice, and their retribution will be violent and calculated. Bedford clarifies that the orca’s friendship depends on their being “treated with kindness.” Humans must show them the same friendship that the whales offer to humans; the relationship is reciprocal. Bedford continues: “if not – the orca’s mouth has 48 teeth set in two impressive rows…. like human beings they have a profound instinct for vengeance.” It is an odd note to include in the lecture. It also does not appear to have any basis in fact. 16 Given that Orca focuses on an intelligent species that does share many attributes with humans, it is curious that it posits an erroneous point of connection as the centerpiece of its fantasy. However, these Animal Attack fantasies are often wrapped up in anxieties and guilt about how humans treat non-human animals, and the way that reflects their treatment of the earth. These films ask audiences to consider the consequences if humans were held accountable for their actions. In this case, Captain Nolan learns humanity’s hard lesson. Throughout Orca, several individuals around Nolan try to make him more thoughtful in his attitudes and actions towards orcas. Bedford possesses an extensive academic knowledge of 15 This indignity would not go unanswered. In Jaws 2, released the following year, Brody first realizes he is dealing with another dangerous shark when the mutilated body of a killer whale washes up on shore, covered in bite marks. 16 After Tilikum killed his SeaWorld trainer, the Washington Post hosted a Q&A with Richard Ellis, a marine conservationist at the American Museum of Natural History. One reader brought up Orca and asked whether killer whales hold grudges. Ellis answered that they “probably don’t.” 194 the species. Umilak (Will Sampson), a Native American, understands the species through the lens of myth and folklore. One of Nolan’s crewmembers, Annie (Bo Derek), expresses concerns based on basic decency. They have different ways of understanding the species and the world, but they all recognize a truth that they cannot communicate to the stubborn Nolan. By failing to heed these voices of reason, Nolan causes destruction and suffering for both humans and non-humans. The collateral damage includes those mentioned above. Their empathy for, and understanding of, the orca earns them no mercy once the whale sets off on the war path. At the start of Orca, Nolan is a clear personification of thoughtless humanity. He witnesses the orca’s amazing rescue of Bedford, a display of its potential as a planetary companion species to humanity. However, Nolan is a fisherman and he views the world through the lens of commerce. To him, the orca is not an intelligent mammal. It is another fish that he can exploit for profit. Nolan justifies his plan to Bedford by framing his decision to capture the orca as an endeavor that is harmless – perhaps it will even benefit the whale: “The lucky lad will have a long and happy life in some aquarium.” Bedford did not raise objections to the use of orcas in aquatic theme parks in her lecture, but she warns Nolan: “You’re planning to capture and sell a fellow creature. He’s like you – he has warm blood, he breathes air, he’s a mammal and intelligent, and he communicates…. that animal has a right to be left alone…. These animals are too big and too smart and they’re made to be in constant motion, they don’t even sleep. It’s much crueler than putting a lion in a cage.” If one takes into account the production context of Orca, this statement causes discomfort. Much of the footage of live whales used in the film was recorded at marine parks (Herron). It suggests an uncomfortable ethical compromise, as the film speaks ill of the institutions upon which it depended in order to produce this film. Bedford makes a clear distinction between the standards of treatment 195 reserved for most animals and the standards one should apply to killer whales. Nolan ignores the expert’s advice and goes forward with his plan. Orca charts the process of Nolan’s discovering that Bedford was right. By the end of the film, he realizes the limits of human exceptionalism and learns to have empathy for the non-human. He even learns to put the rights of the non-human above his own. However, this journey of discovery can only occur after he makes a terrible mistake. His ignorance and arrogance cause him to commit a heinous act that sets the film’s events in motion. The severity of Nolan’s crime and the consequences that he will suffer are foreshadowed in Bedford’s lecture. Bedford draws parallels between the behavior of humans and orcas, noting: “As parents, killer whales are exemplary, better than most human beings…. Yet the most amazing thing about these creatures is neither their gentleness nor their violence, but their brains.” With this, Bedford brings up a slide comparing images of brains from a monkey, a dog, a human, and a killer whale. The whale and human brains are presented as equivalent in size. She continues: “We know very little about the nature of the whale’s intelligence, except that it exists and is powerful. And, in some respects, may even be superior to man.” As with her remark about their parenting abilities, Bedford goes beyond arguing an equivalency between orcas and humans. She suggests that orcas may be humanity’s superior in key regards: their capacity for empathy and their intelligence. Both qualities come together in the closing statements of Dr. Bedford’s lecture, which concern language. As mentioned in Chapter Two, language is often used to indicate humanity’s superiority to animals. Willard features an extended sequence in which Willard struggles to communicate with a “lesser” species. Orca uses the different form of communication employed by orcas not only to mark their difference from humanity, but also their superiority. Bedford plays a sample of whale 196 song in the darkened classroom. There follows a series of close-ups of students looking uncomfortable in response to the eerie sounds. Bedford explains: “Whales talk… The whale sounds you are now hearing contain wavelengths that can travel not just across one ocean basin, but around the entire world. This was recorded underwater and analyzed by computers at Caltech. It was found to contain 15 million pieces of information. The Bible contains only 4 million.” To the human ear, the whale song sounds like meaningless shrieks and whistles. Researchers working with technologies that outstrip the human mind in terms of their ability to process information suggest otherwise. Bedford describes a global communication system in which basic lines of communication potentially contain far more complexity than dense and culturally significant documents. What those “pieces of information” allude to is unknown, and possibly beyond our comprehension: What are they saying? For that matter, do they have to say anything to communicate? Their sonar would be a little like our having X-Ray vision. If we could look into one another and instantly know if someone is happy or sad, indifferent or aroused, healthy or suffering from a tumor we could actually see, then a human phrase like “how are you?” would be utterly meaningless. What we call language, they might call unnecessary, or redundant. Or retarded. Bedford offers a utopic vision of whale society. Quasi-psychic bonds unite the species, enabling profound intimacy. The film begins with the image of two whales swimming together, scored by a lush and romantic Ennio Morricone composition featuring a female singer warbling in approximation of a whale song. The images and music give a sense that these animals are in love. Bedford’s lecture nuances the audience’s understanding of the possibility for whale relationships and the stakes of those bonds. 197 Early in her lecture, Bedford raises the specter of people’s evolutionary connection with killer whales. Showing an image of a 4-month old whale fetus, she notes how it is “incredibly like that of a human baby. It even has two hands with five fingers on each.” This developmental similarity suggests a connection based on an earlier shared ancestor. At the same time, it subtly feeds into the film’s implication that orcas are beyond humanity. Their resemblance to humans comes at a period of premature development, before they emerge fully formed. Orca strikes an ambivalent balance in terms of evaluating orcas’ relationship to humanity. Their similarities to humanity elevate them, making their lives and rights more valuable and worth worrying about than those of other animals. Orcas are also presented as humanity’s superior. In Willard and Monkey Shines, the human protagonists’ interactions with animals debase them, making them more animalistic. In Orca, the opposite process occurs. The orca comes into unwanted contact with humanity and, as a result, it succumbs to its baser instincts and uses its amazing capabilities to seek revenge. The animal’s interaction with humans degrades it, causing it to act like a person, to enter a destructive process of becoming-human. The orca’s descent and Nolan’s ascent both begin during Nolan’s disastrous attempt to capture the whale. Nolan sets his sights on a large male, but his harpoon grazes its dorsal fin and lodges in its mate. As the orca screams, Nolan observes with horror that it “sounds almost human.” Nolan is beginning to come to the grotesque realization that Bedford’s warnings were true. Rather than be captured, the harpooned female commits suicide, swimming into the ship’s propellers. The crew raises her mutilated body from the water; as they examine it, a human-like fetus falls from the female in slow motion (See Figures 3.1 & 3.2). As the male orca roars, a distressed Nolan uses a hose to blast the bloody fetus off the deck, as if trying to remove the evidence of his similarity to the animal. After this, the orca marks Nolan. 198 The journeys of the orca and Nolan parallel each other. Having lost its partner and child, the orca pushes the body of its mate through the water, surrounded by other members of its pod. Eventually, the other orcas swim away while the orca continues moving forward. Its community abandons it as it single-mindedly brings the corpse to the shore of the picturesque fishing village in which Nolan lives. The corpse is left as a warning for Nolan. Later, the film reveals that Nolan came to the village after losing his own wife and their unborn child to a drunk driver. The whale community leaves the orca to its maddening grief and Nolan’s community drives him away once they realize that the orca will only leave their town alone if Nolan returns to sea and faces it. Through the orca’s destructive campaign, the audience witnesses the extent of its intelligence. Orca takes something with solid grounding in truth (orcas are unusually intelligent) and manifests it in an exaggerated and outlandish way. There is a dramatic escalation in terms of the intelligence on display. The orca goes from being able to recognize Nolan and his ship to orchestrating implausibly complex maneuvers. This culminates in a sequence where the orca Figures 3.1 & 3.2 – In Bedford’s lecture, one way she illustrates the connection between humans and killer whales is through reference to the similarities between fetuses in both species. Nolan is horrified when he sees one of these humanoid whale fetuses following his botched attempt to capture what he assumed was a dumb fish. 199 sneaks into the village’s harbor. Once inside, it jumps out of the water in order to damage some fuel pipes, spraying gasoline everywhere. It then rams the support beams of a cabin on the water, knocking over a lamp. This starts a fire that blows up large sections of the harbor. The flames spread through the pipes and up to a gas tanker overlooking the town, which erupts in a huge ball of flame. As the town burns, the orca leaps out of the water in the foreground of shots of the burning town, reveling in the destruction (See Figure 3.3). This is the final straw and the village expels Nolan, sending him off to face his reckoning. In turn, he refuses to run from his fate. Figure 3.3 – In Orca, the whale celebrates after executing an impossibly complex maneuver that nearly sets an entire village on fire. The maddened creature’s antics compel Nolan’s community to cast him out, driving him towards his fate. Orca presents Nolan’s journey towards enlightenment as a tragic tale of too little, too late. Nolan starts the film with arrogant humanist certainty that the orca is only a dumb fish. However, in their shared experiences of premature loss, Nolan finds a connection between himself and the orca. Nolan even identifies the whale’s extreme reaction as proof that the orca is his superior. He observes: “He loved his family more than I loved mine.” As the film progresses, Nolan wishes in vain for a way to communicate with the orca. However, he finds himself unable to connect with the whale in a way that would mean something to the animal. 200 I mentioned that the orca marks Nolan, and the film communicates this in a striking shot referenced in Chapter Two. The orca’s eye fills the frame in an extreme close-up, and it reflects Nolan’s image. For a moment, Nolan comes into sharp focus in the eye. When Nolan later expresses a violent animosity towards the whale, he fixates on the animal’s eyes. He fantasizes about shooting out both of its eyes (“bang, bang”). This act would not only kill the orca, it would destroy a means of connection – something that can return his gaze and in which he can (literally) recognize and see himself. By the end of his journey, Nolan decides he would rather meet the whale’s gaze. He wishes he could look the orca in the eye and explain “that the killing of his wife and child was a terrible accident and I didn’t mean it – I didn’t mean it! I’d tell him I was sorry and I’d hope he’ll forgive me.” Of course, this act of trans-species communication is impossible. Bedford’s lecture suggests such verbal expressions might be totally alien to the orca’s advanced form of communication. Later, as his crew sails out to confront the orca, Nolan watches a digital monitor recording the orca’s song. This alien communication is given a visual counterpart in the form of bright green digital wavelength readouts. Listening to it, Nolan speculates about the song’s meaning: “‘You’re my drunk driver,’ he says.” It is a fantasized translation that imagines the orca might also recognize and appreciate their similarities. When Bedford leaves Nolan alone with the machine, he brings his face close to the screen, as if trying to understand the message by scrutinizing its image. Again, one witnesses Nolan desiring a deeper and more meaningful connection, but being stuck at the surface-level. Nolan is willing to do anything to make things right with the whale. In the end, he even offers himself up for destruction. It is a radical gesture of abandoning the self, but even this is not enough to make amends for the wrongs he committed. Nolan is a tragic figure; though his understanding of, and empathy towards, the non-human grows greater, their connection remains 201 superficial. Orca emphasizes this in their final confrontation. Before Nolan’s death, Orca again features an extreme close-up on the orca’s eye with Nolan reflected in it, followed by a matching extreme close-up of Nolan’s eye reflecting the orca (See Figure 3.4 & 3.5). Though linked, they remain alienated. Underlining their estrangement, Nolan screams: “What in hell are you?!” On one level, the inability of these two characters to connect is based on their literal difference in species. Yet the whale was willing to extend compassion and care to humans before. Nolan has become willing to make contact, but the whale is no longer willing to enter that relationship with him. This brings up an important point of consideration in relation to the concept of becoming with. In Willard, Ben wants to be a companion to Willard; Ben wants for them to enter a becoming with process. Both parties need to make an effort and Willard refuses to be involved except on his own unreasonable terms. There, humanist exceptionalism destroys the possibility of any kind of becoming. In Orca, one witnesses the animal refusing to forgive the human for their carelessness and refusing to enter into a becoming relationship. The decision is still destructive; it does not work to the animal’s benefit to rebuff this potentially healing contact. By the end of the Figures 3.4 & 3.5 – Nolan and the orca are each reflected in the other’s eye during their final confrontation. The animal and the human are at once joined and yet hopelessly apart and unable to connect truly. 202 film, Nolan is dead and the orca also seems doomed. Having led Nolan into the Arctic, the whale finds itself in an environment where it cannot breech the surface for oxygen. The film ends with it swimming off beneath the ice, presumably to a death that goes unseen. In the case of Willard, the solution to the problem seems obvious. It is something humans can work on fixing in themselves. In the case of Orca, the situation is grimmer. What if humans manage to fix themselves and open themselves up to contact with the non-human, but the non- human is no longer there for us to connect to? What if the bond is too thoroughly smashed by past misdeeds and it is too late to make amends? That is the real horror of Orca. However, in Monkey Shines, the horror comes from the idea that anyone would try and enter these relationships at all. Monkey Shines In the beginning of this chapter, I discuss how the humanist influence can be seen in the horror genre’s expressions of disgust and fear at the human form being corrupted through interaction with the non-human. Willard and Orca do not offer optimistic or positive tales of successful becoming. However, the horror stems from the failure of that becoming due to the actions of the human – either never making oneself accessible or making that move too late. Monkey Shines is another case of close and intimate bonding between a human and an animal, but it offers a different take on the material. Monkey Shines represents the reactionary backlash to the progressive models of becoming considered in this chapter. While Willard’s opening sequence establishes Willard as a failure, Monkey Shines sets up Allan (Jason Beghe) as an exceptional individual. The film begins with Allan excusing himself from the bed he shares with his girlfriend, signaling his conventional sex life. Allan does warm- up stretches in the nude, emphasizing his fine physique. Before his morning run, Allan straps on ankle weights and fills a backpack with bricks, demonstrating that he is no casual athlete. As Allan 203 jogs down the street, he greets his neighbors, indicating his social competence. Suddenly, a dog lunges at Allan. 17 He stumbles into the street and the path of an oncoming truck. The impact sends Allan flying through the air. In an on-the-nose bit of visual storytelling, one of Allan’s bricks shatters against the pavement as the accident breaks the strong, solid object that is Allan’s body. Later, after an operation leaves Allan quadriplegic, his family and friends gather in preparation for Allan’s return from the hospital. As in Willard, the chatter at this party fills in the picture of Allan’s situation. Those gathered mourn Allan’s inability to compete athletically anymore and question his ability to continue law school. The opening establishes Allan as socially, physically, and intellectually superior; his accident strips that away from him. Previously, he was a masculine ideal. His accident renders him impotent, both figuratively, as he struggles to complete simple tasks, and literally. When Allan senses his girlfriend drawing away from him after the accident, his friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) dismisses her: “If she walks out on you now, fuck her!” Allan mournfully replies: “I can’t.” Allan’s disability also results in his infantilization and Oedipalization, as exemplified by the fact that his domineering mother moves in to act as his caregiver. She insists on giving Allan sponge baths and expresses jealousy when Allan develops a new romantic relationship. The protagonists in Willard and Orca are both social misfits. They are already close to the border dividing the human and the non-human; they have little to lose by entering into a process of becoming. Monkey Shines is told from a perspective of privilege. The system has been good to Allan and he has little reason to want to disrupt the status quo. Allan is forced into a marginal societal position by his accident and his disability. This brings up one of the most troubling manifestations of Monkey Shines’s sense of privilege: its strong undercurrent of ableism. As 17 The film does not emphasize the fact that an unruly animal causes Allan’s initial misfortune and brings him into close contact with an even more terrible animal. This dog is the initial unpredictable chaos agent in Allan’s world. 204 mentioned previously, the human characters who connect with animals in these films are typically misfits who fall outside the standard criteria for humanity. In Monkey Shines, the protagonist’s dysfunction stems from his disability. Acknowledging the difficulties, frustrations, and indignities that would attend a late-in-life crippling injury is not what makes Monkey Shines’s treatment of disability problematic. In the early stages of Monkey Shines, it appears to be exploring Allan’s adjustment to a new way of life. An important part of this is the subplot about Allan’s developing relationship with Melanie (Kat McNeil), a woman who trains helper monkeys for the disabled, and guides Allan through the rediscovery of his sexuality. 18 What makes Monkey Shines’s treatment of this issue objectionable is the fact that it turns out that Allan’s condition is reversible. A surgeon will only perform the operation if Allan demonstrates a degree of physical competence by managing some slight movement. The film frames Allan’s disability as an issue of self-control, inner strength, and resolve. He must demonstrate that he possesses the will to re-master his body. He achieves this in his climactic struggle with Ella, his evil Capuchin helper monkey. Ella is no average monkey. Geoffrey is a scientist working in a lab with a bad reputation for its treatment of animals. 19 Geoffrey’s own experiments are vague. One should not expect much (or any) detail or grounding for the work of a horror movie’s mad scientist. All the same, the mechanics of what Geoffrey does to Ella, how it changes her, and how these changes affect Allan remain ill-defined throughout the film. That degree of messiness does not derail the fantasy. If one can accept the film’s fuzzy logic, that lack of detail allows it to register better as a rumination on 18 Particularly given Monkey Shines’s bizarre premise, it handles this material in a surprisingly delicate manner. The scene in which Allan performs oral sex on Melanie centers on female pleasure in a way not often seen in mainstream cinema. The victory lies not in Allan regaining his virility and the ability to “fuck her.” It lies in being able to reconnect with another person intimately and provide her with pleasure. This tender moment is undercut by the ending of the scene, which consists of a montage of Melanie’s helper monkeys running about and screeching. 19 The film presents Geoffrey’s boss as especially sadistic. For no reason, his office contains a tank of water in which a rat swims about futilely. The boss is fixated on making Geoffrey pass along his monkeys for dissection. 205 general concepts about the qualities of humans and non-humans, and that which divides one from the other. Geoffrey’s experiments involve injecting monkeys with a serum made from human brains. 20 In order to keep his experiments and their results secret, Geoffrey sneaks Ella out of the lab and donates her to Melanie, so that she might be trained as a helper monkey for Allan. What Geoffrey fails to anticipate is that Ella’s intelligence will increase more quickly than the other monkeys being injected with the same formula. Her progress accelerates as a result of her being in close and intimate contact with a human. The nature of Allan and Ella’s relationship extends beyond physical closeness and involves a psychic connection. When Allan sleeps, he sees the world from Ella’s perspective. When Allan has negative thoughts or impulses, Ella executes them. It is not just that Allan’s influence increases Ella’s abilities, making her more human. Ella wears away at Allan’s self-control. He lashes out at those around him and flies into rages. These changes even manifest in a degree of physical transformation. At times his canines grow long and pointy. It is a subtle degree of difference, emphasized by details like his biting his lip and making it bleed, but it gives Allan a beast-like appearance. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is worth returning to the fact that the term becoming- animal is not meant to be taken literally. Becoming-animal does not involve a lycanthropic metamorphosis and the development of animal-like traits. Such a superficial “resemblance, on the contrary, would represent an obstacle or stoppage” to the process of becoming, because it would represent a potential fixed state of identity, rather than the continuation of the becoming process 20 There is no suggestion in the film that these brains come from criminals or the mentally ill, which could offer some explanation for why the serum turns Ella into such a malevolent force. It seems that human intelligence simply acts on Ella as a dangerous and addictive drug. 206 (Deleuze 233). In trying to make the process of becoming seem more horrific, Monkey Shines make it crudely literal, as Allan starts to look physically and behave mentally like an animal. If Allan must regain his physical abilities through sheer force of will, Ella functions as a crutch enabling his disability by making it manageable. Allan struggles at first with once simple tasks. Turning the pages of a textbook requires great concentration and effort. When he attempts to turn on a light using automated voice control, he cannot remember the proper code number for the lamp. Melanie trains Ella to perform these simple tasks for Allan. Ella operates with increasing efficiency, which the film implies stems from Allan and Ella’s burgeoning psychic connection. She functions as the ultimate companion animal, given the extreme intimacy of their connection. Their mental bond also allows Ella to give Allan a simulated experience of his former physical ability. Ella escapes at night and in Allan’s dreams he sees through her eyes as she runs around. It is an experience the audience shares thanks to the film’s use of point-of-view shots. Given the unconventional camera placement and movement in these shots, as well as their extended duration, these POV shots offer the audience a unique kinetic experience that communicates Allan’s disorienting delight at the familiar yet strange experience of movement (an experience made strange not only by his disability but by experiencing it from the perspective of a non-human body). The mental and physical changes that occur in the human and non-human as a result of this symbiotic connection are handled more explicitly in Monkey Shines than in Willard. Similarly, Monkey Shines goes farther in exploring the cyborg dynamics of this relationship. Allan’s disability results in his having more conventional technological cyborg enhancements. Much of his home is controlled through automation and he moves with the aid of a motorized chair. Ella acts as a further biological extension of his body and mind. The animal extension works more efficiently than the mechanical tools: Allan’s chair and other technological 207 aids frequently frustrate and fail him. At the conclusion, Ella disables Allan’s mechanical devices, thwarting his attempts to stop her. Allan’s biological non-human enhancement (Ella) also fails and betrays him, due to its unpredictability. At the end of the day, Allan can only depend on his natural physical and mental capacities. He uses his mind to outsmart Ella and finds the willpower to move his paralyzed hand. While Ella tries to kill the unconscious Melanie, Allan forces himself to turn on a tape player. This starts a love song; the mood being set, Allan seduces Ella and lures her to him. As Ella embraces Allan, he grabs her by the neck with his teeth and brutally shakes her until she is dead. This notion, that cyborg enhancements are unreliable and untrustworthy and one can only truly depend on the human body and mind, further reveals the humanist prejudice running throughout Monkey Shines. Allan becomes an unwilling participant in a posthuman collective. The way technology aids his infirm body represents a frustration rather than an asset. What it offers him pales in comparison to what he could achieve with his own exceptional body. His bond with Ella initially offers him new levels of fulfillment on multiple levels. In the day-to-day, she helps him with mundane household tasks. When Allan sees the world through Ella’s eyes, she allows him to experience the sensation of vital physicality and movement vicariously. It is a range of movement that would not have been available to him even in his athletic prime. Finally, Ella offers affection when Allan is depressed. After his accident, Allan faces a myriad of indignities, big and small. He loses his girlfriend, his overworked friend has little time for him, and his shrewish homecare nurse and overbearing mother torment him. Before Ella enters his life, Allan attempts suicide. Ella performs tasks without complaint and offers Allan the uncomplicated love and amusing distraction of a pet. Unfortunately, Ella also helps Allan by acting out his murderous desires. 208 Ella and Allan are trapped in a complicated mental feedback loop. Ella acts on Allan’s impulses. The first people Ella kills are Allan’s former girlfriend and her lover, the arrogant surgeon who played a role in paralyzing Allan. When Allan hears of their death, he immediately knows that the cabin they were staying in caught fire. He knows this because he dreamt of the incident from Ella’s perspective. He admits to having fantasized about taking the exact same action previously. Ella does not just facilitate Allan’s darkest desires. Her animal influence apparently encourages him on to experience his darker feelings more intensely. Allan tries to return Ella to Geoffrey, but she breaks out of the lab to return. Allan realizes that Ella has returned during a heated argument with his mother. The film does not present Allan’s anger towards his mother as being unfounded. In the early stages of their fight, Allan makes sound and rational points based on logic and supported by evidence. He is training to be a lawyer, after all. He expresses frustration at his mother’s attempts to undermine his developing relationship with Melanie. When she accuses him of being ungrateful for the sacrifices she made to become his sole caregiver, Allan notes that he never asked her to do that. However, his reasoned arguments give way to name-calling and wishing her dead. When Allan transitions into that irrational mode, he recognizes that he has gone too far. Indeed, he has gone to a point to which he himself would never willingly go. He identifies this as Ella’s malign influence and warns his mother to watch out. While Allan sees his behavior as suspiciously out of character, his mother does not. It is perhaps telling that the character who has known Allan the longest does not see his outburst as so unusual that it raises alarms. Allan’s attempts to put the onus for his bad behavior largely on Ella may indicate a subtle level of self-deception. Yet the film presents the changes in Allan as a negative result of Ella’s influence. His mother is punished with death for not recognizing this and 209 failing to heed Allan’s warning. Everything builds to a final confrontation between Allan and Ella, when the divisions between human and animal become their weakest. As mentioned, Allan’s animal instincts play a role in his final victory. He successfully synthesizes the qualities that the film presents as human (his intellect) and non-human (his savagery). Right after his victory, the film offers a sequence of Allan’s spine once again being operated on in a hospital. This pays off the earlier promise that, if he could will himself to move, surgeons would perform a restorative surgery. The score steadily builds, giving the impression of a triumphant final movement. As the doctor slices Allan’s back open, the score suddenly cuts off as the heart rate monitor flat lines. After a moment’s pause, a screeching Ella, soaked in blood, bursts from the incision (See Figure 3.6). Allan wakes from this nightmare in his hospital bed, where he is recovering from the successful surgery. What can one make of this climactic nightmare? It could be seen as recognition of the animal that was always inside Allan, something Ella helped bring out but did not create. However, that figurative animal inside him is the nightmarish manifestation of a demonic, unnatural creature that he did destroy. Perhaps the nightmare offers a final grotesque visualization of the animal inside to undercut the fact that it helped Allan and could be seen as desirable. The film ends with a purely hopeful scene, as Allan rises from his wheelchair and walks to Melanie before the two drive off Figure 3.6 – A nightmarishly literal version of the animal inside manifests as a bloody Ella emerges from Allan’s back. 210 together. The animal instinct, which is presented as being purely monstrous, has been exorcised through Ella’s death. Throughout the film, Ella troubles the boundaries separating human and animal. Ella starts off being a passive victim of this process; she is abused by Geoffrey for his experiments. When Geoffrey brings out the syringe, she tries to escape. The injections cause to her to scream in distress and she flees when released. However, after Allan rejects her and sends her back to Geoffrey, Ella encourages the injections and takes them without complaint. The drug-addled Geoffrey recognizes her as a fellow “junkie.” Like Allan, Ella’s categorization was compromised unwillingly. However, while the resulting changes disturb Allan, Ella wants to continue becoming. Their reactions betray the film’s bias. The animal influence degrades Allan’s humanity. It is a regressive, negative event. Becoming more human elevates Ella’s abilities and condition. From the privileged subject’s perspective, it makes sense that an inferior entity would want to drag their superior down while elevating themselves. However, in her endeavor to become more human, Ella flies too close to the sun. Forgetting her place destroys Ella. Throughout the film, she functions as Allan’s helper, an extension of his will. Like Ben, Ella eventually decides that she is done with servitude, although she lacks the clear life-and-death motivation that make it hard to fault Ben. Ella simply wants to occupy the privileged position. She even starts force-feeding Allan the monkey treats he used to give her as a reward for obeying commands. While Ella was happy with these treats, Allan spits them out resentfully. He notes that Ella has forgotten her station; she wants “to be the boss now…. [She] wants to be the brains as well as the brawn.” This demonstrates that she has forgotten the fundamental distinction between them as humans and animals. Allan warns Ella that he will inevitably get the better of her: “I’m the brains of this outfit. I can beat you at this game, Ella. You 211 know why? Because I’m the human.” Allan can say this directly to Ella because, after all, she is an animal incapable of understanding and appreciating speech. There is no ambiguity about this, as there was in Willard. However sophisticated Ella appears, she cannot understand Allan. This is one of the ways that the film emphasizes that Ella is still a brute animal who reacts in primitive, violent ways to her problems. When Allan shouts at her in defiance, she growls and urinates on him. This indignity sets Allan off, causing him to curse Ella as a filthy animal. Importantly, the urination represents not only a dominating power move, it also marks Allan as her possession. Falling in love with Allan represents the most dramatic way Ella confuses the distinction between their species. Throughout the film, one gets the uneasy sense that Ella is developing romantic feelings for Allan, who regards her affectionately as a pet. Early in the film, while Allan tries to study, Ella turns off the lights to create a proper mood. Though normally obedient, Ella ignores Allan’s complaints that this makes it hard to read. She shuts his book, turns on romantic music, and hugs Allan’s neck. Haraway talks about intimate enmeshment between the human and the non-human. Monkey Shines uses Ella’s desire to offer a crude and taboo version of that desire for intimacy. It also harkens back to the bestiality taboos that were long a key part of the primate’s function in horror, something referenced in the Introduction. At the end of the film, Allan brings Ella back to her romantic mindset by turning on some mood music and speaking to her softly. Moments ago, Allan was screaming at Ella and trying to kill her. However, Ella allows herself to be seduced. She puts aside her weapon and embraces Allan, putting herself in the vulnerable position that allows him to destroy her. It is a pathetic moment and it is difficult not to feel sympathy for Ella. Betrayed by her heart, she serves as a decidedly tragic monstrous figure. The fact that Ella is a primate enhances this effect. Like the cetacean in Orca, Ella belongs to a species not so far removed from humans. 212 There is something uncanny about her movements in the film as she does tasks for Allan, her little body and hands performing human-like tasks and gestures. Her face, in close-ups, has a human quality that makes it easy to project emotions and intent onto her character. Perhaps this is another reason for the nightmare image. In order to demonize Ella and what she represents, the audience cannot be left with this sad creature’s broken body being shaken like a ragdoll and tossed away. They need to see Ella as a grotesque, distorted figure that intruded into the human realm in unnatural ways. While Ella became a transgressive force unwillingly, she adopted the role eagerly, rather than running away from it as Allan did. For that, she deserves destruction. Both Willard and Monkey Shines suggest that the disruption of borders separating humans and non-humans is unusual. They present scenarios in which those who transgress those borders are punished. However, they differ in their attitudes towards that transgression. In Willard, the issue is not that Willard violates those boundaries. It is that he remains too human, even as he enters into a becoming process and sees the potential of a new way of being. Petty social hang-ups guide his actions, and he values his animal companions only insomuch as he can dominate and exploit them. Their lives, even the lives of those select rats he holds dear, are not as important to him as his safety and dignity. He ultimately views the vast majority of his rats as disposable, and for that he earns destruction. Willard begins the film as an outcast from human society without much to lose. Allan, on the other hand, loses his privilege in a freak accident. In that regard, he and Ella are not dissimilar. A cruel twist of fate strips Ella of her basic nature as well. For a while, these two unusual individuals find a mutually beneficial situation. This only lasts as long as a semblance of traditional borders separate them and Allan remains in charge. When they become more intimately enmeshed, when Allan’s humanity is threatened, and when Ella tries to become his superior, Allan takes action to sever these ties and set things right. In Monkey Shines, violent 213 punishment is earned for embracing the disruption of human-animal borders. The goal becomes to reaffirm traditional humanist notions of self. In the final film considered in this chapter, the end of humanism inspires a degree of horror. More than that, however, it is positioned as representing an exciting possibility. Phase IV Phase IV offers the most radical vision of becoming found in any of these films, in part because of what it asks the audience to consider becoming with. Of all the creatures featured in this chapter, the ants in Phase IV are the least likely to elicit sympathy or positive sentiments from viewers. Many people find rats distasteful or frightening. Yet the rats in Willard at least share mammalian status with humans. Rats are warm-blooded, furry little creatures. When a rat performs an action that seems almost human-like, it can be endearing. When they sit on their haunches, using their dexterous hands to hold a piece of food, it can prompt a moment of recognition. The rat is not human, but it might not seem totally alien. Ants are a different story. Ants cause discomfort not only because of their extreme differences, but also because of their disquieting similarities to people. They build complex structures, live in communities, and perform specialized forms of labor. Some species even engage in sophisticated activities that resemble farming and ranching. 21 Yet ants are insects with a physiological makeup markedly different from that of humans. Ants possess hard exoskeletons, have multiple legs, and their faces lack analogous features that might aid humans in seeing themselves in the animal. As a result of these profound biological differences, the ways ants mirror humanity are more likely to appear uncanny and unsettling than they are to prompt productive recognition. 21 Ants were “farming fungi in South American rainforests for 60 million years” before humans began farming (Handwerk). Smithsonian Magazine notes: “Today, about 240 species of attine ants – the leafcutters among them – are known to farm fungus in the Americas and the Caribbean” (Handwerk). One article refers to herder ants, which manage aphids “the same way [humans] keep cattle,” as “insect cowboys” (Zeldovich). 214 It does not help the ants’ case that their human-like traits make them resemble an unflattering or dystopic caricature of humanity. In their industrious societies, workers possess no apparent personalities or individual will. Ants have an entrenched hierarchical system. When ants operate as a collective unit, their actions can be ruthless. Army ants have a particularly fearsome reputation, moving in mass columns and swarming over creatures in their path. 22 Many ants battle other colonies and some even take slaves (Tennenhouse). Aggressive species of ants expand their habitat like colonial empires. 23 Like rats, ants adapt to and coexist with human development with admirable tenacity. This makes ants a troublesome pest species that can be a destructive and dangerous nuisance. Phase IV deals with ants that begin to act even more like humans than ants do already. The ants become a literally alien presence on earth. As is often the case in Animal Attack films, the reason why these ants begin acting abnormally remains vague. The film attributes their change to unusual cosmic activity, described in voiceover by James Lesko (Michael Murphy) as “events in space.” These transformative events are rendered as a series of abstract images. The film opens on a shot of space – stars break up an otherwise dark screen, except for a black circular void in the screen’s center. The Sun emerges from behind this void, revealing it to be a planet. The Sun illuminates this red orb, before passing between the large planet and a smaller planet in the foreground. When backlit, the smaller planet appears as a black orb (See Figure 3.7). As the Sun disappears between the two, the larger planet becomes blueish-white. With the black dot at its center, the collection of planets resembles an eye 22 One of the first films to present ants as fearsome antagonists was The Naked Jungle (Haskin, 1954), an adaptation the 1938 short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson. The story and its adaptation focus on a plantation owner in South America trying to stop the destructive progress of army ants. The Naked Jungle came out the same year as the iconic ant horror film Them! (Douglas, 1954) 23 The U.S. Department of Agriculture offers numerous documents about the domestic and international spread of imported fire ants, a destructive invasive species with a presence on every continent except Antarctica (“Potential”). 215 floating in space. After a moment, a shifting aurora emanates from this celestial “eye,” breaking up its neat shape and creating an amorphous mass (See Figure 3.8). This opening image is striking, but without context it holds no clear meaning for the audience. Lesko’s voiceover explains that these events create similar confusion in the diegesis. Human experts, scientific and spiritual, debate the meaning and significance of these events. Lesko mentions that “mystics predicted earthquakes, and the end of life as we knew it.” The film fades from this cosmic scope to a new circle: a hole in the dirt. A black ant emerges as Lesko explains: “When the effect came, it was almost unnoticed because it happened to such a small and insignificant form of life.” The human experts fail to grasp the significance of these events. They are concerned with what this event means for humans, assuming it can only have meaning and significance if it impacts humans directly. With their anthropocentric focus, they fail to consider Figures 3.7 & 3.8 – Phase IV begins with abstract visual renderings of mysterious cosmic activities that will bring about major changes on Earth. 216 that these events might have a profound effect elsewhere. These events do mark “the end of life as we knew it,” but it will not involve earthquakes. Humans are a presence in Phase IV from the start, providing exposition through voiceover. After Lesko gives a sense of the larger context, Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) speaks about the resultant aberrant behavior among ant populations. The men’s different focuses give an early indication of their personalities. Lesko proves to be the more open-minded of the two, taking in the whole picture. Hubbs’s obsessive focus causes him to lose sight of important details. Though they are a presence, neither of these characters nor any humans appear on screen for the first ten minutes of the film. Perhaps anticipating the trouble viewers might have connecting with ants, Phase IV introduces its world by forcing viewers into the ants’ company. The film first gives a sense of the ants’ behavior through the lens of human observation. While most people lose interest in the cosmic event, not noticing any changes in the world, Hubbs observes how “ordinary ants of different species were doing things that ants don’t do. Meeting. Communicating. Apparently making decisions.” The camera finds a group of ants gathered in a circle, illuminated by a beam of light. The camera cuts to a close-up of an ant’s face, before panning around the circle to focus on the other assembled representatives. The close-ups allow the audience to notice strange geometric symbols on the ants’ heads. They also provide a striking sense of these creatures as individuals with distinct looks, something often unnoticed given the difference in scale between humans and ants and people’s tendency to think of ants as an anonymous collective (See Figures 3.9 & 3.10). 24 The members of this diverse ant coalition rear up, wiggling their legs and antennae. 24 Phase IV benefits greatly from the contributions of Ken Middleham, who receives credit for the film’s “Insect Sequences.” Middleham played an important role in the presentation of insects in 1970s era horror. He worked on The Hellstrom Chronicle (Green and Spiegel, 1971), a documentary framed as a paranoid fantasy and drawing on sci-fi and horror tropes. He also worked on the more straightforward fantasy narratives Bug (Szwarc, 1975) and 217 Given the voiceover’s statements, the viewer can only interpret these images as representing the ants “Communicating. Apparently making decisions.” The nature or content of their communication is beyond people’s ability to discern. Throughout this introductory sequence, Hubbs’s voiceover explains that the ants are behaving oddly, but the images on display suggest that there is more to these events than even Hubbs appreciates. The voiceover stops as the camera follows an ant from this meeting as it journeys underground and through its nest. Without the guiding voiceover, the audience cannot understand the full significance of the strange things glimpsed in this shadowy environment. Even Damnation Alley (Smight, 1977). In a way, Middleham can be understood as performing a role similar to that of the Taylors, whose footage for Jaws, Orca, and Jaws 2 contributed to how the public thought about and saw great white sharks in the 1970s. Figures 3.9 & 3.10 – The ants never lose their identity as a collective. However, thanks to the micro-photography provided by Ken Middleham, neither do they simply exist as a wholly anonymous mass. 218 if this world of dark passages is unfamiliar, the audience can still tell that some items are foreign to the world of ants. There are stacks of clear, plastic-looking tubes and a field of tiny obelisks. The film’s ant guide moves past several queens pumping out eggs before entering a room with another queen that emits an eerie blue glow. The camera then begins a back-and-forth series of ever-tighter close-ups on the ant guide and this glowing queen. This ends with extreme close-ups on their segmented eyes. The image of the insect eye illuminated by pulsating lights becomes a visual motif in the film, matched with corresponding kaleidoscopic point-of-view shots (See Figures 3.11 & 3.12). These images imply the ants’ strange and unknowable interior worlds. Similarly, the fact that the voiceovers cut out when the camera moves underground implies the limitations of what human experts can observe and understand about these creatures. They exist independent of human observation and remain not entirely knowable. Driving home that division between what humans can and cannot know, the voiceover returns when the action moves back above-ground. Hubbs narrates surface-level manifestations of the ants’ changing behavior. Black and red ants crowd the screen, locked in violent combat. Suddenly, the fighting ends and the ants leave the field. Hubbs notes that conflicts between ant species in an isolated part of Arizona have stopped. In the same area, the ants’ natural predators Figures 3.11 & 3.12 – Above, an extreme close-up on the segmented eye of an ant becomes a visual motif in the film. Below, Hubbs uses a camera to photograph the tower-like structures built by the ants; the use of a filter implies that he is also being watched by an ant. 219 are disappearing. As Hubbs describes these changes, a spider approaches the lone ant remaining on the field. This is revealed to be an ambush as many ants rush from their hiding places, overwhelming and destroying the spider. Hubbs notes that the number of ants is increasing as they remove the checks on their population size. The ants are cooperating against common enemies and acting as an effective unified force. Having taken out these two tiers of competition, the ants are confronted with a more determined and sophisticated enemy: humanity. Or, more pointedly, man. Critics frequently complain about Phase IV’s underdeveloped human characters. While critics might debate whether to describe them as one or two-dimensional 25 , consensus holds that they are “roles with little definition beyond stereotype” (“Buying & Booking Guide: Phase”). Phase IV features only three significant human characters. There are Hubbs and Lesko, the scientists who wage war with the ants. When their conflict results in the death of a local family, the scientists take in the lone survivor: Kendra (Lynne Frederick), a teenage girl. The affectless nature of the human characters further encourages the audience to align themselves with the ants. The closest Phase IV comes to genuinely emotional moments center on the ants. In one, the scientists deploy an insecticide on the insects. The camera goes in close as the poisoned creatures succumb to the toxic substance. The film then features an extended sequence of multiple ants engaging in a suicide mission for the good of the colony. By relay, they transport chunks of poison to feed to the queen, who produces a new generation of ants immune to the poison. This sequence gives a sense of the ants’ ingenuity and their selfless devotion to the larger good. Later, the insects demonstrate that they appreciate such sacrifices. In retaliation for one of the colony’s destructive maneuvers, the scientists destroy the monolithic towers the ants have built, crushing a 25 The reviewer for the New York Times complained: the “principals… are merely one-dimensional figures registering surface emotions” (Weiler). In a more recent review in an academic journal, Graham Murphy wrote: “antiseptic and emotionally cold… Hubbs and Lesko remain two-dimensional characters: they don’t develop much beyond their function as chess pieces for specific intellectual arguments” (329). 220 large group. After again focusing on the individual deaths of these insects, the film shows their bodies being carried away and laid out for a hero’s funeral. The dead are arranged in long columns, around which the colony gathers (See Figure 3.13). The ants care for and honor their dead in a way that contradicts the human characters’ beliefs that the individual ants do not matter. At the same time, even as the film builds these affective connections, it remains the most committed of any of these films to the notion of the animal pack, the unindividuated collective. No clear individual personality emerges from the horde. There is no demonic gateway animal, there is only the collective. Despite their odd collective persona, the ants give viewers more to connect with than the cold humans. However, the stereotypical quality of the human characters also serves a thematic purpose. The three central people function as a microcosm of philosophical and existential reactions to the erosion of humanism. They face a scenario in which they must reevaluate their assumptions about the value and nature of the non-human, their understanding of humanity’s place in the world, and what it means to be human. This makes each of these characters worth exploring for what they represent. Lesko and Hubbs are two male experts sent to study the situation unfolding with the ants. They arrive at an abandoned housing development in the desert, whose shabby plots of land and Figure 3.13 – Ants killed in an attack on the colony are put on display and attended to by the rest of the colony. Though they are a collective, the lives and deaths of individuals matter. 221 half-finished or rundown houses contrast ironically with surrounding billboards featuring an artist’s rendition of a picturesque community. As Hubbs describes it, it is just another “desert development that failed to develop.” During their tour, Lesko spots chewed up wooden beams that suggest the ants forced out these would-be settlers. Amidst this unfinished community, Hubbs and Lesko find a cluster of earthen towers, each twice as tall as the men (See Figure 3.14). The towers rise straight up before tilting back to create viewing platforms. As the men observe the ants, camera shots distorted by a kaleidoscopic filter and taken from extreme high and low angles imply that the ants are also watching them, from their towers and the ground. The men set up an opposing base facing the ant towers, a geodesic dome full of high-tech equipment (See Figure 3.15). From these two structures, the men and the ants commence a destructive campaign. The men blast away at the towers, causing them to crumble. Meanwhile, the ants infiltrate the base and sabotage its air conditioner, shutting down the base’s computers and forcing the men either to swelter in their hotbox or venture out and face the ants. The two men have different strategies for engaging their insect opponents. Figures 3.14 & 3.15 – The ants and the men construct their respective bases. Hubbs is a biology specialist. Like Bedford in Orca, Hubbs performs the expert role. Hubbs represents a less benign take on scientific authority. Because of his expertise, Hubbs understands how the world should operate and quickly spots the anomaly. When the object of his study alters radically, he displays some excitement and curiosity. Mostly, he wants to return the world to a 222 state he already understands. Hubbs, in his unreasoning and uncompromising drive to destroy or dominate the ants, makes things much worse. Hubbs rejects the implications of these ants’ new abilities; he also resists their attempts to (literally) break through the barriers separating the human from the rest of the world. Early in the film, the ants attack Hubbs’s arm. Over the course of the film, this limb becomes bloated and paralyzed. Hubbs’s desire to destroy the ants, coupled with his knowledge of how ants should behave, causes him to underestimate this new iteration of the species. In a frenzied final effort to defeat the ants, he rushes towards their colony alone with the goal of killing their queen. It is telling that this man imagines his primary opponent as being a powerful female figure. Instead of literally crushing his foes, Hubbs falls into a pit outside the base, where the ants overwhelm and destroy him. The arrogant scientist becomes the victim of a large-scale version of the trap the ants set early in the film for the spider. Phase IV does not use Hubbs simply to say that this fictional character is bad. It also does not suggest that scientists, biologists, and experts are necessarily bad. It is Hubbs’s worldview and mindset that the film criticizes: the arrogance, the self-assurance of superiority, and the refusal to adapt or learn when the old ways become untenable. The other humans have better luck dealing with these ants and the paradigm shift they represent. The ants menace both Lesko and Kendra, mostly due to their association with the destructive Hubbs, but these two avoid death. At least they avoid a literal and final form of death. They do undergo a process that changes them fundamentally. This might be seen as a kind of death. However, it results in a new form and way of life, making it simultaneously a (re)birth. Like Hubbs, Lesko approaches the situation with a scientific mind, but his specialty lies in abstract mathematical concepts. He does not share Hubbs’s prejudices and assumptions about how the world works. Lesko is open to the insects’ potential and attempts to communicate with them. 223 He does not try to impose human language onto them, as Willard did. He also does not lament their lack of shared language like Nolan. Instead, he finds a point of potential common ground and the ants meet him there. The meaning of the geometric shapes they exchange is not immediately obvious, but Lesko accepts the challenge and works through it. Lesko decides that the ideal outcome would be for humans and ants to coexist peacefully as distinct entities. When Hubbs dies, Lesko abandons his notion of coexistence and sets off with destructive intent. Lesko dons a hazmat suit and approaches the nest, spraying poison (See Figure 3.16). Damage to his suit forces him to strip away the protective barrier that insulates him from his surroundings (See Figure 3.17). Removing the suit, he becomes open to contact. This is an important step, as the narrative leads him to a point where the human and nonhuman merge into a singular entity. In order to take that final step, Lesko needs Kendra’s help. Figures 3.16 & 3.17 – Lesko attempts to cut himself off completely from the world by donning a hazmat suit. Damage to the suit leaves him once again vulnerable to contact with the other. Several factors distinguish Kendra from Hubbs and Lesko. Obviously, there is her gender. She is also younger and belongs to a different generation. She is no scientific expert; she is a civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time. Emotions, rather than logic (or the appearance of logic in the case of Hubbs), govern her actions and reactions. The loss of her family leaves her almost comatose with grief. She is a social being suddenly bereft of important connections with others. These factors leave her more open to the ants and the new world they offer. 224 While none of the human characters has great depth, Phase IV’s treatment of Kendra invokes problematic gender stereotypes. Affect, rather than reason, governs her actions, and the film presents her as being closer to the natural world and the non-human than the men. Kendra’s introduction makes sure the audience thinks of her this way. Her family lives on a small farm and Lesko first sees her riding a horse that she regards with great affection. It is a view of women with deep roots in Western thought (Garrard 24). When deployed in a culture that traditionally values white men above everything else, this conceptualization justifies the oppression of women. Citing diverse Western thinkers ranging from Cato to Hegel and Freud, Val Plumwood explains: “women’s inclusion in the sphere of nature has been a major tool in their oppression” (Feminism 19). Even if the connection being drawn is not negative, it is often demeaning, overly simplistic, and intended to confirm masculine power (Feminism 20). For that reason, many feminists reject “the very idea of a feminine connection with nature [which] seems to many to be regressive and insulting” (Feminism 20). Phase IV strives to use Kendra to illustrate an ecofeminist argument: marginalized people stand to benefit from dismantling the anthropocentric status quo, which oppresses both them and the nonhuman and the natural world (Feminism 21). While it might have good intent, Phase IV’s ecofeminist message feels creaky and outdated; it is a simplistic presentation and one invested in the notion of gender as a biological given rather than a cultural construct. 26 It is, after all, ecofeminism filtered through the perspectives of white men (Bass and screenwriter Mayo Simon) 26 Greg Garrard notes that some ecofeminists do adopt a strategy of accepting the dominant culture’s hierarchical binaries, but “reversing the terms, exalting nature, irrationality, emotion and the human or non-human body as against culture, reason and the mind” (24). Yet many feminists (eco and otherwise) criticize any philosophy that accepts notions of the feminine or masculine uncritically, no matter how seemingly empowering it may be: “feminists have long argued against the acceptance of some ‘feminine essence’ grounded in biological sex, showing instead how gender is culturally constructed…. Even a positive valuation of femininity as ‘closer to nature’ thanks to female biology or social experience neglects the reality that all the gender distinctions we know have been constructed within patriarchal societies” (24). 225 in the early 1970s. Despite these flaws, Kendra’s character represents an attempt on the filmmakers’ part to acknowledge that Western forms of humanism do not just negatively impact the literally non-human. Throughout most of the film, Kendra appears as a pathetic victim. When confronted with a single ant, something she could easily crush, she simply implores it to go away. Her unwillingness to assert herself against this bug might seem ludicrous. Yet, based on personal experience, Kendra recognizes and acknowledges that these are not normal ants. These creatures must be treated with respect and caution. The evidence suggests a shift in the status quo has occurred. As a result, Kendra modifies her behavior and attitude. Hubbs never learns this lesson, and the film positions him as arrogant, foolhardy, and destructive. In this case, Kendra is better at observation than the scientist. Though Kendra understands and fears the ants, she offers herself up to them in hopes of saving others. She walks into their territory barefoot – willingly exposed and vulnerable. This preparedness to sacrifice the self for the larger good signals her empathy, but it also demonstrates that she has the ability to engage and connect with the selfless and communal ants. She has the potential to become part of their collective. Throughout the film, the characters resist becoming entangled with the ants. It seems like a horrible fate. Early in the film, the ants try to penetrate Hubbs’s body, resulting in terrible infirmity. Something very different happens to Kendra after the ants swarm her feet. When Kendra disappears after leaving the base, Lesko assumes she has died like Hubbs. Left vulnerable after stripping off his protective hazmat suit, Lesko descends into the ants’ nest. Upon entering, he witnesses Kendra rising from the earth in a kind of second birth (See Figure 3.18). Though physically unaltered, Kendra has undergone a significant change; she functions as an emissary to 226 the human world. She can be understood as reemerging as a leader, perhaps a variation on the ants’ queen. When she touches Lesko, the film enters an extended psychedelic sequence that attempts to depict the end of anthropocentric humanism and the beginning of a new posthuman hybridity. This final sequence is the centerpiece of controversy surrounding studio-mandated alterations to Phase IV. 27 Low quality bootlegs of the director’s cut ending are available online. It is longer than the theatrical cut’s ending sequence and features a more audacious display of surrealist imagery, emphasizing how the lines dividing human and non-human are blurring. In a reference to the paintings of Salvador Dali, a half-woman, half-fish creature lies in repose. A person sits across from a baboon while another person soars through the sky with an eagle. The lines between genders also blur as the faces of Kendra and Lesko merge. That image potentially complicates the film’s otherwise traditional sense of gender binaries. However, even the much shorter theatrical cut’s conclusion conveys the film’s central point effectively. In its most striking moment, the sun becomes a third eye in Lesko’s forehead as the glowing grid of an ant’s eye overlays this image of enlightenment (See Figure 3.19). 27 Sean Savage offers an illuminating account of Phase IV’s troubled production and the issues surrounding the original ending in his 2014 Moving Image article “Phase IV: Saul Bass’s Sci-fi Vision Lost and Regained.” Figure 3.18 – Having become part of the ant’s collective, Kendra emerges from the earth in a second birth. 227 Many horror films might offer Hubbs some vindication; even if he was destroyed, the narrative would suggest that he was right to fight this change. Phase IV suggests that the way forward for society does not lie in clinging to traditional humanist notions and resisting the change the ants represent. The ants are destructive, but that is because they are trying to disrupt an entrenched system. They need to act demonically in order to have a revolutionary impact. The film suggests that the only hope lies in becoming part of their non-human multiplicity, their colony. When Kendra emerges from the earth, it seems as though she might be a truly horrific figure: a dead body full of ants, which manipulate it to give the illusion of life. However, when she touches Lesko and he undergoes his transformation, he never loses his internal voice. The film ends with the same voiceover that guides the audience throughout the film. It implies that Lesko is still in there, but he has changed in ways not entirely clear to him yet. The psychedelic experience heralding this metamorphosis is disorienting and potentially disturbing. However, the film does not present this as a bad or horrific development; it is simply different from what came before. This chapter’s title comes from Lesko’s final lines regarding these events: “We knew then that we were being changed and made part of their world. We didn’t know for what purpose, but we knew we would be told.” They are entering the unknown Phase 4. The film does not presume to know what this new posthuman state of being looks like, or how it Figure 3.19 – Coming into contact with the ants destroys the arrogant Hubbs. It brings the open-minded Lesko a form of transcendent enlightenment. 228 will unfold. However, whatever form it takes, it holds its own enigmatic promise, and it certainly beats charging bullheadedly into a ditch. Conclusion Thinking past entrenched humanist philosophies is a daunting task, one that prompts competing theories about how best to tackle the challenge. The strategies offered by Deleuze and Guattari and Donna Haraway have similar aims. In theory, their proposals should be able to work together quite well. In practice, both are so dogmatic in their tones and approaches that they leave little room for compromise. However, that is precisely what these theories require. Deleuze and Guattari are too obsessed with the theoretical dimensions of their becoming- animal concept. As a result, they do not attend to the animal in becoming-animal. Indeed, the animal seems simultaneously central to their concept and also inconsequential. Any other could fill the slot after becoming. Haraway offers becoming with, an alternative that attends to the animal and generally evinces an ecologically progressive perspective. Yet her theory is too concerned with being nice; it needs a little of Deleuze and Guattari’s nastiness. In order to think through these abstract concepts – their strengths, weaknesses, and how they might best work together – it helps to give them some grounding and see what these ideas look like when they are taken out for a spin. Horror is a genre heavily invested in humanism. Due to the unique conventions of the genre, this also means that horror is a wonderful venue in which to find renderings of the spectacular destruction of the humanist sense of self. Animal Attack films operating within the genre can offer their own unique takes on these scenarios. While Animal Attack films tend to segregate humans and non-humans into clear rival camps, these texts also frequently interrogate and play with those categorizations. Even when a film ultimately reifies that binary, the way it foregrounds and disrupts the division between human and non-human can leave those 229 categorizations, and the ways of thinking to which they belong, open for deconstruction. Sometimes, these films will offer a reactionary take on the erosion of humanism. Often, they will struggle with the complexities of humanism’s demise in illuminating or frustrating ways. At other times, they will revel in the possibilities of a new regime of identity. However they process this paradigm shift, Animal Attack films can offer tools to help think through these debates. In the first section of this project, I focused on the animals in these films and their relationships to people. These animals represent spectacular manifestations of a natural world hostile towards humanity and civilization. However, the environments in which these events take place are equally important to consider in terms of understanding the larger ecological consciousness of these films. Accordingly, the second half of this dissertation shifts the focus to the background of these films and addresses the landscapes. The best place to start such a discussion lies in what a viewer is likely to take in first: the look of these landscapes and the aesthetics of their presentation. 230 CHAPTER 4: “This is Paradise” The Implications of Aesthetically Manipulating Landscapes Most viewers would approach The Shallows (Collet-Serra, 2016) understanding that it focuses on a killer shark. If promotional materials did not tip them off, the film opens by teasing the carnage to come: a young boy discovers a helmet-mounted GoPro camera floating in the surf. Reviewing the footage, the boy discovers that the camera captured the moment at which a shark ate its operator. This primes the audience to anticipate the shark’s arrival. Yet the early part of The Shallows feels more like a tourism advertisement than a horror movie. The secluded beach that Nancy (Blake Lively) seeks out seems pristine and perfect. It pops with saturated colors, the waves crest in loving slow motion, and the soothing white noise of surf fills the soundtrack. After this showcase of picturesque imagery, an idyllic moment heralds a shift in tone and action. Finally alone at the beach, Nancy rests on her surfboard in the water. Those familiar with Jaws and its ilk will experience déjà vu when the movie cuts to a camera angle beneath the water, gazing up at Nancy. The odd placement suggests the otherwise-unmarked predator’s POV. The camera’s ascent towards Nancy seems to confirm that interpretation. Back on the surface, something leaps from the water next to Nancy. It turns out to be a dolphin, which arches over her head gracefully. Nancy finds herself surrounded by a pod of cavorting dolphins. It is a scene from a tourist’s dream, and a delighted Nancy paddles farther from shore in pursuit of these benign creatures. Following the dolphins leads her to a stinking whale carcass, its leaking blubber and viscera polluting the waters. Nancy and the audience have a moment to absorb the grotesque sight before the inevitable happens and the shark strikes. In the previous section, I analyzed how animals in Animal Attack films are conceptualized, presented, managed, and manipulated. I also addressed how Animal Attack 231 cinema deals with the definitional borders separating humans from animals, and the way these films challenge and subvert those divisions. This second phase of the project shifts focus to the arenas in which these dramas occur. In this chapter, I use a trio of recent texts to illuminate the relationship between production and space, as well as between aesthetics and ideology. Practical constraints, financial and otherwise, influence where and how these productions can shoot. They also determine the degree to which these productions can manipulate their shooting environments. It is important to consider this process of selection and manipulation because the ways in which these texts narrate and aestheticize their central environments have ideological implications for the relationships between people, animals, and the land. Before getting into the individual case studies, it is important, for both this and the subsequent chapters, to consider the significance of the “landscape” as a representational genre in cinema and beyond. John Wylie notes that cultural geographers conceptualize “landscapes” in two markedly different ways. First, landscape can refer to the space one occupies. It indicates “the mutual embeddedness and interconnectivity of self, body, knowledge and land – landscape as the world we live in, a constantly emergent perceptual and material milieu” (Wylie 1-2). This meaning suggests an intimacy and connection between the individual and their environment. Landscape can also designate “a specific cultural and historical genre, a set of visual strategies and devices for distancing and observing” (Wylie 2, emphasis added). This second conceptualization emphasizes the individual’s separation from their environment. Wylie quotes Raymond Williams, who argues: “the very idea of landscape implies separation and observation” (3, original emphasis). If the former connotation suggests a holistic physical relationship between the person and the land, the latter connotation suggests a relationship based 232 primarily on visuals. Wylie adds: “Landscapes are not just about what we see but about how we look” (7, original emphasis). Landscape here also designates a specific way of seeing. This latter understanding of landscape is the one most commonly associated with the arts and visual media. In addition to identifying a visual practice, this latter sense of landscape has dark implications for the individual’s relationship to the land. The former sense of landscape suggests the individual’s embeddedness within an environment; the individual is open and responsive to their environment. In contrast, the distancing landscape gaze is associated with power, domination, and imperialism (Mitchell 9). Tom Gunning notes that landscape traditions are implicated in Heidegger’s identification of the “age of the world picture…. For Heidegger the metaphysical (and destructive) nature of modern Western man views the world as something which can be appropriated through becoming a picture” (“‘The Whole’” 30). The worldview of the landscape is thereby associated with anthropocentric processes of dominating and destroying the world. The two understandings of landscapes that Wylie offers seem not only different, but irreconcilable. However, Wylie notes that the sense of entanglement implied in the more benign connotation of landscape can apply to artistic landscapes. The artist capturing a landscape can be imagined situating themselves at a distance from their subject and imposing their will on that subject through representation. Yet Wylie argues that the artistic landscape requires a “being-in-the-world” and a “perceiving-with-the-world” (3). For that reason, the artist need not be conceptualized as a purely detached spectator. Viewing a work of landscape art means seeing both “the painter’s vision and the visible landscape imprinted on each other” (3). Wylie’s description of how these representations of land reveal and encourage a sense of embeddedness rather than distance resonates from an ecological perspective. With paintings, it is easier to understand the artist’s function as the subjective 233 interpreter of a larger environment, but a similar principle applies to cinematic landscapes. Movies still offer selective views of the larger environment, ones intended to affect the viewer and impart meaning and/or emotion. 1 One needs to be careful when drawing parallels between the analysis of painted and cinematic landscapes. Though cinematic landscape traditions are informed by the landscape genre in painting, Tom Gunning warns that their relationship is not based on “a simple transfer of visual principles and effects from canvas to cinema screen” (“Landscape” 35). Technological advancements affected how people conceptualized, related to, and represented landscapes (“Landscape” 37). Cinema did not just adopt techniques from painting, it adapted them, thereby transforming “the possibilities of landscape, both as a form of imagery and as a way of experiencing nature” (“Landscape” 35-36). Cinema helps bridge Wylie’s conceptions of landscapes by managing to embody both. Gunning notes that early cinematic landscapes were not only influenced by painterly traditions, but also by other representational forms, including the immersive spectacle of the panorama. The traditional artistic landscape “maintains a certain distance from the viewer, an invisible barrier to actual penetration” (“Landscape” 36-37). Yet Gunning notes that landscape paintings also have a tradition of including “diminutive staffage figures in the foreground in postures…. [These figures] inaugurate imagined narratives of entrance into the represented space…. The pronounced perspective of the Ideal Landscape and such compositional devices as streams, pathways or minute travelers traditionally lead the viewer’s eye into the distance, generating fantasy of penetration and exploration” (“Landscape” 38). The 360-degree curvature 1 Scholars studying cinematic landscapes frequently reference Sergei Eisenstein’s comments on the power and importance of landscapes on film. Eisenstein felt that the “landscape is a complex bearer of the possibilities of a plastic interpretation of emotions…. [it is] the freest element of film, the least burdened with servile, narrative tasks, and the most flexible in conveying moods, emotional states, and spiritual experiences” (Lefebvre, “Introduction” xii). 234 of the panorama took this feature further, departing “from the tenets of centered linear perspective, offering an infinite number of viewing perspectives” (Clarke and Doel 220). The panorama offered an immersive, “environmental” representational mode (Gunning, “Landscape” 42). The cinematic approach to landscapes struck a balance between the distancing traditions of landscape painting and the immersive aims of the panoramic spectacle: “Cinema simultaneously maintains the frame (the screen rectangle fixed and visible in the front of the auditorium) and ruptures it” (“Landscape” 53). It ruptures that frame through its dynamic engagement with the land; through the movement of the camera, cinema strives to convey to the audience a sense of immersion, of being in the represented space. Yet that immersion will always be balanced out by the insulating frame (“Landscape” 64). It is important, therefore, to reckon with the frame. In all forms of landscape art, Martin Lefebvre identifies the frame as a key factor distinguishing landscapes from the actual land. The land exists as a complex whole. An artist selects some portion of that whole upon which to focus. They place it within a limited and limiting frame. At that point, “nature turns into culture” (Lefebvre, “Introduction” xv). The imposition of that frame and the way it presents its contents has consequences. Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner note that landscapes “are not only selective but are never neutral in intention or reception” (16). The frame both “suggest[s] a reading and limit[s] the range of interpretations” (17). What the artist chooses to focus on and how they present their subject are factors influenced by culture; in turn, these presentations influence cultural sensibilities. They help determine what environments are seen as attractive, impressive, or ominous. This can influence how an audience thinks, feels, and potentially acts towards an environment. Given the potential power of the landscape, it is important to consider what the landscape looks like in 235 modern narrative cinema, as opposed to the early non-narrative cinematic landscapes described above by Gunning. Landscapes can seem anathema to mainstream cinematic fiction. Martin Lefebvre notes that a traditional landscape “is space freed from eventhood (e.g., war, expeditions, legends)” (“Between” 22, original emphasis). The landscape is “the inverse of setting… an ‘anti-setting’ of sorts” (22). Most narrative films are about actions and events, so “in mainstream cinema, natural or exterior spaces tend to function as setting rather than landscape…. It is the place where something happens, where something takes place and unfolds” (“Between” 24). Certain shots in a film might be framed as landscapes. In these (often brief) moments, the filmmaker directs audience attention towards the environment. In describing these moments, Lefebvre references Laura Mulvey’s work on the disruptive and arresting function of the male gaze, where the narrative’s flow pauses for the camera to linger on a female body (“Between” 28). Mainstream cinema is about spectacle as well as narrative, and a striking setting can be part of that spectacle. While filmmakers can insert intentional landscapes, Lefebvre argues that there can also be impure spectator’s landscapes (“Between” 30-31). His argument follows logically from the premise that the landscape is a way of seeing. Depending on the individual viewer’s attention, almost any shot in which the setting can be seen can become a landscape. When the viewer’s focus shifts to the location, the viewer experiences a landscape moment that others might not recognize as such. As stated in the Introduction, horror encourages viewers to scrutinize the background to an exceptional degree, increasing the potential for these impure landscapes. Taking this into account, my analysis certainly focuses on moments intentionally framed as landscapes. Yet it also performs a focused spectatorship that maximizes moments of impure 236 landscape appreciation as I explore how these films present their settings, both when those settings are foregrounded and when they are relegated to the background. The choices of where to set these Animal Attack films and how to present their settings are never neutral. They speak to how humans imagine the world in which they live. The land becomes a territory over which competing forces fight and claim ownership. It offers conceptual and physical resources that can either be protected or exploited. Over the course of the narrative, these movies will often force viewers to reevaluate their understandings of the settings. Qualities that initially mark the land as valuable and desirable turn into liabilities. In both The Shallows and Black Water (Nerlich & Traucki, 2007), the remoteness of the striking central locations draws in the protagonists. These environments offer something different, a form of escape. However, these secluded areas become claustrophobic prisons. The opposite can also be true. In The Grey (Carnahan, 2011), disaffected individuals become unexpectedly stranded in an isolated environment. Facing extreme hardship, some find a new sense of peace, purpose, and fulfillment. Chapters One and Two dealt with how animals are made to appear on screen in Animal Attack films. In those discussions, it mattered what the audience saw in the actual film and how those images were narratively framed. Were the animals in those films presented in a way that facilitated audience immersion in the film’s fantasy, or did the presentation amplify the implausibility of the scenario? Issues of construction and labor also mattered in those conversations. These films put themselves in a position where they have to simulate safely the presence of a monstrous animal on set. It matters how these films go about solving that production problem, why they use the techniques that they do, and what effect those decisions have on the implications of the text. 237 In this chapter, I again address issues of visual presentation, narrative framing, and production manipulation, this time focusing on the landscapes rather than the animals they contain. Questions of indexicality are relevant to my analysis of landscapes. Are these films set in real or fictional locations, and how specific are they about where this action takes place? Was the film shot on a soundstage or on location? If it was on location, was it shot where the film is set? Yet regardless of where these films are shot, the generation of a landscape will inevitably involve the manipulation and ‘sweetening’ of the environment for aesthetic purposes. This chapter investigates the ways in which these productions approach their respective environments to achieve an aesthetic effect. It also focuses on the ideological and ecological significance of the aesthetics they employ or evoke. The way these settings look impacts how these environments register with viewers. That presentation affects how viewers feel and think about an environment, most obviously within the film, but those representations can contribute to larger cultural attitudes about actual environments. Rod Giblett notes that swamps are sites of great ecological value; however, “[i]n the patriarchal western cultural tradition wetlands have been associated with death and disease, the monstrous and the melancholic, if not the downright mad” (Postmodern 3). Due to this cultural prejudice, bolstered by artistic and narrative traditions, the “typical response to the horrors and threats posed by wetlands has been simple and decisive: dredge, drain or fill and so ‘reclaim’ them” (3). One can draw parallels to the ways the negative representations of sharks in films like Jaws are blamed for the demonization and slaughter of actual sharks. The ways these spaces are represented matter and can have material consequences. The three texts considered in this chapter offer useful case studies for charting how Animal Attack films play with people’s perceptions about natural environments. The way these movies 238 manipulate viewer sentiment towards their central locations plays a role in influencing how people think about and value real-world environments. In part, these particular films were chosen because they offer a survey of diverse terrains: moving from the beach and sea, to swampy wetlands, to snow-covered mountainous forests. In presenting their landscapes, they deploy different primary aesthetic strategies, ranging from the picturesque, to the uncanny, to the sublime. I will discuss the particulars of these aesthetics, and their ramifications, in relation to their illustrative texts. At the outset, it warrants mentioning that none of these aesthetic modes offer perfect strategies for depicting environments. No aesthetic has an uncomplicated relationship to the environmental sensibilities it encourages. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. I argue that the way these films play with aesthetic categorization offers a nuanced and rich sense of the environments being depicted. By not adhering to a singular aesthetic mode, these texts also circumvent some of the negative ramifications of classical expressions of those styles. The environments showcased here are simultaneously attractive and terrible. They offer various types of pleasure, but not all of these are pleasant. They also offer the counterintuitive pleasures of horror and terror. They ultimately position the land as something that demands respect. That does not mean that the conclusions of these texts do not sometimes follow problematic patterns already discussed in Animal Attack films. The overall experience, however, leaves the audience with a nuanced sense of space. Additionally, details about the production of these films help illuminate the way in which these aesthetic modes are artificial and culturally-determined frames placed on physical environments by humans. In order to guide the progression of the argument, I have organized these films according to the willingness of the characters to be in the central environments. In The Shallows, the protagonist actively seeks out the idyllic beach. In Black Water, the tourists are planning to 239 explore an open river. When they make the decision to deviate from their course, they become unintentionally stranded in an adjacent swamp. Finally, in The Grey, the characters seek to bypass the wilderness completely while flying in a plane. When their aircraft crashes, they find themselves unexpectedly stuck in an unknown environment. At this point, I will begin the individual case studies, starting with The Shallows and its deceptively lovely beach. The Picturesque Shallows Almost all of The Shallows plays out on and around an isolated Mexican beach. Location manager Duncan Jones identifies this beach as being crucial to the text, describing it as “the heart and soul of the film” (“The Shallows – Media”). The Shallows actually introduces its central location twice: once in its cold open and again as Nancy arrives. The beach looks markedly different on these separate occasions, giving an early indication of its mutable quality. Before showing the location, The Shallows creates a soothing aural landscape. The sound of lapping waves plays over the production company logos preceding the film. In contrast to these gentle sounds, the first images of the beach have an ominous appearance. The film opens on a ground-level shot of the tideline. The colors are muted. The waves, sand, surrounding tree- covered hills, and sky – all are presented in varying shades of blue-gray (See Figure 4.1). This is how the beach appears in the cold open, when the little boy discovers the recording of a surfer’s death. Even before this gruesome discovery, the somber look of the beach allows the audience to understand it initially as a potential site of horror. Figure 4.1 – When the beach is first shown, it is presented in largely monotone and muted cool colors. 240 The footage the boy watches culminates in the shark’s dramatic reveal, but it also introduces another side of this environment. At first, the audience watches the boy watching the footage. When he plays the video, a small screen of vivid color intrudes upon his muted world (See Figure 4.2). After a moment, this footage fills the whole screen. In order to achieve this effect, The Shallows has to cheat the aspect ratios. The Shallows uses a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, while GoPros use a 4:3 ratio. This means that the GoPro’s image would never naturally fill the frame in The Shallows; there would be black bars on either side of the image. The Shallows manipulates the image so that the amateur video fills the frame. This way, when the viewer encounters the beach’s alternative guise for the first time, the experience can give a sense of immersion similar to the rest of the film’s images. The GoPro footage shows the same beach looking different (See Figure 4.3). Though the film cheats the aspect ratios to keep some degree of immersion, it keeps the audience conscious of the image’s mediation by including digital readouts that mark this as a piece of amateur home video (time codes, battery levels, resolution specifications). These markings give it the appearance of an authentic piece of found footage. It encourages the audience to think of this footage not as the result of careful color correction and digital manipulation. When the sun shines at this location, the surrounding tress are really that vibrant green, and the sea and sky are that vivid blue. Out of those crisp blue waters, a shark eventually rushes towards the camera, its open mouth engulfing the frame. Again, the increased sense of immersion makes this moment Figure 4.2 – The GoPro introduces a small patch of vivid color into the scene. The GoPro’s box-like image will be stretched to fill the widescreen frame. 241 more effective. The viewer is vicariously placed in this environment and in a character’s position and is then vicariously consumed. In its opening, The Shallows reveals the extreme pleasure and horror offered by this location in close conjunction, drawing a connection between these two seemingly opposed sensations. As the boy runs off, still holding the helmet, a wide shot reveals that color has started reentering his world. Though still muted, the blue of the sea and the green of the vegetation are more distinct from each other (See Figure 4.4). It is a transitional appearance, driving home that the environment occupied by the boy and the one seen in the video are the same. The foreshadowing in this scene does more than promise audiences that a monstrous shark will soon appear. It helps them understand that this landscape can be both terrible and lovely. It casts a pall over the presentation of the beach throughout the early part of the film, which is a decidedly picturesque rendering. After cutting to black for the title screen, The Shallows reintroduces the beach using the same saturated colors seen in the GoPro footage. The idyllic presentation of the landscape makes Figure 4.3 – The surfer’s GoPro footage is stretched to fill the screen, giving an immersive quality to the audience’s first glimpse at the beach looking lovely in warmer saturated colors. Figure 4.4 – Though the surfer’s footage confirms the beach to be a site of horror, color begins to seep back into the muted beach scene. 242 sense in part because it aligns the audience with Nancy’s perspective. The Mexican beach to which she travels possesses great personal meaning. She associates it with her mother, who visited the beach while pregnant with Nancy and who has just died of cancer. This tragedy sparked an existential crisis, causing Nancy to quit medical school and journey to this significant location. While the film might be understood as presenting the land through Nancy’s rose- colored glasses, she initially pays little attention to the scenery. Though Nancy is the film’s sympathetic protagonist, she displays qualities that partially characterize her as an ugly American tourist. Nancy’s initial trip to the beach draws a crude distinction between her character and Carlos (Oscar Jaenada), a local giving her a lift. Nancy starts the trip interacting with her smart phone. A large projection of her screen dominates half the screen, blocking out the world around her (See Figure 4.5). This not only allows the audience to see the expository information being provided on her phone, it also mimics the distracted perspective of a person interacting with a screen. Carlos chastises her, telling her to pay attention to the world around her. After trying to explain in Spanish, he gestures to their surroundings and explains: “It’s only for your eyes. Real.” In response to that, the camera shows the sun glinting through the thick green foliage, emphasizing the visual pleasures provided by this natural splendor (See Figure 4.6). Nancy apologizes for her distraction, blaming her phone obsession on the fact that she is American. This suggests that their difference relates to nationality (and possibly ethnicity). Though Carlos presumably encounters this environment every day, he retains his sense of wonder. Carlos is better able to be in the moment and appreciate the simple pleasures around him. 243 In these early moments, Nancy comes across as an entitled and privileged “gringa.” For one thing, she has only a rudimentary grasp of Spanish. That is not unusual for white Americans, even ones from areas with large Spanish-speaking populations (Nancy comes from Galveston, Texas). However, when travelling to remote parts of Mexico and relying upon the kindness of locals, Nancy’s ignorance becomes presumptuous. When Carlos asks how she plans to leave this isolated beach, which requires a bumpy trip through the jungle along a dirt road, Nancy replies (without irony) that she will call an Uber. Also presumptuous is her sense of ownership over the beach. Nancy has never visited the beach, but her mother did while pregnant with her. Nancy explains to Carlos that she therefore considers this their beach (Nancy and her mom’s). Nancy projects a specific and personal meaning onto the land as a result. In the bay sits a distinctly shaped island. There are three connected peaks, with a smaller fourth peak set apart in the water (See Figure 4.7). Like someone seeing shapes in the clouds, Nancy views this geographic formation as resembling a pregnant woman lying on her back in the water – a monument to her mother’s fleeting presence in this place. When she points out the shape to Carlos, he studies it for Figure 4.5 – In a visual device used at several points throughout The Shallows, Nancy’s focus on her digital devices manifests in its screen blocking out the rest of the frame. Figure 4.6 – Nancy is initially too distracted to notice how visually striking the jungle surrounding her is. Carlos, a local who presumably sees this every day, has to scold her to pay attention. 244 a while before saying, “No.” She explains it to him in more detail, trying to make him see: the three peaks are the face, breasts, and belly, while the fourth sticks up like a foot. Carlos still does not see. To herself, Nancy insists with a smile that she is right. She makes this statement in Spanish, as if that lends her claim more authenticity and authority in this land. Nancy’s insistence suggests that the beach is obliged to conform to her vision and understanding of it. After all, this foreign beach belongs to her by birthright. As Nancy first surveys the beach, the film cuts to an overhead shot that showcases the beach in all its glory. The film bookends this shot with two close-ups of Nancy’s marveling face, as if this high angle shot is meant to represent her point-of-view. The angle makes that impossible. While not a literal POV shot, this shot serves three functions. At the most basic level, it provides visual orientation. It also effectively approximates Nancy’s sense of delight and adoration. Finally, this removed aerial view provides a sense of dominance. After returning to Nancy’s face, the film offers an eye-level shot of the beach, closer to what Nancy might actually see (See Figures 4.8 – 4.11). It does not seem like an intimidating environment. Having been thoroughly surveyed, the beach is presented as a space ready to be entered and enjoyed. Figure 4.7 – In Nancy’s mind, the topography of the island serves as a tribute to the presence of her pregnant mother decades ago. 245 Figures 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11 – When Nancy first sees the beach, The Shallows cuts from a close-up of her looking to an aerial shot. It is an angle that is impossible for Nancy to see and that exists only for the audience. After returning to Nancy’s gazing face, the film offers a more plausible POV shot of the beach, an area that has been surveyed and can now be entered and enjoyed. While Nancy gazes at the beach, Carlos says, “This is paradise.” This is the closest the audience comes to learning the identity of the beach. The film makes a point of never naming its central location. Nancy repeatedly asks Carlos for the name, which he continually refuses to reveal. Near the end of the film, Nancy records what might be a final message on the dead surfer’s GoPro. When trying to communicate where she is exactly, she can only turn the camera to show the beach. She trails off while conceding, “I never found out what it was called…” The film also never identifies a location more specific than Mexico; it never even mentions in what state the action is meant to take place. The refusal to name the beach works on multiple levels. From a narrative perspective, it makes Nancy’s isolation feel more tangible. Neither she nor the audience definitively know where she is. It allows the location to maintain a level of mystery, even as the audience might be made to feel that they know the layout of the location. That is a very limited form of knowledge. But, as an ideal landscape, it makes sense that the beach in The Shallows is an environment that 246 the audience sees without truly knowing. Perhaps most importantly, it allows the beach to function as a platonic ideal, one that gets subverted by Nancy’s subsequent encounter with the deadly forces of nature. The beach in The Shallows is a paradox; it is distinct and special while being anonymous and generic. Appropriately, that effect was achieved by combining a real location with the non-space of a movie studio’s set. In promotional materials discussing the film’s production, the real location choice comes across as both essentially inconsequential and highly significant. Producer Lynn Harris mentions wanting to “find a beach that looked like a Mexican, or Latin American, or Costa Rican” location (“Finding”). Latin America not only encompasses the two specific countries Harris mentions, but the entirety of Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean Islands. It suggests just how broad a conception the production initially had for its central location. Harris also explains that their search for this “tropical, magical” place was conducted in Australia (“Finding”). Those involved in the production are able to imply the financial resources at their disposal through reference to a wide-ranging global search for the right location. They found the beach over 300 miles off the Australian coast: Lord Howe Island, an ecotourism destination in the Tasmanian Sea 2 . Like many isolated islands, Lord Howe hosts a unique biosphere. Location manager Duncan Jones explains: “Most of the island is virtually untouched forest, with many plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world” (“The Shallows – Media”). The island and its surrounding waters are considered protected parks and, since 1982, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage site, “in recognition of the global significance of the island’s beauty and biodiversity” (“World Heritage”). To be a UNESCO natural heritage site means that Lord Howe is recognized as having “outstanding universal value from the aesthetic or scientific point of 2 Appropriately, given Carlos’s description of the beach, the motto of Lord Howe Island’s Tourism Association website is “Just Paradise” (“Lord Howe”). 247 view” (“UNESCO”). In casting the island as a Mexican beach, the goal becomes accentuating that “universal” aesthetic value, while concealing those unique biological features that contribute to its scientific value. Concealing the flora and fauna that might give away Lord Howe’s identity was only one logistical challenge facing the production. There was no preexisting infrastructure for production as The Shallows was “the first largescale production ever to shoot on Lord Howe Island” (“The Shallows – Media”). All the necessary equipment and crew needed to be transported in from the mainland. It is therefore worth asking what about the island compensated for the difficulties that came with shooting there? As already suggested, the look of the beach was a major draw. As in the film, the rhetoric of perfection plays an important role in promotional discussions of this location. Those involved in the production describe Lord Howe as having the “perfect” beach. Director Collet-Serra describes the location scouting process as a quest to find “the best beach in the world” (“Finding”). Whatever the challenges of shooting on Lord Howe, Collet-Serra justifies the decision by arguing: “Four frames of that beach are worth more than two hours of another beach that is not perfect” (“Finding”). Collet-Serra’s statement suggests that there is an intangible value to this beach, related to its lovely appearance, that makes it greater than other similar locations and worthier of attention. The location’s appeal lay not only in its look, but also in the fact that this protected site had not yet received wide exposure. Lord Howe’s obscurity contributes to its aura, making it exceptional and desirable. Producer Matti Leshem explains that the production wanted “to shoot in a place no one’s seen before, and there just aren’t very many places like that left in the world” (“The Shallows – Media”). Part of what The Shallows can offer audiences is exposure to a 248 previously unknown and spectacular environment, which is a rare experience in the modern age. In order to help convey that sense of exclusivity, the land must be manipulated to give the sense that it is an untouched environment. One way in which the production preserved that illusion was by concealing the presence of the large crew. Those involved in the production had to walk single-file through the sand, and this trail of footprints was erased as they passed (“Finding”). Erasing footprints from the sand was not the full extent of the trickery required to create the film’s perfect beach. The Production Notes for The Shallows provide a long description of the challenges and rewards of working on Lord Howe Island. After extolling the environment’s virtues and celebrating the crew’s skill in finding and presenting it, there is a throwaway concluding sentence: “The film was also shot in the main water tank at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia” (“The Shallows – Media”). The studio water tank actually constituted the majority of the film’s production: ten days were spent shooting on Lord Howe, while thirty days were spent in the studio (“The Shallows – Media”). Earlier, I evoked Marc Auge’s concept of the non-place when referring to this studio location. Auge uses the term ‘non-place’ to designate spaces produced by “supermodernity;” these are environments “which cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity” (63). These spaces are not defined by context and history primarily, but rather by their immediate function. Individuals entering these spaces are similarly defined by their function within that environment (82-83). Auge describes possible examples of non-places, including sites of “transport, transit, commerce, leisure” (76). The film studio offers another example of Auge’s non-place. Its mutable identity fits the variety of productions making use of it and those who enter into it either assume a new persona or have their presence elided in the text being 249 produced. Part of the challenge for the crew working in this anonymous warehouse-like space, which contained a pool of water surrounded by blue walls, was to recreate a distinct UNESCO site in this non-place. In order to achieve this effect, the production adapted techniques drawn from the old panorama spectacle. The anchor for the film’s panorama was an artificial element introduced into the actual location by the production crew. A fake rock was placed in Lord Howe’s cove (See Figure 4.12). Nancy spends much of the film perched atop this rock, which rested on five meters of scaffolding anchored to the ocean floor by several tons of cement (“Shooting”). Scott E. Anderson, the film’s visual effects supervisor, explains that the crew on location “captured a beautiful, 360 environment from the position of the rock island that Nancy is on” (“The Shallows – Media”). Note that Anderson refers to what was captured as an “environment,” not a shot or view. It is a word choice that evokes the representational mode of the panorama. The artificial rock was then placed in the studio’s water tank. Using that frame of reference, the image of the actual location could be digitally mapped onto the blue screens surrounding the tank (“The Shallows – Media”). Anderson explains that the 360 degree view captured by the film crew became “our virtual world,” one open to digital manipulation, as it “covered everything from sunny day to cloudy night to early morning, all of the times you see in the film” (“The Shallows – Media”). Figure 4.12 – The artificial rock is placed in the actual location to anchor the film’s panoramic capture of the environment. Image from “Shooting.” 250 Adding to the disorientating de-location of the film’s studio shoot, Collet-Serra explains that all shots in the tank were taken with the camera pointing in one direction (“Shooting”). To reposition the camera in the studio would mean revealing the infrastructure making the tank seem like the ocean, including rows of mechanical rigs agitating the water to create waves (See Figures 4.13 & 4.14). Any sense that the camera moved during these shots came from repositioning the subjects. Figures 4.13 & 4.14 – The distinct location of Lord Howe Island is recreated through a combination of digital and practical effects in a controlled environment. Images from “Shooting.” Lesham notes that part of what made Lord Howe so special was the fact that images of it were not widespread. Since most viewers would not have seen it previously, it lends the attractive beach a distinct aura. For this production, that environment was digitized and converted into an environment that could be manipulated to simulate a range of conditions not necessarily captured during the original shoot. It is an interesting iteration of Walter Benjamin’s work on the loss of aura in an age of mechanical reproduction. Lord Howe has been thoroughly captured and can now be manipulated to suggest any number of variations. It raises questions about how this impacts the aesthetic value of Lord Howe, one of the factors justifying its UNESCO status and its protection. If an environment’s preservation is partially predicated on its visual appeal, what happens when those visuals are preserved in a way that allows the illusion of 251 immersion and presence? It also raises the issue of how this simulated version of a treasured landscape is tweaked in order to resonate with audiences. In Chapters One and Two, I discussed how wild animals in fictional films are often carefully controlled on set. This control might come from the animal being a fabricated recreation, as in the case of the sharks in Chapter One, or well-trained, as with the dogs in Chapter Two. This can be seen in The Shallows, where a combination of CGI and practical models of the shark’s body parts allow the film to solve the problem of incorporating an elusive, untrainable, and potentially-dangerous animal into its narrative. It uses similar tools (a combination of practical and digital effects) to solve the various problems of location shooting (e.g., unmanageable weather, limited daylight, expense, etc.). Though the shark special effects used in The Shallows are considerably more sophisticated than what one sees in the Jaws franchise, even casual viewers will likely understand that the shark in The Shallows is a digital creation. The effect is particularly obvious in moments of high drama, such as when the shark leaps from the water in order to eat a surfer or is engulfed in flames near the film’s conclusion. Like the shark, the backgrounds in The Shallows are primarily digital creations with a basis in reality. Yet that effect may be less immediately obvious. Understanding this fact encourages special consideration of how the location gets represented. In addition to being digitally manipulated, The Shallows recasts Lord Howe Island as Mexico. Even if the production wanted to avoid naming Lord Howe, it could still have passed it off as belonging to the nearest major landmass: Australia. In many ways, Australia makes as much, if not more, sense as a location for The Shallows. Australia has an active surfing culture. It has miles of coastline and a reputation for being sparsely populated. On top of all that, Australia 252 has many more shark attacks than Mexico. 3 It is worth considering what the film gets out of setting its action in Mexico, as opposed to having Nancy’s character work out her wanderlust, and encounter natural danger, Down Under. Mexico has an aura of desirability and danger. It is also a country where the white, English-speaking Nancy can feel out of place. The exotic thrill and hint of danger that comes from Nancy being south of the border feeds into the picturesque aesthetic that characterizes the film’s presentation of the beach. What are the implications of describing the beach as picturesque, as opposed to saying that it is beautiful? In popular usage, they are interchangeable terms for describing a pleasing or attractive sight. Yet, according to classical aesthetic theory, the picturesque is “essentially the opposite of the Beautiful” (Tatum 42). Certainly, many describe the beach in The Shallows as “beautiful.” The term pops up in reviews, publicity materials, and in the film itself. 4 However, if one considers the history and theory of aesthetics, “beautiful” feels like an inappropriate label to apply to The Shallows’s central location. Indeed, it feels like an inappropriate phrase for describing many of the environments featured in Animal Attack films. For Immanuel Kant, the beautiful offers a counterpoint to the sublime. Both are “agreeable… but in very different ways” (14). While “the sublime touches, the beautiful charms” (16). Kant characterizes the sublime as being greater than the human; the magnitude of the sublime makes it imposing, even dreadful (14). The beautiful offers simpler pleasures. Using botanical examples, Kant explains: “Lofty oaks and lonely shadows in sacred groves are 3 Since 1580, Mexico has had 40 confirmed cases of unprovoked shark attacks. Australia ranks second in the world with 621 cases. Nancy’s home country, the U.S., leads the pack with 1407 (“World Map”). Nancy’s home of Galveston, Texas has the most confirmed cases of unprovoked shark attacks in that state: 18, with records dating back to 1911 (“Texas”). Nancy’s unlikely encounter could plausibly have happened much closer to home. 4 Variety’s review notes that the action takes place in “a beautiful cove” (Debruge). In a promotional interview, star Blake Lively describes Lord Howe Island, the real filming location, as “the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen” (Greco). In the film, Nancy shows the beach to her little sister over video chat and declares it “just as beautiful as [Mom] said it was.” 253 sublime, flowerbeds, low hedges, and trees trimmed into figures are beautiful” (16). Kant’s contrast of unmanicured, ancient trees and orderly gardens offers a neat sense of difference. The beautiful is something controlled and manageable, both conceptually and physically. Beautiful landscapes are characterized by “symmetry, balance, and order” (Tatum 45). The beautiful offers evidence of human intervention and cultivation. This is not to suggest that those associated with The Shallows or those covering it in the popular press had this Kantian sense in mind when they used the term “beautiful.” However, in the context of discussions about aesthetics, beautiful has a loaded meaning. While the grim realities of the attractive beach in The Shallows are not immediately evident, it is never presented as the kind of neatly tended environment considered beautiful in a classical sense. Even as Nancy encounters the beach as an earthly paradise, there is an acknowledgment that it contains an element of danger, even if that threat is manageable. That mild peril arguably contributes to the location’s desirability. To Nancy, the beach feels like a secret space cut off from the world of human development. Of course, the beach is an open secret. Carlos lives nearby and drives Nancy to the spot. When she arrives, two Spanish-speaking surfers are already on the scene. Later, a drunk stumbles onto the beach in a stupor. Nancy even gets strong phone service on the beach. She manages to have an extended and high-quality video chat with her family in Texas. Still, the beach feels special and secret to a U.S. tourist like Nancy because it is not full of other U.S. tourists. While Nancy is not alone in this foreign environment, traveling here puts her at greater risk than if she stuck to botanical gardens or city parks. The audience understands this because of information provided by the text. Before Carlos leaves, he warns that it will be dark in a few hours, suggesting that there is an element of danger (in the water or its surroundings). The 254 audience also intuitively understands the general risks of entering the sea, especially if there are few other people around. Yet, with her bag of sunscreen and basic first aid supplies, it does not seem like anything Nancy cannot handle as a confident surfer with some medical training. Also, she never ventures deep into the ocean. As the title suggests, the action remains confined to the shallows, implying that land will always be close and the water will not be deep. This beach is a wild environment, but not excessively so. It is a picturesque environment, and that makes it subject to the concerns and criticisms surrounding the picturesque aesthetic. Jennifer Lynn Peterson notes that the picturesque has its roots in the eighteenth century and constitutes “a vast and far-reaching aesthetic convention encompassing all kinds of imagery both ‘high’ and ‘low’” (176). Despite its long history and diverse expressions, a general critical consensus has emerged “that the picturesque is politically retrograde” (Peterson 179). It is a popular, bourgeois, and “uniquely commodifable” aesthetic (175). The picturesque is a “wilder” aesthetic than the beautiful (Tatum 42), characterized by “irregularity, boldness, strength, or a certain rustic quality” (46). However, the picturesque is less intense than the sublime. Consider the aerial shot that introduces the beach. It does not inspire awe or humble the viewer or the protagonist. The angle places the audience in a position of extreme visual mastery over the landscape and showcases the attractive scene in all its splendor. After that shot, the viewer sees the beach from Nancy’s perspective, and it is an environment ready to be entered and enjoyed. The picturesque constitutes a weaker “commercialized form of the sublime. Rather than overwhelming the viewer with awe, the picturesque instead soothes the viewer with idealized landscape imagery” (Peterson 176). The picturesque’s aspirations towards something wilder than the beautiful, and something offering more profound pleasures than the beautiful, leave it open to particularly harsh criticisms. 255 It lies somewhere between the beautiful and the sublime; “it aspires to grand meaning yet retains a more pedestrian pleasant quality” (Peterson 184-185). Yet objections to the picturesque extend beyond criticisms of its visual presentation. The ideological critique of the picturesque relates to the way it “relentlessly aestheticizes the world, depoliticizing it and structuring it in terms of a set of reductive conventions that can be easily understood. As such, the picturesque is seen as a form of knowledge in the service of the dominating classes in imperialistic Western culture” (179). The picturesque is thus implicated in the broader charges that the landscape gaze indicates a domineering imperialist worldview. This feels like an especially apt criticism given the protagonist in The Shallows and her relationship to the land. Nancy is not an imperialist in a traditional sense, but she is a privileged cosmopolitan traveler. She feels entitled to go where she pleases and use the land as she sees fit. This is her beach. It exists to offer her emotional solace and recreational pleasure. Yet the film’s preamble makes sure that viewers understand there is more to this ideal beach than meets the eye and that a powerful creature might also consider this their territory. That opening casts a pall over Nancy’s first encounter with the beach. It also primes the viewer to understand the ways in which the picturesque, regardless of authorial intent, carries “within itself the seeds of its own undoing” (Peterson 183). Peterson’s discussion of the picturesque, both its shortcomings and its critical promises, responds to the travelogue shorts of early cinema. These were non-narrative works showcasing exotic locations; they often present the scenery and local populace as attractive, but strange. Arguably, a great distance exists between these primitive shorts and a slick, modern, mainstream thriller like The Shallows. Yet the picturesque preceded the advent of travelogues, and its cinematic expression persists beyond these shorts. The legacies of travelogues are still felt in the 256 fetishistic and excessive gaze modern movies turn on landscapes, particularly foreign ones. It is a gaze especially prevalent in films like The Shallows, which focus on tourist activity. Peterson sees revolutionary potential built into the picturesque. She argues “that the picturesque might be read against the grain as a potentially disruptive aesthetic, not despite but because of its impulse to soothe, which very often shows its seams” (179-180, original emphasis). Since the picturesque tries “to imbue new landscapes with a veneer of enchantment, the picturesque could lead an unwitting spectator into potentially disruptive foreign territory, leaving the traveler suddenly alone to face an otherness that might never have been approached without it” (183-184). The travelogues Peterson discusses were products of their time; an early twentieth century imperialist worldview influences how they present the world and its peoples (6-7). These travelogues understand and present the non-Western world as a spectacle to be enjoyed by the Western spectator. However, Peterson notes that viewers of these travelogues might experience cinematic encounters with human others that they would not otherwise have had. The attractive scenery draws in the spectator; then, as the camera scrutinizes the faces of locals, one of these subjects might return the camera’s gaze in resistance. Peterson suggests that these disruptive and deconstructive moments are implicit in early cinematic versions of the picturesque, and potentially in any expression of the picturesque. Gunning makes a similar argument about the unsettling encounter with human resistance in early travel/landscape films (“‘The Whole’” 34). The presentation of the beach in The Shallows recognizes and takes advantage of that fundamental issue with the picturesque aesthetic for its narrative of encountering a hostile non-human other. The environment Nancy discovers appears ready not only to have personal meaning and significance projected onto it, it is also open for pleasure and recreation. For over ten minutes, 257 The Shallows plays like a cross between Endless Summer, Baywatch, and a tourism advertisement. The camera ogles Nancy’s body as she undresses and slips into her wet suit. The film shifts to slow motion as Nancy enters the water and paddles out to ride the waves. During these surfing sequences, the camera’s placement shifts dramatically. At one moment, it will offer a close-up of Nancy, the camera bobbing in the water to give a sense of immersion. It will then take a wide-angle view, allowing the audience to soak in the visual splendor of the setting. Sometimes the camera is ground-level with Nancy. It might then go up high to provide a bird’s eye view of the scene or dip below the water’s surface. In a shark film, shots from under the water can hint that the audience is viewing things from the shark’s perspective. While The Shallows exploits that assumption later, both for fake-out scares and genuine attack moments, in these early scenes the camera mostly only goes under the water when Nancy does. When Nancy dives to bypass a wave and get further out, the camera dives with her, showing the ocean’s churning surface from a new perspective. The variety of perspectives offered by the camera in these early moments perpetuates the sense that the land is something to be dominated visually. The camera can go wherever it pleases to give the audience an attractive or impressive view of Nancy in action. At this stage, the camera functions like a high-quality version of the GoPro used by Nancy’s fellow surfers. Nancy operates like a modern variation of a traditional Western imperialist, one that might be uncomfortably familiar to viewers. She is the entitled cosmopolitan traveler. As referenced at the beginning of this chapter, an idyllic encounter with the natural world brings her into contact with an uglier, harsher side of nature. It is a reversal common in Animal Attack films, many of which feature tourists, either traveling to a foreign location or a less developed part of their own country. These tourists come seeking escape from their normal lives. Some 258 have a romantic goal of communing with the natural world. Animal Attack films fulfill such desires with a perverse twist. Nancy wants to have a meaningful connection with this beach and ends up becoming very close to it after nearly being incorporated into its food chain. Early on, the film establishes that Nancy is a control freak; she likes to manage the world and the people around her. After her encounter with the shark, she finds herself powerless temporarily, and brought into communion with nature in ways she did not anticipate and does not desire. After the shark appears, the qualities that made the beach initially appealing begin to work against Nancy. The blazing sun, which continues to give everything a vivid and saturated appearance, starts to damage Nancy’s skin. She huddles under her surfboard as blistering sunburns form and her lips crack. The clear blue waters offer a level of visibility, but also enough concealment that the shark can take her by surprise. At one point, Nancy rides a wave and does not notice the shark’s insubstantial form, just concealed by the water as it too rides the wave and rams her board (See Figure 4.15). The film does not take place far out at sea; it plays out in a shallow bay, where a confident swimmer like Nancy should be in no danger. The shallows come to represent a frustrating liminal area. The land is within sight and should be easily accessible, but Nancy’s ability to maneuver in the water is no match for the shark. She ends up stuck on a rock in the middle of the bay. It is a fragment of land that provides her with safety, but which the tide threatens to swallow. As Nancy’s rock goes under, she swims to a buoy, an insubstantial and Figure 4.15 – The waters are clear enough that the audience can perceive the threat of the shark in the wave, but Nancy remains oblivious to its indistinct form. 259 poorly maintained manmade object in the middle of the water. Clinging to this relic of human intervention in the otherwise pristine bay, Nancy makes her final stand. However, the waves toss the buoy about wildly as the weather turns rough. The weather turns quickly and dramatically after Nancy reaches the buoy. In the narrative’s dramatic arc, this marks the moment when things seem most dire for Nancy. She has found the inner strength to fight back, but she has lost her more secure perch. Nancy wanted the land to have personal meaning for her, and now the grim weather reflects her despair, while also making her final confrontation more visually dramatic. Dark clouds and curtains of rain creep in from the distance. The sky becomes almost black and the sea becomes a slate gray. The environment takes on the appearance foreshadowed in the film’s preamble (See Figure 4.16). In the ultimate subversion of the setting’s idyllic quality, Nancy uses a flare gun to ignite the whale fat in the water. The paradise turns into an inferno, from which the demonic shark erupts to bring her down into the water (See Figure 4.17). However, this grim situation gives way to Nancy’s triumph. Figure 4.16 – Much as the land initially reflected Nancy’s delight, by the conclusion of The Shallows, the beach seems as grim as Nancy’s situation. Figure 4.17 – In the ultimate subversion of the beach’s surface appeal, the dead whale’s blubber ignites, turning paradise into an inferno. 260 Nancy tricks the shark into impaling itself and Carlos, whose son found the camera, returns to rescue her. Amidst the washed-out, blue-tinged world of the storm, Nancy looks up and sees a bright sun and a vision of her dead mother, distorted by water on the camera’s lens. Paradise is restored. The film then cuts to an epilogue, set one year later and back in Nancy’s home of Galveston, Texas. The scene is bright, but the colors are less vibrant and the setting is less dramatic. Nancy looks out at the vast horizon of the sea. The film does not give a strong sense of the surrounding environment. Out-of-focus beach houses can be seen behind Nancy (See Figure 4.18). Far off in the distance are tall buildings, which suggest that civilization is nearby (See Figure 4.19). Nancy caresses a scar on her leg, but the epilogue makes it clear that the only lessons she has learned from her experience are interpersonal. She has returned home, completed her medical training, and made amends with her estranged father. The film ends with her running into the water with her sister. Nancy’s experience renews her confidence and resolve, rather than humbling her. No clear ecological lessons are learned. Figure 4.18 & 4.19 – Back in Galveston, the scenery is much more mundane. In the background, one can discern indistinct beach homes and a city off in the distance. 261 While The Shallows’s conclusion reifies the ability of powerful and resourceful humans to control the natural world, a relationship seemingly confirmed by the film’s production, I argue that it again invites consideration of what carries weight in horror fiction. Will the audience’s most lasting impression be the image of Nancy and her sister taking to the water again to the strains of an empowering pop ballad? Or will it be a shark launching itself out of the water to murder an obnoxious surfer? Does the audience latch onto the generically indistinct, flat, and developed Galveston beach? Or, more likely, will their memory linger on the dramatic environment which embodies both the potential beauty and the terrifying formidability of the non-human world? It is an environment with lessons to teach, but those lessons can only be learned on nature’s terms and at great personal cost and struggle. Driving home the significance of the film’s untamed landscape, the end credits offer a series of strange bird’s eye views of shallow oceans. The colors in these shots are unnatural; they combine lurid, almost toxic shades of purples, reds, and greens. While these colors are odd, there are sometimes clear topographic motivations for differences in colors – e.g. a bright red rock formation sticking out of the purple sea. However, the colors combine in strange ways. A blotch of red water in the middle of a cool sea gives the impression of blood spilling out beneath the surface. The focus in images may be selective, with one corner or strip being in sharp focus while everything else is a blur. Images are mirrored, creating the sense of waves coming together or pulling apart like an opening wound. The last of these images looks down on waves parting to reveal the title. However, behind the title is a projection of a sideways view of bubbles rising beneath the water, creating a distorted and disorienting perspective. These strange images provide a further coda to the tame beaches of Galveston, offering attractive but nightmarish and surreal visions of unfamiliar seas (See Figures 4.20 & 4.21). 262 The beach in The Shallows is not only a pleasure to look at, it is a location that viewers might wish to visit. Blake Lively says of Lord Howe Island: “It’s just this little hidden treasure that I hope we don’t ruin after this film, because everyone’s going to want to go there” (“Finding”). The “we” in her statement is ambiguous. It could refer to the production crew, who alerted the general population to this “hidden treasure.” It could also be the “we” of humanity, whose increased presence would have an inevitable detrimental effect on this isolated, protected landscape. Black Water’s action takes place in a different kind of environment. Its appeal is less obvious, and some might find the idea of its destruction comforting. The Uncanny Black Water Black Water’s title refers to forested wetlands where decaying foliage makes the waters murky. “Black water” also refers to dirty or polluted wastewater. It functions as a generic term for unpalatable water and does not suggest a desirable location. While Nancy actively seeks out the beach in The Shallows, the tourists in Black Water never intend to enter the swamp where they encounter a saltwater crocodile. They set off down a clear stretch of river on a sunny day. Figure 4.20 & 4.21 – Instead of leaving the audience with the unspectacular sights of Galveston, The Shallows uses attractive but distorted and disorienting images of the sea for its closing credits. 263 Dense trees on either side of the river mark a clear demarcation between the open water and the wetlands. 5 It is the group’s foolhardy amateur guide, operating under the belief that the river and its surrounding swamps are free from crocodiles, who suggests crossing that line in search of better fishing opportunities. Black Water is the first Australian film addressed in this project. 6 In order to provide greater perspective on the film’s thematic content, I will devote some time to considering the unique place of landscapes in Australian cinema and culture. However, while it is important to understand elements of cultural specificity in the film’s presentation, Black Water also illuminates broader sentiments about wetlands in Western culture. Negative cultural attitudes towards these environments relate to the belief that swamps are both inimical to human use and development and fail to provide traditional forms of aesthetic pleasure. Drawing on the works of Rod Giblett, I argue that these swamps are best understood through the lens of the uncanny, which brings its own unusual and unconventional forms of aesthetic pleasure. As in The Shallows, Black Water introduces its central environment before its characters. The sounds of insects and lapping water precede a shot of a shady mangrove swamp. The camera glides over the undisturbed water’s surface. The shot could approximate the vulnerability of riding in a low-lying boat, or the perspective of a swimming crocodile. The film gives context to its narrative through a series of titles that appear on screen. The first states: “The Saltwater 5 The terms swamp and wetland are used here interchangeably. According to the EPA’s definitions, “wetland” is a catch-all term that can refer to marshes, bogs, fens, and swamps. “Swamp” is the most accurate term for the terrain in Black Water, as it is “dominated by woody plants” submerged in “standing water” (“Wetlands”). 6 Identifying films as belonging to a distinct national cinema can be a tricky and imprecise proposition. While much of Black Water’s funding came from Australian sources, it also relied on funding from the U.K. (Morris, Clint). The film struggled to secure domestic screenings and did most of its business through international distribution deals (Ryan 139). However, the film is set and shot in Australia, Australians play key roles in front of and behind the camera, and the film deals with Australian themes, as will be discussed later on in more detail. 264 Crocodile population in Northern Australia is expanding.” After a pause, new text appears below the first statement: “So is the human population.” Those two statements can be interpreted in different ways. Due to overhunting, Australia’s saltwater crocodiles faced extinction in the 1970s after millions of years of existence. Their population rebounded thanks to conservation efforts and the recognition that crocodiles were a valuable natural resource; they could be farmed for meat and skin and used to attract tourists (Quammen 157-158). Black Water’s introductory text could suggest that humans are finding ways to coexist with a dangerous species, in ways both ecologically and economically beneficial. The early parts of Black Water present such a world, one in which crocodiles thrive in captivity because of human intervention, and where humans benefit from exploiting crocodiles. However, the film understands that this coexistence depends on crocodiles being incorporated into a world constructed and dominated by humans. The prospect of coexisting with wild crocodiles in their natural habitat is another matter. Black Water suggests that the tendency of humans to explore and expand their territory makes conflict inevitable. In Black Water, the undeveloped swamp proves as wild and uncanny as its indigenous alpha predator. In order to make the swamp an effective site of horror, Black Water gives audiences points of reference against which to compare it. After the initial glimpse of the swamp, it takes about eight minutes for the film to lead its human characters away from a world of comfortable development and safety. The early sections of the film are characterized by a general disinterest in the characters’ unspectacular surroundings. The framing favors close-ups of the actors as they leave their suburban home and visit mundane tourist sites. In such shots, the surroundings are reduced to indistinct and seemingly inconsequential blurs (See Figures 4.22-4.24). It is a visual style reminiscent of what one sees in the epilogue in The Shallows, after the narrative arguably 265 reasserts human dominance. The shallow focus of these shots reduces the opportunity for spectators to experience unintentional landscape moments. The difference between how the wild and domestic spaces in these films are presented also signal which environments the filmmakers find most significant, interesting, and/or visually appealing. Like their surroundings, Black Water’s central characters are unspectacular modern Australians. Grace (Diane Glenn) and Adam (Andy Rodoreda) are a young married couple from an unidentified suburb. Along with Grace’s younger sister, Lee (Maeve Dermody), they set off to explore the Northern Territory during the Christmas holidays. In The Shallows and The Grey, the central characters are in the midst of existential crises that match their extreme surroundings and predicaments. Black Water’s characters are presented as uncomplicated, decent people who suffer an incredible misfortune. Black Water opens with a statement claiming that it is “based on Figures 4.22, 4.23, 4.24 – The early sections of Black Water are characterized by a general disinterest in their mundane settings, as reflected by a shallow focus that draws the attention to the human characters. 266 true events.” 7 This claim, frequently deployed in horror 8 , lends weight to the narrative and suggests that similar misfortunes could befall its viewers. This textual claim to authenticity also makes the independent feature’s low-fi production values work to its benefit. Black Water lacks the gloss of The Shallows or the intentional grit of The Grey; it opts instead for a realist aesthetic that Michael Fuchs notes edges towards naturalism, as it “seeks to represent physical reality as- is, without adhering to artificially imposed artistic conventions or succumbing to idealization” (45). In interviews, the producers of Black Water are frequently able to offer thematic or aesthetic justifications for the restrictions imposed on the shoot by their limited resources. While striving to achieve that aesthetic, Black Water still plays with geography and manipulates its shooting environment. It simply lacks the resources needed for the kind of dramatic manipulation one sees in a film like The Shallows. One gets a useful perspective on Black Water courtesy of another film that was produced and released around the same time: Rogue (McLean, 2007). At least in an abstract sense, Black Water and Rogue are very similar. Both feature stranded tourists in Australia’s Northern Territory battling aggressive saltwater crocodiles. 7 The film was inspired by a 2003 incident (Pomeranz). Three men in the Northern Territory went biking in a muddy area. While bathing in a swollen river, they were carried off by the current. After one of their party spotted a crocodile, two swam to and climbed up a tree. The third member of their party was killed by the crocodile. The crocodile returned shortly thereafter to circle the tree, where the survivors spent the night before being rescued the next day. A week later, a crocodile was shot near the scene of the incident by a ranger, though its body could not be recovered to confirm if it was the same crocodile. An official who led the rescue operation explained: “[The men] were in a spot they knew well and where they had never seen a crocodile before…. They weren’t being reckless or doing anything stupid. It was simply bad luck” (McMahon). The attack “reopened a debate about culling. Many people in the area believe that there are too many crocodiles in the Northern Territory and that the reptiles, which used to be fearful of men when they were hunted, are now quite brazen” (McMahon). This us-versus-them mentality is suggested by Black Water’s opening text. Traucki also mentions Val Plumwood’s account of her near-death encounter with a saltwater crocodile as informing the narrative (Pomeranz). This is ironic, given that Plumwood’s account explicitly warns against the impulse to interpret her experience through the lens of monster movie melodrama. Plumwood laments: “I had survived the crocodile attack, but not the cultural drive to represent it in terms of the masculinist monster myth: the master narrative” (“Surviving”). 8 Kendall Phillips notes that this gimmick has been a mainstay in the genre since Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), which is widely considered the first gothic/horror novel (Projected Fears 187-188). Walpole’s novel proports to be a “found” documentation of true events, rather than an artistic construction. It is also a common technique used in Animal Attack narratives. In addition to several films profiled in this project, Moby Dick uses this technique, citing real incidents of whale aggression to provide context for its narrative (Melville 298-299). 267 Rogue is even partially based on the same incident that inspired Black Water (McMahon). Though strikingly similar, the films were very different in terms of their financing. Rogue is not a big studio film, but with funding courtesy of the Weinstein’s Dimension Films, it became the biggest-budget Australian horror movie ever produced (Mark). Most reports put its budget at $25 million (Gibson, Rachel; Mark). Black Water, in comparison, was produced for under $1 million (Caldwell). Their respective budgets determined where and how these films could be shot. Rogue was able to film on location in the Northern Territory. The fact that the cast and crew worked near actual “crocodile-infested water” lent the project an aura of dangerous authenticity (Gibson, Rachel). One report notes that armed park rangers were brought in to guard the large crew of 80- plus individuals (Gibson, Rachel). The production also shot on sound stages in Victoria, on the other side of the continent. The same promotional article that describes the dangerous location shooting opens with the description of a “‘cave’… a meticulously created structure made from steel, hessian and spray-painted cement… built in a warehouse in [the suburbs of Melbourne]” (Gibson, Rachel). This was only one of the production’s “spectacular sets,” which also included a constructed “40-meter-long island” (Gibson, Rachel). Descriptions of the studio shooting process offer further evidence of the resources available to the producers. Without referencing Rogue, Andrew Traucki explains in interviews that Black Water’s budget prohibited them from shooting either on location or in a controlled set. He acknowledges that shooting in Northern Australian would be “the obvious thing to do… but that would have meant transporting and accommodating crew and cast” from their headquarters in Sydney (Morris, Clint). 9 While shooting on location might be the most “obvious” and common-sense move to a 9 Sydney is in New South Wales on the south-east side of Australia, while the Northern Territory takes up the upper midlands of Australia. To offer some perspective on distance, Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and the 268 layperson, Traucki adds: “Traditional [filmmaking] wisdom would have seen Black Water shot in a studio with a fake swamp and a fake tree” (Morris, Clint). Traucki explains that “the cost of a studio and a set was prohibitive,” but he also justifies his production choices through reference to his goal “to be as gritty and realistic as possible, so that meant a real swamp” (Morris, Clint). In order to stick close to home, the production team had to find a swamp “within 20 miles of the central business district of Sydney” (Morris, Clint). Traucki describes using the satellite imagery of Google Earth for a preliminary search of mangrove swamps in the Sydney region (Morris, Clint). This high-tech, low-budget alternative to traditional location scouting allowed him to find Gungah Bay, 25 miles south of Sydney near the suburb of Oatley (Pomeranz). A team of 35 individuals shot in the mangrove swamps for four weeks (George). Since the production relied upon natural light, filming took place during the summer to take advantage of the longer days (George). The project was also shot “on digital video, which is cheaper and more tolerant of low light than is film” (George). In the case of a film like Rogue or The Shallows, one sees a film production using its capital to manipulate and simulate its shooting locations. In the case of Black Water, one sees the production bending to accommodate the restrictions of both their capital and their environment. This is not to say, however, that the producers of Black Water did not indulge in their own forms of geographic manipulation. Black Water crew members did travel to the Northern Territory for an additional week to get footage of real crocodiles from local farms and parks (B., Devon; George). These crocodiles were then digitally composited into the swamp footage taken about 2000 miles away. Through this trick of photography, two disparate locations are combined in a single frame. It creates the most populous city in Australia. The most comparable city in the Northern Territory would be its capital, Darwin (which has a much smaller population than Sydney). Going in a straight line, the two are separated by about 2000 miles, making it comparable to traveling between opposite coasts of the U.S. 269 impression that the actors are not only near the actual dangerous animals but are also near the location where the story takes place. As with the location shooting, producers frame the decision to use footage of real crocodiles as a preference as much as a necessity (Caldwell). Traucki notes: “Audiences can’t fault the animals in Black Water… You can’t say that they’re fake because they’re simply not” (Caldwell). While viewers might not be able to fault the animal itself, Fuchs does fault the compositing. Referencing a shot in which the crocodile emerges from the water behind Lee, Fuchs comments: “the image lacks depth, creating an unnatural (and, arguably uncanny) spatial configuration…. the animal is simultaneously behind and next to Lee” (47). It is a moment that potentially undercuts the illusion of authenticity that Black Water tries to construct, both formally and narratively (See Figure 4.25). The meandering structure of Black Water’s opening road trip reinforces the film’s apparent naturalism. At the start of the trip, Grace mentions looking forward to two weeks “on the road.” Her statement suggests that the characters plan to stick to paved paths and explore from the comfort and safety of their car. As they set off, the film offers a high angle shot of the car traveling down a clear and well-maintained road, one cutting cleanly through dense vegetation. From inside the car, the audience watches indistinct foliage flashing by outside. The camera leaves the car for a moment to focus on a frilled lizard in the road, which rises to its hind legs and runs away to clear a path for the oncoming car. It is a fleeting image, but it reinforces Figure 4.25 – A composite effect in Black Water attempts to combine two disparate spaces into a single image. 270 the notion that the car provides not only safety. It also helps dominate (even intimidate) their world. In the car, the characters are armed with maps and guidebooks, which promise to make the well-charted environment surrounding them easy to understand and navigate. For their first stop, the characters settle on “that crocodile place.” An early visit to a crocodile farm provides more than grim irony; it illustrates how modern Australians might have controlled encounters with crocodiles. Before their visit, Lee reads from the guidebook about how such farms harvest crocodiles. Grace coos sympathetically at the notion of the animals being turned into handbags. In this setup, crocodiles are as pitiable as any farm animal destined for slaughter. In the park, tourists laugh as a guide teases a crocodile to the surface by dangling a chicken leg on a string into its pen. The park is an environment where children hold baby crocodiles for photo-ops (See Figure 4.26). The film’s protagonists take their own commemorative photo, as Adam and Grace stand in the mouth of a giant model of a crocodile’s head (See Figure 4.27). Both Adam and Grace will be dead by the film’s conclusion, but in this environment the notion that these animals pose a legitimate threat seems comic. Figures 4.26 & 4.27 – At the crocodile farm, the fearsome animals do not appear to be threats. It is not just that these crocodiles are different from what the protagonists will later encounter. 10 The constructed environment of the farm is also very different from the swamp, 10 Although they are also the same, quite literally. As mentioned earlier, Black Water used footage of real crocodiles that were added to shots featuring actors through compositing (Morris, Clint). Footage of these real crocs came from 271 having been designed for human comfort and safety. Wide shots show tourists crowded on shaded, elevated walkways overlooking crocodile enclosures (See Figure 4.28). Waist-high fences on either side of the walkway and rows of steel cables extending over the crocodile pits offer further protection. The narrow, artificial moats housing the crocodiles are bordered by high concrete walls with chain link fences bolted to their tops for additional height. The final image from the park is a mass of crocodiles, seen through a set of bars, sunning themselves on a plastic tarp in front of their artificial lagoon (See Figure 4.29). In this environment, scores of crocodiles can be kept safely. This stands in stark contrast to the swamp, where a single crocodile presents great danger. By spending time in both safe zones of human development and a dangerous, wild environment, Black Water speaks both to the grounded reality of modern Australia, and the continent’s mythical reputation. Figures 4.29 & 4.30 – At the crocodile farm, tourists are kept comfortable and protected; here, multiple crocodiles can be safely maintained in an artificial environment. Ross Gibson argues that all Australian films are “about landscape” (63). As established at the beginning of this chapter, landscape is a cultural artifact and is distinct from physical geography. The cinema represents and dramatizes the land, making it function “as an element of myth, as a sign of supra-social Australianness” (75). When Gibson speaks about significant, the same kinds of crocodile parks and farms featured in this early scene (B., Devon). It is wholly possible that some of the crocodiles seen menacing people in Black Water ended up as food or fashion accessories. 272 mythic landscapes, he refers to the continent’s formidable wilderness environments. Tom O’Regan questions the disproportionate focus given to those settings in discussions of Australia’s national cinema (and identity). O’Regan notes that most Australian films take place in the environments where most Australians live: cities and suburbs. These settings receive less critical attention because they appear less distinctly Australian (O’Regan 193). Audiences around the world expect Australian films to conform to “the National Geographic imaginary,” showcasing exotic and distinctive flora, fauna, and landscapes (85). Black Water gradually moves its characters away from the familiar, developed Australia O’Regan references, and into the mythic and wild Australian landscape Gibson describes. An important characteristic of these nationally significant wilderness spaces is that white Australians struggle to survive in them. Ross Gibson interprets the landscapes so central to Australian cinema as “the projective screen for a persistent national neurosis deriving from the fear and fascination of the preternatural continent” (69). Part of that fear and fascination comes from the inhospitable grandeur of much of Australia’s landmass. Most Australians live in cities hugging the coast, ringing the continent’s massive heart. Like the U.S., Australia is a settler colonial society. Its non-Aboriginal people lack an inalienable sense of belonging. This amplifies the neurotic sense of Australia as an unhomely homeland (64-65). The continent must be tamed, domesticated, and aestheticized for Anglo settlement to be possible. At the same time, Australia’s national character derives from the land’s intractability (66-67). Settler Australians look to the ancient land as a key source of identification, while seeking to control and change it. John Tulloch suggests that the defining non-Aboriginal Australian legend concerns “the drama of man’s struggle against nature in the face of great physical and mental hardship, his eventual triumph, and his magnificent reward” (O’Brien 191-192). Of course, Tulloch alludes to the ideal outcome 273 of that scenario. The potential for failure makes tales of hardship and struggle resonate. Inevitably, not all such stories end happily. If extraordinary individuals must fight to live in Australia, presumably not everyone makes the cut. The inverse of the legends to which Tulloch refers, stories of struggles lost or won at monumental cost, offer rich material for horrific narratives. The protagonists in Black Water may be Australian citizens, but they are also tourists. After entering the swamp, their leisurely and privileged vacation ends. It falls upon them to reenact the struggle to domesticate and control their country. They must prove their personal worthiness to occupy this space, rather than resting on the achievements of earlier settlers. The swamp is the crucible through which they pass in order to prove their Australianness. A swamp may seem like an odd choice for an Australian narrative’s mythic proving grounds, being so different from the continent’s iconic dusty deserts and Outback. 11 Yet the swamp shares with other Australian landscapes the fundamental feature of appearing both inhospitable and ancient, or out-of-time. The film visually indicates that the characters are entering a wilder and more primitive environment as they travel to the river to start their tour. At first, the river is seen through the safety of the car’s windows, like so much of the natural world beforehand. Humanity’s foothold becomes more tenuous as they approach the river’s edge. The paved road gives way to a dirt and gravel path, which becomes two tire tracks cutting through the grass. This is the beginning of the protagonists’ experience of entering an undeveloped and unfamiliar environment. It establishes a pattern where, as the characters get increasingly out of their element, their physical grounding becomes more tenuous (See Figures 11 In an article surveying Australian landscape photography, Rod Giblett notes that “swamps and other wetlands” have only recently started entering the category of iconic Australian landscapes, joining “the bush, the outback and the desert” (“Shooting” 336). 274 4.31-34). This progression continues as they transition to a small motorboat and head out onto the river. Their mode of transportation and the environment in which they travel through are becoming more precarious. Eventually, they venture beyond the border of trees and enter the swamp. In the swamp, the crocodile upends their boat. They spend much of the rest of the film stranded in, and awkwardly navigating through, the trees. Their predicament causes Adam to recall a children’s rhyme: “Three little monkeys, sitting in a tree, teasing Mr. Crocodile, ‘Can’t catch me.’” The rhyme emphasizes the sense that these modern characters have been reduced to an ignoble primitive state. Before these humans can return to the modern human spaces from which they strayed, they must slay the beast threatening them. Figures 4.31, 4.32, 4.33, 4.34 – The characters in Black Water become progressively destabilized as their trip unfolds. They start out driving on clear paved roads. They then move to overgrown paths. They transition to a boat heading down an open river. Finally, they end up stuck up a tree in a flooded mangrove swamp. What do I mean by “human” spaces, as opposed to the “natural” space of the swamp? What marks these spaces as “human?” In the early scenes, Black Water places its visual 275 emphasis on the human characters. It favors close-ups with shallow focus. In the swamp, the visuals shift. They give more weight to the characters’ surrounding. This in turn gives a stronger sense of a world that exists independent of these human characters and their concerns and dramas. This shift is signaled partially through the increased use of wide shots with a deeper focus. It also comes through the strategic and idiosyncratic use of nature footage montages. In films like The Shallows, where the attractive landscape possesses an exotic appeal, mini-montages showing off the location tend to be frontloaded. This serves an orienting purpose, but it also positions the lovely land as the prize in the subsequent contest between humans and nature. Once the action begins and the dangerous animals appear, most films suspend their use of such montages. Black Water’s landscape montages offer less spectacular imagery, making them seem less intended for the viewer’s pleasure. These montages are also deployed differently. The scenic interludes persist throughout Black Water. In one key moment, the use of these montages subverts what would traditionally be an unambiguous moment of high drama. Adam is the first significant character killed by the crocodile. Having left the tree to retrieve the boat, he gets pulled under the water. Shortly after Adam disappears, the crocodile emerges from the water with Adam’s lifeless body in its mouth before sinking back into the murky water. Grace screams hysterically. It is a tragic moment, as Grace is pregnant with the couple’s first child and never got the chance to tell Adam. Yet the film simply cuts away from the characters to a static shot of the swamp. Grace’s cries fade from the soundtrack, replaced by the ambient noise of the swamp and a series of shots of busy insects, attractive flora, and still waters. Black Water allows these quiet moments of the environment’s mundane rhythms to submerge the human drama. Of course, in the heightened emotional context of the scene, the land’s indifference takes on an almost sociopathic cold menace. If the crocodile, a toothy relic of 276 the past, functions well as a movie monster 12 , the undeveloped swamp is well suited to be a monster’s realm. It can even seem monstrous by itself. The swamp’s disquieting character extends beyond its unforgiving and unsympathetic qualities. The multifaceted and shifting nature of wetlands gives them a heterotopic quality, making them alien to Western notions of spatial stability. Michel Foucault describes heterotopias as juxtaposing multiple (incompatible) sites within a single space. They reveal the mutability of all space, undermining notions that spaces possess a logical and consistent character. Foucault suggests that space preoccupies modern Western society, which struggles with a sense of emplacement rooted in the Middle Ages. Foucault argues that Westerners “live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another” (23). This understanding assumes a place for everything, and (ideally) everything in its place. It follows that heterotopias, which challenge such notions and everything built upon their unstable foundations, can unnerve. Wetlands present an inconsistent area where the relationship between land and water is in flux. It is a more extreme version of the liminal space used in The Shallows, with Nancy on her rock perch in the rising tide. Wetlands are “neither strictly land nor water. Rather, they are both land and water” (Giblett, Postmodern 3). When the characters are on land, they do not encounter any trouble. The river is a less secure environment, but at least there they can still navigate in their boat. When they enter the swamp, their boat becomes stuck and upended. They must awkwardly wade through the waist-deep water or take to the trees – neither of which are ideal nor secure options. 12 Rod Giblett notes: “crocodiles have been living on the earth for 200 million years…. They are truly a ‘blast from the past.’ As such they are vehicles and vectors for the uncanny,” which is partially characterized by the return of the repressed (“Alligators” 301). 277 Rod Giblett suggests that the indefinite quality of swamps, spaces combining land and water, partially explains their dreadful associations in Western culture (Postmodern 3). The swamp’s mixing of elements violates human notions of proper placement, making them dirty, according to Mary Douglas’s description of dirt as “matter out of place” (Giblett, Postmodern 13). Yet in Western culture, swamps are not merely dirty; they possess a malevolent character. Swamps upend the relative stability and predictability of land and water environments, making them inimical to transportation (18) and therefore human development and colonization (55). They are themselves often characterized as monstrous places; as such, they make ideal homes for monsters (186). Giblett observes a trend within Western culture of casting swamps as “a secular underworld into which the hero of the modern adventure romance has to descend and in which he has to overcome monsters” (“Alligator” 306). The convention dates back to antiquity, in legends such as the trials of Hercules and Beowulf’s battle with Grendel’s Mother (Giblett, Postmodern 183). It does not help that swamps do not conform to traditional notions of pleasing aesthetics. According to certain traditions, the “wetlandscape” can be understood as “inimical to landscape” (Giblett, Postmodern 12). Citing Paul Carter’s survey of Australian travel literature, Giblett notes that the “black waters” and “dismal swamps… did not conform to the ideal of the pastoral landscape of the English countryside” (11). Part of the issue lies in the way “the confines of closed, wooded wetlands… pose a problem for an aesthetic of sight which is accustomed to seeing without interruption or impediment” (11). Landscapes, particularly picturesque landscapes, “were ones that allowed the eye to wander from object to object” (11). One can think of the beach in The Shallows, which lends itself to an aerial master shot. Even when the viewer is positioned within that kind of environment, they can survey it, understanding 278 its essential features and knowing its limitations and borders. Giblett argues that, in itself, the ecological value of swamps is not enough to give them cultural value. If swamps are to be properly valued and seen as worthy of protection, they must offer some aesthetic pleasure. Swamps might not be attractive spaces, but they are visually interesting environments. Traucki explains that his limited resources compelled him to create a narrative that utilized a limited number of actors and locations. But, in order to make the work compelling, it would need to be a striking location: “A three-hander is cost-effective but I did not want to put them in one room… A room has no visual appeal but a swamp does” (George). Black Water has little interest in the suburban environments from which the characters depart. In the swamp, the sightlines might be compromised, but the presentation allows the audience to take in the characters’ surroundings. How then does one conceptualize the aesthetic of the swamp? Most swamps cannot satisfy the standards of the beautiful, picturesque, or sublime. Giblett sees the uncanny as the swamp’s aesthetic (Postmodern 12). In order to understand the significance of Giblett’s argument, it helps to understand the unique qualities of the uncanny. One gains insight into the uncanny by considering it in relation to the sublime. Kant outlines different kinds of sublimity – the noble (inspiring “quiet admiration”), the magnificent (a sublime prospect overlaid with beautiful elements), and the terrifying, which is “accompanied with the sensation of shuddering” (16). The terrifying sublime, which inspires “dread and even melancholy,” is the most relevant for these horror films (16). Yet terror is different from horror. Stephen King argues that both are important to the horror genre, but they operate on different levels. Terror exists in the mind, while horror is a bodily sensation. Horror can deal with the psychological, but it “invites a physical reaction by showing us something which is physically wrong” (King, Danse 23). Adriana Cavarero notes that, while horror and 279 terror are closely linked, they display “quite opposite characteristics” (7). Their relationship is not dissimilar to the relation between the beautiful and the picturesque. Cavarero, examining the etymology of terror, describes terror as a “kind of total fear, synonymous with absolute disorder and loss of all control” (5). The terrifying spectacle so overwhelms the viewer that their mind cannot cope and they must flee. Horror is less about fear and more about “repugnance,” something that freezes and isolates the person experiencing it (7-8). In order to accommodate this distinction, I include the uncanny in my constellation of relevant aesthetics. Sigmund Freud notes that classic works on aesthetics focus on “what is beautiful, attractive and sublime – that is, with feelings of a positive nature – and with the circumstances and the objects that call them forth, rather than with the opposite feelings of repulsion and distress” (219). Freud offers the uncanny (unheimlich) as a descriptor for that which is horrific. Freud notes that early attempts to grapple with the uncanny equated it with the unfamiliar: “The better oriented in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it” (221). Freud argues that the “uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression” (241). The uncanny seems unfamiliar due to that repression. Freud suggests that this need not be restricted to personal experiences that an individual might repress. It could also encompass cultural repressions, or the repression of experiences of primitive Homo sapiens (244). Crocodiles play a role in illustrating Freud’s discussion of the uncanny. Freud relates the story of an English couple haunted by ghostly crocodiles, which invade their home after they purchase a piece of furniture decorated with crocodile carvings (244-245). Allen Shelton paints the scene: “In the dark at night they feel something moving around the room. There is a wet 280 stench. Freud is momentarily unnerved as the room in the story changes into a swamp crawling with crocodiles” (62). Giblett notes that, in the story Freud references, the carved furniture comes from New Guinea, marking it as an artifact of colonialism. This allows Giblett to read the incident as a manifestation of “the colonial unconscious…. The return of the repressed is a return not only to the individual’s own repressed but also to the culture’s repressed” (“Alligator” 300- 301). The English couple brings an imperial token into their home, only to have their domestic space transform into a fantastical swamp. Spaces like swamps and creatures like crocodiles present an obstacle to colonization, and this object from a colonial land brings with it echoes of the land’s resistance. Black Water evokes this anecdote indirectly by having its suburban characters stranded in a swamp and terrorized by a crocodile, a throwback to a time before Anglo colonization and development. In addition to essentially being a living dinosaur, the crocodile has an added ghostly quality. Black Water never suggests that the crocodile is anything other than a flesh-and-blood creature. Still, the scenario carries intriguing elements of spectrality and haunting. Within the film, the only information given about crocodiles is that there should not be any living in these waters. Despite this, once our characters enter the swamp, the inscrutable crocodile periodically emerges from the murky waters, materializing seemingly out of nowhere. As the crocodile takes human victims, the waters concealing the crocodile allow the dead to become ghostly. Their bodies float about, appearing and disappearing. Even before they die, the humans in this ‘secular underworld’ seem to have entered an otherworldly realm. At several points the film highlights the continuation of the human world just around the protagonists, yet out of reach. At one point, Grace stares wistfully through the 281 trees at a plane flying far overhead. Later, Lee spies a man in a boat passing by on the main river, just beyond the fringe of trees. Despite the boat’s proximity, her cries for help go unheard. Lee, the baby of her family, eventually manages to kill the crocodile. Taken to its lair, a muddy outcropping in the water, she finds a gun on the mutilated corpse of their tour guide. When the crocodile attacks her, she shoots it in the head. Its body sinks into the murky waters, disappearing. Like some mythic hero, Lee slays the beast before leaving this otherworldly realm and returning to the land of the human and the living. Yet the film ends on an enigmatic note, further emphasizing the crocodile’s ghostliness. The crocodile is clearly dead, yet, as Lee leaves the swamp, she hears an unexplained splash behind her. Throughout the film, similar splashes heralded the crocodile’s appearance. Lee looks back. All she sees is the empty swamp and its opaque still waters. It undercuts the sense that Lee has bested the environment. In the end of Black Water, the swamp and its residents are not conclusively defeated. Lee simply retreats, leaving the mystery behind her. In his cultural analysis of swamps, Giblett argues that there are different registers of the uncanny. The uncanny can either inspire horror or fascination (Postmodern 13). He argues that swamps have traditionally been imagined as horrifically uncanny, and he sees this as the reason why swamps are undervalued and threatened. Giblett feels that swamps “need to become a place of the fascinatingly uncanny, their sights, sounds and smells, even their tastes and textures appreciated and conserved” (13). Yet the horrifically uncanny need not be so distinct from the fascinatingly uncanny, particularly when dealing with fictional representations of these locations in genre texts. A swamp is unlike a location like Lord Howe Island. Avid tourists will not flock to visit swamps they see in films. For many, swamps are environments to be appreciated from a 282 distance. Part of their mystique comes from their otherness, an alterity that resists being coopted and that can lend a bit of strangeness even to a setting within one’s own country. Yet it is important to remain conscious of the divide between the landscape and the land. One needs to see and engage how these environments are manipulated and why. Above, I discuss how the physical wetland space has a heterotopic quality and the ability to unnerve. The cinematic swamp space presented in Black Water has a different kind of heterotopic quality as a result of its construction. Hye Jean Chung notes that digital compositing attempts to integrate different spaces into a single space in a seamless way that obscures the “dispersed sites of production and bodies of labor that collaborate to create the finished product” (87). To take a dramatic example from Black Water that has already been referenced, consider the image of the dangerous croc emerging right behind Lee as it prepares to attack. In the diegesis, this is a homogenous space with a singular identity. Chung encourages the cultivation of ‘heterotopic perception’ as a critical reading strategy in order to reveal the operations that such images conceal or efface. When one engages the compositing at play, one can see in the image “multiple layers that contain spectral residues of dispersed geographical locations and laboring bodies” (90). Even as the image has a narrative identity, it has an identity beyond the narrative. This image brings together an actress working on the outskirts of Sydney and a crocodile in the Northern Territory, living on a farm and most likely waiting to be harvested. This heterotopic quality is what lies behind Fuch’s sense of the image’s uncanniness. If the effect in this low-budget operation is imperfect, it can aid the viewer’s heterotopic perception. Something similar applies to The Shallows, though, in that case, the sophistication of the special effects makes it harder to spot the seams. Yet one must endeavor to engage those points of construction; the production context complicates and nuances one’s understanding of the text’s 283 spatial imagination. To close out this chapter, I shall discuss a text that falls between the production philosophies of The Shallows and Black Water as it strives to capture an intangible aesthetic. The Sublime and The Grey Of the films considered in this chapter, none feature more extreme circumstances or characters than The Grey. In his opening monologue, Ottway (Liam Neeson) describes himself as “a salaried killer for a big petroleum company.” He targets wolves, which pose a perpetual lethal threat to the crew of a remote Alaskan base. In an early sequence establishing Ottway’s dreary life, he monitors a crew of pipeline workers. In the distance, he spots a lone wolf charging towards the team. He puts it down with a single shot and it skids to a halt just short of the men. They seem nonplussed. The men’s reaction, and Ottway’s job, suggest that similar incidents occur regularly. 13 The loss of Ottway’s wife renders this professional hunter suicidally depressed. He even places the barrel of a loaded rifle in his mouth before a chorus of wolf howls from the surrounding dark mountains stops his hand. Fate lands Ottway on a small aircraft that crashes during a heavy storm while carrying a crew of pipeline workers. Ottway survives the crash along with an assortment of six rough characters – Diaz (Frank Grillo), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts), Burke (Nonso Anozie), Flannery (Joe Anderson), and Hernandez (Ben Hernandez Bray). Stranded on a barren, snow-swept plain, the survivors realize that a pack of wolves now stalks them. Ottway understands the nature of his occupational quarry; he recognizes the wolves’ aggression as a territorial response to the men’s sudden and unintentional intrusion on their land. Acting like a pack leader, Ottway takes the men on a harrowing trek in search of shelter and in 13 The rarity of wolf attacks on people, at least in North America, renders Ottway’s occupation absurd. Most professional wolf hunting, in the U.S. and around the world, is justified as protecting livestock, not people. 284 an attempt to escape the wolves’ domain. Despite their efforts, their numbers dwindle from persistent attacks and the harsh climate. Ottway, the final survivor, realizes too late that the men have actually been traveling deeper into the wolves’ territory all along. The revelation comes as he finds himself in a clearing littered with bones – the wolves’ den. The film ends enigmatically, not revealing the final outcome as the once-hopeless Ottway commits to a final one-on-one confrontation with his lupine alpha male counterpart. 14 The locations in The Grey primarily fall into three categories: domestic spaces, the pipeline base, and the wilderness. Though most of the film’s action takes place in the wilderness, The Grey handles these distinct realms differently from most Animal Attack films. Usually, if a film features different realms, they are kept largely segregated. In The Shallows, the Mexican beach and Galveston are distinct realms that signify very different relationships between humans and their environments. That segregation is even more clear in Black Water, which documents the process by which the characters journey from their comfortable suburb to the uncanny swamp. By playing with memory, The Grey allows its different environments to overlap and coexist, creating a more dynamic relational interplay. I will move through these broad categories one at a time, considering their respective contributions to the film’s geographic imagination, starting with the domestic spaces. In The Shallows and Black Water, characters aspire initially to escape from safe domesticity, if only temporarily. After their trials in the wild, they desire to return to those same spaces. Returning to the domestic is not an option in The Grey; these spaces are associated with 14 The restrained ending might surprise viewers exposed to a marketing campaign prominently featuring Neeson taping broken mini-bottles to his knuckles. It suggested that the film’s centerpiece would be a man-versus-wolf punch-up, leading some to jokingly nickname Neeson (and the film) “Wolf-Puncher.” Actually, the credits roll before the fight begins. After the credits, there is a close-up of the back of Ottway’s motionless head resting against the slowly breathing alpha’s side. The shot recalls an earlier image of Ottway pressing his hand against a dying wolf’s slowly breathing belly, making the fight’s outcome unclear. 285 interpersonal relationships that have been ended by death. Confined to the past, these spaces can only be accessed through Ottway’s memories. 15 There is the childhood memory of his father’s office, and the more recent memory of his wife’s room. The film does not provide a strong orienting sense of where in the world these locations exist. That lack of context is unsurprising, as these spaces are about important interpersonal relationships. As with the human spaces in Black Water, the primary focus is not on the surrounding environments but the characters within them. These scenes often employ shallow focus and play out in intimate close-ups. Indeed, it is not until the end of the film that the camera pulls back far enough in the wife’s room to reveal medical instruments, clarifying that she died of some unknown illness. While the two domestic locations have different visual qualities, both are characterized by warm colors and soft high-key lighting. This lends the domestic spaces a comforting visual quality not seen in the film’s other arenas. The father’s den features a washed-out sepia effect, going along with its association with a distant, nostalgic past (See Figure 4.35). 16 The wife’s room has an almost ethereal whiteness to it. When one realizes that this room is the space where she died (or at least where she was dying), it presents a more serene and peaceful white death than what the men face in the snow (See Figure 4.36). These cozy spaces offer an escape from the otherwise harsh world of the film. 15 Several characters experience similar escapes into memory; these acts of remembrance precede the characters’ deaths. Lewenden (James Badge Dale) and Burke imagine interacting with loved ones shortly before dying, though the audience does not share their visions of the past. When the dying Talget imagines his daughter’s presence, the audience sees the girl. However, the child enters the wilderness, rather than bringing the whole domestic realm with her as in the case of Ottway’s memories. 16 The brown-yellow hue of sepia, which simulates the aging effect in photographs, is based on the color of cuttlefish ink. Sepia is a genus of cuttlefish. The color of nostalgia comes from a cephalopod. When considering the relationship between animals and visual culture, it is worth noting the multifaceted ways in which the two interact. 286 While the wilderness becomes the site of gruesome death, the drilling base is the only environment presented as being without redeeming qualities. Ottway’s opening monologue describes it as “the end of the world.” He laments, “I know this is where I belong. Surrounded by my own. Ex-cons, fugitives, drifters, assholes – men unfit for mankind.” Ottway views the base as a dystopic refuge for misfits. With reference to Chapter Three, it houses humans who have fallen beyond the civilized confines of humanity (and who will soon find themselves literally in the wild and among the animals). In his self-pity, Ottway feels he deserves to be there. Henricks’s memory re-summons the base near the end of the film, but the film spends the least amount of time in this location. It functions as a physical manifestation of Ottway’s destructive depression. The Grey defines the base in unflattering contrast to the natural world around it. The film opens on a smooth, slow pan across a striking mountain-scape at dusk (See Figure 4.37). Clouds drift past snow-covered peaks, which tower over dark pines. Everything is presented in varying shades of black and blue. A distant howl sounds. It reverberates and echoes as the camera pans, Figures 4.35 & 4.36 – The cozy domestic spaces of Ottway’s past are rendered in warm colors and soft high-key lighting. It gives these scenes a visual character distinct from what one sees in the rest of The Grey. 287 creating an otherworldly aural effect. The film then cuts to a slightly unsteady ground-level wide shot of the base (See Figure 4.38). The sky is pitch-black, and the lights give the snow and plumes of smoke rising from equipment a sickly yellow hue. A monotonous industrial buzz fills the soundtrack. Everything about the initial presentation of the base, in terms of the framing, color choice, and sound design, mark it as different from its natural surroundings and unpleasant. After the base’s introduction, the film provides a series of similar shots before introducing Ottway into the environment. The camera follows Ottway as he makes his way to a bar on the base. A blue neon cross on the wall outside fills the soundtrack with its own buzz. As the camera lingers on this cross, it is the first instance of this existentialist text tacitly questioning the value of religion. The cross is visually vulgar and aurally irritating, and the holy symbol marks a site that is decidedly unsanctified. As Ottway enters the bar, he enters an environment of cold, unflattering fluorescents, abrasive heavy metal music, and the shouts of an ongoing fight. Figure 4. 37 – The first image of The Grey presents a moody but attractive mountainscape. Figure 4. 38 – The splendor of the mountain is contrasted with the unattractive industrial base. The contrast is amplified by the base’s sickly yellow color. 288 The Grey does not dwell on the significance of this being a petroleum base whose operations are directly and indirectly detrimental to the world around it. However, the imagery gives a sense of the base as an ugly, polluting presence. In The Shallows, the beach is presented as a pristine environment insulated from the outside world. In Black Water, the swamp can be imagined as a site of ecological healing. Though an indigenous species was believed to have been eradicated in this environment, it actually continues to thrive – much to the characters’ distress. In the case of The Grey, one witnesses an attractive wilderness setting that is presumably in the process of being destroyed by the industrial activities being carried out at the base. Throughout these scenes at the base, the film cuts to Ottway’s pleasant memories and outdoor scenes. Even as Ottway’s work involves violence and danger, it offers a welcome visual and aural respite from the ugly world of the base. As mentioned, the cries of the wolves, which signal another shot of the dark mountains from the film’s opening, stop Ottway from ending his life in an alley on the base. While The Grey presents the natural world as a lifeline for its despairing protagonist, the film is not wholly romantic in its attitude towards the nonhuman world. The Grey’s sentiment towards its wilderness setting is deeply ambivalent. As with The Shallows and Black Water, the audience never knows exactly where The Grey’s central location exists in relation to human development. In this instance, the characters share that ignorance, as they become unintentionally stranded in this environment. This mysterious land is an obvious site of horror. The harsh conditions make the land itself a hazard, with Burke dying of exposure. In other instances, the surroundings and the wolves work in concert to bring the men down. As the men trek towards the woods, deep snow slows their progress. When the wolves attack, Flannery cannot outpace the wolves and the other men cannot come to his aid quickly enough to 289 save him. Later, the wolves pursue Ottway and Henrick, causing them to fall into a river where Henrick drowns. Given the men’s employment in an ecologically destructive industry, their fates in the wild allow The Grey to be understood as a less fantastic version of the revenge of nature films to be discussed in Chapter Six. 17 In addition to being physically dangerous, the land initially appears as bleak and hopeless as the industrial environment from which the men came. After the crash, Ottway wakes to find himself on a barren snowy plain. In wide shots, one can make out trees and mountains in the distance, but the blowing wind obscures their features. For the most part, the land seems characterized by featureless whiteness. As the men prepare to leave the crash site, Henrick offers a prayer for the dead and asks for God’s continued protection. The film bookends his prayer with images of this grim wasteland, an ironic visual counterpoint to the notion of divine mercy (See Figure 4.39). The settings become more attractive as the men make their way further into the surrounding forests and mountains. In The Shallows, there is a notable deterioration of the environment’s visual appeal as Nancy’s situation becomes more dire. As the likelihood of her survival decreases, the world becomes dark and stormy. The opposite trajectory can be seen in 17 In his commentary for The Grey, director and co-writer Joe Carnahan describes the scenario as nature extracting its revenge on intruders working for an environmentally destructive industry. He does not make mention of the B- movie tradition of eco-horror. Figure 4.39 – While Henrick offers a prayer to God, Ottway surveys a bleak landscape that offers little. 290 The Grey. As the film progresses, the number of survivors dwindles. Yet the grandeur and the visual appeal of the men’s surroundings becomes greater as they move closer to the wolves’ den and their destruction. This effect culminates in a late scene in the film, as Diaz lies down to die on the banks of a river. Prior to this point, the scenery’s appeal exists for the appreciation of the filmmakers and the audience. The characters are too busy dealing with their hardship and trying to survive. Throughout the film, loving shots of landscapes are balanced by the narrative’s emphasis on suffering, peril, and death. Yet in Diaz’s final scene, the characters acknowledge the majesty of the land explicitly. Diaz lies down by an attractive stretch of river. The water goes by slowly here and the banks are paved with brown pebbles that give way to a crisp field of white snow. Dark pines sit on either side of the river. Mountains stand in the distance, their peaks just obscured by clouds. Ottway and Henrick try and convince Diaz to carry on. Diaz asks them: “What have I got waiting for me back there?” By “there,” Diaz could refer to their job site specifically, or the civilized world in general. The other characters have relationships in the larger world. Even if their loved ones are gone or far away, they can access these people through their memories. Diaz has nothing substantial to connect him to the world. 18 He outlines his prospects, assessing what awaits him if he escapes the wilderness: “Gonna sit at a drill all day, get drunk all night… that’s my life?” Sitting against a log, looking out towards the mountains, he instructs Ottway and Henrick to turn and look at the scene before him. “I feel like that’s all for me,” Diaz says. “How do I beat that? When will it ever be better?” 18 When the men die on the trek, the survivors collect their wallets. Before his final confrontation with the wolves, Ottway, the lone survivor, respectfully discards the dead men’s wallets one-by-one. Each wallet contains at least one picture of the owner with someone, as well as assorted cards that signal attachment to organizations and institutions. Diaz’s wallet only contains his driver’s license. 291 Like Nancy in The Shallows, Diaz claims ownership of the wilderness in this moment. The land is “for him.” However, the tone and context of his declaration is very different from Nancy’s. Diaz deems the site a suitable place to die, even if it will be by the grim means of wolf attack or exposure. Throughout the film, Diaz has been the most hostile, volatile, and irreverent member of the crew, making his transcendent realization and discovery of inner peace all the more shocking. While Diaz might be an extreme case, Ottway’s characterization of the camp’s residents suggests that there is something fundamentally damaged and anti-social about all members of their party. Diaz’s speech implies that such men would not benefit from surviving and returning to modern civilization. Better to live a short and brutish life surrounded by such a scene of natural splendor. This scene is an important moment for the Diaz character and a powerful acting moment for Grillo. It is the type of scene that might normally be played out in close-up, emphasizing the actor’s performance. However, Carnahan covers the scene using wide shots primarily. It emphasizes the importance of the land in this moment and allows it to feel like an overwhelming factor in this decision (See Figure 4.40). Diaz’s appreciation for the scene before him does not diminish the landscape as a site of horror. After Ottway and Henrick leave him, Diaz is left facing away from the camera in a wide shot, starring out at the mountains. The camera slowly creeps towards him as the tense score starts to rise. While the film does not give the scene a violent payoff, it allows the shot to play Figure 4.40 – Diaz instructs his fellow survivors to look at the lovely view in order to understand his decision to die in this spot. 292 out, building dread. At this point, it is worth considering how the production interacted with the setting to create a site that is both lovely and terrifying. Though the action unfolds in Alaska, The Grey remains unspecific about where in Alaska it takes place. This applies to both the oil base and the crash site. The closest The Grey comes to providing a concrete reference point comes from an early offhand comment by Flannery, implying that the plane is destined for Anchorage. A digital screen displaying a map of Alaska sits at the front of the plane’s cabin. However, that map cannot be seen in enough detail to discern the plane’s location or its route. That digital map begins to cut out and distort before the plane’s critical turbulence begins; the loss of even a semblance of knowledge about place foreshadows the men’s fate (See Figure 4.41). A running element in the film will be Diaz’s frustration with a GPS watch he steals off a dead body, a tool that never fulfills its purpose of helping the men find their way. As Diaz prepares to die, he passes the GPS to his compatriots. Of course, these men spend the whole film heading in the wrong direction (traveling towards the wolves’ den, as opposed to away from it). As with all the films discussed in this chapter, this narrative about becoming lost was produced in a location different from where it was set. Instead of shooting in Alaska, outdoor filming took place primarily around Smithers in northwestern British Columbia. 19 Additional 19 Alaska was considered for the shoot but was “ruled out early on as the costs worked out better in British Columbia and the Canadian province offered more locations closer to a major city” (“Liam Neeson’s”). While the Figure 4.41 – Shortly before the plane crashes, a digital map displaying Alaska begins to glitch and distort. It foreshadows the technical failure that is about to occur, as well as the sense of displacement that will define the characters’ trials. 293 shooting took place “in and around Vancouver in Whistler and Squamish, with studio shooting at Bridge Studios in Burnaby” (“Liam Neeson’s”). The discourse surrounding The Grey’s production positions it somewhere between The Shallows and Black Water. The Grey has access to more resources than a film like Black Water, and it was able to combine location and studio shooting. It was also able to use digital technology to enhance its environment in ways not dissimilar to The Shallows. Yet unlike those involved in making The Shallows, The Grey’s director Joe Carnahan tries to stress the authenticity and naturalism of the film shoot. It is an attempt to endow the film with something like Black Water’s raw and guerilla qualities. This involves positioning the film shoot as making itself vulnerable and receptive to the elements. In promotional material for the film, those involved in the production speak a great deal about the extreme conditions in these outdoor locations. Coldest temperatures cited range from minus-37 to minus-50 degrees. 20 These conditions are said to have caused the basic equipment (and personnel) needed to produce the film to begin breaking down. 21 In many ways, this discourse contributes to the film’s mystique. The Grey is a masculine survival narrative, and the men involved in the production can boast of surviving their own hardships. In addition to making the cast and crew seem suitably tough, shooting in these conditions allows those involved in the production to make other claims of authenticity. In an interview, displacement is not particularly extreme, some Alaskans were annoyed that this film cast Alaska in a poor light without even giving the state the financial benefit of serving as the shooting location. Ben Anderson, writing for the Anchorage Daily News, worries that films like The Grey – genre pictures set in Alaska but mostly filmed elsewhere (including Insomnia, 30 Days of Night, and The Fourth Kind) – give the wrong impression to potential tourists: “Are these the kind of things we want people Outside – already often woefully misinformed about our state – thinking?” 20 The measurement scale is not specified in crew statements, but, at these low temperatures, distinctions between Celsius and Fahrenheit are less important (-40 degrees is the same on either scale). In one interview, director Joe Carnahan claims: “The coldest day we had on Hudson Bay Mountain [near Smithers] was about minus-37 degrees” (Barone). In another interview, Neeson puts the temperature at “minus 40 degrees” (Eisenberg). Yet another article quoting location manager Bruce Brownstein puts the temperature at “-50 Degrees Celsius at times with the wind chill” (“Liam Neeson’s”). 21 Neeson mentions how, on his first day shooting, “Cameras, equipment occasionally seized up because they just couldn’t handle the extreme cold” (Ahearn). Another article mentions how “both Carnahan and actor Dallas Roberts suffered frostbite” (Pearson). 294 Carnahan insists: “There’s just nothing inauthentic about the film, because we were really out there” (Barone, emphasis added). Carnahan suggests that the reality of that cold escapes from the screen and has a tangible effect on audiences: “I’ve seen [The Grey] at various test screenings and press screenings, and I’ve seen a lot of people put their coats on during the movie… I can see that they’re physically affected by the film” (Barone, original emphasis). The genuine nature of the landscapes allows them to have an immersive quality that elicits a bodily response. Carnahan claims to have achieved the “environmental” representational mode to which Gunning alludes by causing audiences to feel the cold of the shooting location. Even the performances become more genuine in this location. Carnahan describes it as the difference between acting in a traditional sense (pretending to be cold) and simply reacting to extreme cold (Barone). Much as the actors’ reactions were determined by the weather conditions, those involved in the production suggest that the shoot had a semi-improvisational quality dictated by the natural conditions. If the makers of Black Water were forced to depend on natural light, the makers of The Grey claim that they willingly made themselves vulnerable to the natural weather conditions. Carnahan explains: “you go out there with a battle plan or a sense of what you want to do and very quickly nature has another idea. You have to kind of adapt” (Dickson). Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi offers a similar account of the production: “Carnahan and I were saying, ‘Well, what we get is what we get. If it snows, it snows; if it rains, it rains’” (“Masanobu”). Unlike the makers of The Shallows, this crew suggests that they were not endeavoring to ‘solve’ the problem of location shooting. They were allowing themselves to be open to and molded by the location. In that sense, the setting can be imagined as playing an important role in determining the look and feel of the production. Yet, from other statements, one comes to understand that the film inevitably employed its fair share of artifice in creating this narrative. 295 Some of the film was shot on indoor sets, and some of the scenes shot outdoors required digital or practical enhancements. In his commentary for The Grey, Carnahan acknowledges that a cliff encountered by the men was built by production designer John Willett. At several points, Carnahan also gives credit to visual effects artist Mark Stetson and Zoic Studios for seamlessly adding in digital snowflakes or covering the surrounding trees in digital snow. At one point, due to low snowfall in Vancouver, an outdoor set had to be covered with practical artificial snow “to the tune of about $175,000” (Carnahan). Actor Dermot Mulroney provides a useful comparison when thinking about the film’s geography. Mulroney describes The Grey’s utilization of interior and exterior locations as an “incredible hybrid” and likens it to the way the film switches between real, animatronic, and digital wolves (Weintraub). Both the setting and the wolves in The Grey are made up of multiple parts, pieced together so as to create a “seamless and believable” effect (Weintraub). If the production attempts to conceal the heterotopic quality of the film’s images, Mulroney’s comments remind spectators that the formidable land, like the dangerous animals in these films, is a strategic construct. It is therefore worth considering the nature of this fantasy and its potential impact. The sublime has been referenced throughout this chapter, since it serves as one of the key orienting points of reference in discussions of classical aesthetics. Other aesthetic modes are often understood in relation to the sublime, as well as its counterpoint: the beautiful. Peterson locates the picturesque between the “tame aesthetic of the beautiful” and the “much more powerful” and terrifying sublime (185). Giblett similarly positions the uncanny as “in-between, or the mediating category between, the sublime and the beautiful” (Postmodern 32). While the sublime helps to define these other aesthetics, it remains abstract and intangible. Giblett explains: 296 “for Kant [the sublime] was associated with the formless and the devoid of form” (32). Peterson expands on this point: For Kant, the sublime is not a picture but a state of mind, an emotional response conjured up by images, sounds, or experiences. The sublime is a feeling of awe, of insignificance in the face of the infinite; it cannot be represented…. Strictly defined, then, the sublime is always unrepresentable. But there is a long tradition of representations of the sublime, which we can understand not as literal representations of sublimity but, rather, as representations of the idea of sublimity. (185, original emphasis) Peterson argues that most attempts to convey sublimity fail (186). While a mountain may be a sublime subject, images of mountains are not necessarily sublime. This holds especially true of representations trying to capture the sublime while “striving for realism” and mainstream accessibility (185). In the case of such mediations, “the emotional response they inspire is always at one remove” (185). There is a safety and a distance to these representations that prevents these objects from inspiring the necessary feelings of awe and insignificance. So what allows The Grey to convey the sublime effectively? At the bare minimum, the environmental features presented in The Grey qualify as classic sublime objects. All the landscapes that the men encounter in the wake of the crash have an austere beauty, yet they are formidable and dangerous. The film opens on towering, mist- shrouded mountains, which remain a constant throughout the film. In the wilderness, the mountains seem to box in the survivors, forming a daunting barrier to a world beyond the wolves’ domain. Even when the men are in their oil base, the mountains loom over the pathetic and squalid human settlement below. The mountains seem to call out to Ottway, reminding him that his personal tragedy is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Of course, where there 297 are mountains, there are corresponding yawning depths. Most of the men manage to maneuver over one such drop by shimmying along an improvised tightrope. Yet the film puts viewers in the perspective of Talget, who fears heights. The audience enters his vertiginous frame of mind as he inches along, and confirms his worst fears as the rope gives way and sends him plummeting to a painful demise. In addition to the visuals, the narrative framing plays an important role in constructing The Grey’s sublime character. Since the sublime is an intangible aesthetic, its narrative evocations of despair and terror enhance the idea of sublimity surrounding the project. The Grey’s visceral moments, and the sense of dread conjured by its narrative’s omnipresent potential for death and destruction, allow its landscapes to offer more than a pale approximation of the sublime. The presentation of the landscapes simultaneously emphasizes two important qualities. The land is a deadly environment for multiple reasons, and that offers its own grim pleasures to fans of the horror genre. At the same time, the film offers traditional aesthetic pleasures by showcasing a visually striking setting. The land’s potential to frighten and awe become inextricably connected. In addition to finding that important affective balance, The Grey avoids the type of bland realism Peterson references, even while its filmmakers make claims for the text’s authenticity and naturalism. The Grey utilizes tropes from the horror genre, as well as the action and adventure genres. In so doing, it embraces a level of restrained fantasy that makes it difficult to take literally. After all, the wolves in this world behave in an outlandishly predatory manner. 22 The Grey also never pins down the land’s location in any 22 While I argue that The Grey’s presentation is difficult to take literally, some object to the film’s depiction of wolves. A Humane Society blog post hoped that the film would be “a horrible flop” and warned that it could affect attitudes towards wolves the same way Jaws stoked fears of sharks (Pacelle). Blogger Wayne Pacelle worried about The Grey’s potential “destructive consequences – especially at a time when a renewed persecution of wolves in the United State places the lives of [wolves] at more at risk [sic] than ever.” In Carnahan’s commentary for The Grey, he attacks the Humane Society bitterly, calling their criticisms “myopic… absolute bullshit, and nonsensical and 298 specific way. This allows it to exist as an archetypal ideal of the imposing and pitiless sublime landscape, rather than an actual location. While I argue that The Grey conveys a sense of the sublime effectively, the sublime, as an aesthetic, is not without its critics. In “The Problem with Wilderness,” William Cronon positions the sublime as an ecologically harmful fantasy. Cronon’s essay revolves around the argument that the idea of the wilderness as something “that stands apart from humanity… is quite profoundly a human creation.” 23 There are multiple problems with this culturally constructed fantasy of an unpeopled natural realm. The wilderness is an ahistorical fantasy space, one that often requires overlooking the fact that indigenous peoples did once live in those spaces before their coerced removal (Cronon). This holds especially true in the case of national parks and nature reserves, something that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Five. The wilderness is also often imagined as a staging ground for indulging reactionary understandings of masculinity (Cronon). The Shallows and Black Water, which center on active female protagonists, avoid this issue by following the Final Girl model of horror discussed by Carol Clover. The Grey is a more traditional wilderness tale. It is fascinated by the power dynamics that play out between a group of tough men in a grim survival situation. The Grey features few female characters, none of whom have significant speaking roles or even names. Cronon warns that the sublime tradition also causes people to overvalue certain environments, to the exclusion of environments closer at hand or less visually absurd.” He goes so far as to compare their preemptive criticisms to Nazi book burning campaigns. Carnahan complains that The Grey is not intended to be a Planet Earth-style documentary and that the wolves are metaphors. 23 Other writers advance similar arguments. John Wylie writes: “Thinking of nature and culture – of natural processes and human cultural practices and values – as distinct and independent realms is, cultural geographers have argued, extremely problematic in both theory and practice. The issue of where one draws the line between the two becomes fraught with political, moral and ethical dilemmas” (10). Raymond Williams also expresses concern about the way nature has been constituted as something “out there” and apart from humanity. In relation to ecological problems, Williams warns that “nothing much can be done, nothing much can even be said, until we are able to see the causes of this alienation in nature, this separation of nature from human activity” (295). 299 spectacular (Cronon). An undercurrent in Cronon’s argument is the fact that narratives about the sublime traditionally follow a humanist trajectory that can have negative repercussions. The sublime might overwhelm its perceiving human subjects, but that is only in the beginning. Christopher Hitt explains that, in the Kantian conceptualization: “the sublime experience begins with the apprehension of a natural object which the imagination is unable to grasp” (608). Hitt notes the importance that it often is a natural subject – some nonhuman feature in the world. As the human struggles to grasp the sublime object, “The result is a kind of cognitive dissonance, a rift between perception and conception. This rift is then overcome by the triumphant emergence of reason, revealing to us, finally, our ‘pre-eminence over nature’” (608). While the sublime might initially humble the thinking human, the human is ultimately able to reconcile their experience in a way that allows the sublime to confirm the human ego. Despite these drawbacks to the sublime, it is not without its potential positives. Christopher Hitt proposes an “ecological sublime,” which might take advantage of the aesthetic’s strengths while avoiding its problematic tendencies. Hitt describes the ecological sublime as the sublime with a difference. It would still offer a “revelatory experience” but it “would offer a new kind of transcendence which would resist the traditional reinscription of humankind’s supremacy over nature” (609). Hitt argues that the sublime’s ability to foster wonder and humility should be explored and encouraged in an era where humans have increasing control over and impact upon the world (620). Hitt understands critics’ concerns with the sublime, particularly the way it “reinscribes the notion of nature’s otherness [and reinforces] the separation between human and nonhuman realms” (603). Hitt also acknowledges that the way the sublime tends to present the natural world as a terrifying and absolute other might merely alienate audiences. However, Hitt cites several 300 environmental philosophers who argue that viewing and presenting nature as other is not inherently bad. Neil Evernden argues that people should “decenter the subject and ‘liberate’ nature, leaving it outside the domain of the mind… as a mysterious, alien ‘divine chaos’” (Hitt 613). Nature should be “accepted in its full individuality, as a unique and astonishing event” and encountered as something “beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the ‘canny’” (Hitt 613, original emphasis). Peter Reed suggests that, when confronted with this natural alterity, “we stand dumb, overcome by an encounter with something that is so obviously beyond our ability to capture in words” (Hitt 613). It is worth noting that Diaz instructs his fellow survivors to look at the mountains in order to understand his wish to die in their presence, while conceding “I can’t explain it, I don’t have the words.” The key is that the presentation should accept that nature has intrinsic value despite (or because of) the fact that it is “wholly Other” (Hitt 613). The presentation should also avoid presenting things with an anthropocentric sense that the human subject is the only thing that matters (Hitt 613). I argue that The Grey’s version of the sublime avoids the pitfalls of the traditional sublime and offers an example what Hitt describes as the ecological sublime. There are certainly versions of The Grey’s narrative where the men’s encounter with the wilderness would ultimately confirm their inherent value. In such a version, these outcasts from society would experience meaningful growth and manage to come together as a team to defeat the wolves. At the very least, the depressed Ottway would find a new lease on life and manage to make it out of the wilderness alive, as in the case of the other films considered in this chapter. 24 However, that is not how events play out in The Grey. 24 The Edge (Tamahori, 1997), written by David Mamet, functions as a more reactionary, humanist take on the sublime and The Grey’s narrative. In The Edge, romantic rivals (Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin) find themselves competing against a grizzly bear, the Alaskan wilderness, and each other. When Hopkins’s character manages to kill the bear, his nefarious rival, and leave the woods alive, it vindicates him as the superior man. 301 The Grey’s men work in (or are pawns of) an industry predicated on the thoughtless destruction of the natural world. Due to a catastrophic failure of technology, the men get lost in the wilderness they intended to sail over. Their extreme circumstances strip away the remnants of their humanity. They must alternate between being fleeing prey animals or a rival pack scrapping with the wolves for territory. Despite their best efforts, all these men are ultimately overwhelmed by the natural world. Some meet this fate unwillingly and horribly, although even in those cases the men occasionally find transcendent grace (this is most notable in Talget’s death scene). Diaz and Ottway, the most dysfunctional members of the group and of society, meet their obliteration willingly, giving themselves over to something greater than their unrest and despair. Religion can offer little comfort to these lost souls. Shortly before his final confrontation with the wolves, Ottway rages at God. After demanding some intervention or other proof of God’s existence, Ottway mutters: “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.” However, in the natural world these rough men encounter something greater than themselves. In that sense, the horrific vision of The Grey offers a humbling fantasy that has potential value in cultivating positive ecological sensibilities. 25 As with the other films considered in this chapter, the production context of The Grey gives new dimensions to the vision of the natural world offered within the text. As a narrative, The Grey might appear to illustrate some of Cronon’s criticisms of the sublime sensibility. The film suggests that, even as industrial activities wreck once-pristine environments, there are still parts of the world where humanity is not the dominant force. Some of the discourse surrounding the production of the film attempts to bolster this illusion, trying to present the production as making itself vulnerable to the harsh world around it – a world where humans seemingly should 25 The fact that The Grey sold itself to the public partially as a rollicking adventure of men fighting wolves makes this revelation potentially more startling and impactful. 302 not live. But, in reality, the land is as much a narrative and physical construct as the film’s fancifully demonic wolves. The cast and crew might have been subject to bitterly cold temperatures while filming, but, as Liam Neeson explains to Global News, they were only thirty minutes away “from their hotel (‘which boasts an incredibly good sushi restaurant and an incredibly good pizza parlour too,’ [Neeson] noted)” (Ahearn). Conclusion There are two levels to the landscape presentation in each of the films profiled in this chapter. There is what one sees in the film and there is the labor that went into achieving that aesthetic effect. Each has its own implications in terms of how one should think about the land being presented and people’s relationship to the environment. And, while each has its own implications, each one also inflects the implications of the other. In The Grey, the sublime remoteness of the mountains becomes inextricably interwoven with the image of a movie star trying to decide between sushi and pizza. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, none of the aesthetics utilized in these films when depicting the natural world are beyond reproach. They all have their drawbacks, in addition to their advantages. However, none of the films considered above are perfect or pure expressions of their primary aesthetic registers. There is a dynamism and complexity to the presentational modes of the films considered in this chapter. These films exemplify, exploit, deconstruct, and alter traditional understandings of the connotations and potentials of the aesthetic modes being deployed. The goal becomes understanding what kinds of ecological fantasies these films inspire and what sorts of sensibilities these different modes foster. Yet these films’ tweaked versions of those classical aesthetics and the implications of those aesthetics must also be understood in relation to the labor that produced those images. 303 Sometimes that production context becomes evident when the seams separating it from the world of the film begin to come apart. Such is the case with Black Water’s sometimes-questionable compositing, or The Shallows having Nancy call attention to a distinct-looking set of mountains off the coast of Lord Howe Island (the rocks that resemble a pregnant woman), thereby compromising the film’s ability to present Lord Howe as anything other than itself. With larger films, those seams can be less evident within the text. However, those films will often foreground the disconnect to some extent while promoting the film. Those involved with making The Shallows are not shy about showing off the trickery they were able to accomplish with their resources and talent. If those involved in the production try to efface that type of labor, as is the case with The Grey, that has its own implications. Whether their relationship is effaced, foregrounded, or seeping through the seams, production, space, and aesthetics all inform each other. In this chapter, I have dealt with how various productions manipulate the land for aesthetic purposes and the ideological implications of that manipulation and presentation. In Chapter Five, I do a close reading of a single text that manipulates the land for more obviously ideological purposes. In so doing, it amplifies topics introduced in this chapter: themes of ownership, colonial anxieties, and the division between Nature and Civilization. 304 CHAPTER 5 “I Will Kill the Lions and I Will Build the Bridge”: Crafting an Ahistorical and Oppositional Natural World in The Ghost and the Darkness Though based on true events, The Ghost and the Darkness (Hopkins, 1996) takes liberties with the relevant facts. It therefore feels fitting when this historical drama’s protagonists discuss the vagaries of memory. The topic arises near the film’s conclusion. Seated around a fire are Col. John Patterson (Val Kilmer), the Irish engineer; Charles Remington (Michael Douglas), the American professional hunter; and Samuel (John Kani), the African foreman. Patterson is based on a real person; Remington and Samuel are both invented figures. A pair of murderous lions have bedeviled this ragtag team of factual and fanciful characters, thwarting their efforts to build a railroad bridge across the Tsavo River. The big cats’ reign of terror now seems near an end. After bringing down one of the elusive lions, the hunters drink champagne in celebration. As they drink, Remington grows wistful. “You know,” he says, “I just keep wondering if we’re going to remember all this.” Patterson slurs, “I love Africa! I could never forget her.” It is not the first time that this colonial agent has declared his love for the continent. Remington chuckles, “You’re young, Johnny. I mean, so many things flash by and at that moment you say ‘Oh yeah – this is going to stay with me, surely. I will never forget this dawn, this hunt, this passion.’ And then – pfffttt – it’s all gone.” Remington pauses, then taps a finger to his temple, “But I hope it stays here.” With a smile, Patterson raises his bottle. “Another toast,” he insists, “to memory!” Remington seconds the toast: “To memory!” Remington implies that the alternative to remembering is forgetting, and that remembering means preserving a moment perfectly. Having a fictionalized character in a historical drama draw a false equivalency between memory and fact provides an apt reminder that viewers should think critically about how Ghost (and popular cinema generally) mediates 305 the past and reality. Ghost presents itself as a reliable reenactment; its introductory voice-over begins: “This is the most famous true African adventure,” and ends: “Remember this: even the most impossible parts of this story really happened.” 1 But this plea for credulity comes from Samuel, another fictionalized character. Ghost takes dramatic license with history, heightening the facts to create a conventional Hollywood narrative. 2 The way Ghost presents this story does not just serve entertainment aims. It also carries ideological weight. This chapter investigates why Ghost chooses to memorialize this event in this way, interrogating the implications of its presentation and how it manipulates and cultivates the available facts. This chapter differs from previous ones by focusing on a single text: The Ghost and the Darkness. I reference other films based on the same events to provide context, but Ghost receives the lion’s share of the attention. In a project where a classic like Jaws shares space with its inferior sequels, Ghost may seem an odd choice for special consideration. Ghost certainly had the ingredients to make a film that was popular, successful, and perhaps even iconic. It features Kilmer and Douglas, two major ‘90s stars. It was written by William Goldman and photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, both Oscar winners. Yet few would argue that Ghost is a successful text. Critics dismiss it as being derivative of Jaws. 3 Even crewmembers joked about those similarities during filming, nicknaming the production “Claws” and “Paws” (Askew 53). Key players in the 1 A tagline on the film’s poster echoes this sentiment with a difference. Whereas the voiceover assures audiences that “even” those elements are true, the tagline states: “Only the most incredible parts of the story are true” (“The Ghost and the Darkness”, emphasis added). 2 Screenwriter William Goldman explains that the story of Patterson and the Tsavo Man-Eaters is compelling, but required finessing to make a successful film. Patterson spent nine months trying to shoot the lions. Goldman offers this assessment: “In real life, it’s extraordinary. On film, nothing… Sorry folks, it doesn’t shoot…. For nine months he fails? What are you smoking, this is a Hollywood movie” (83-84, original emphasis). 3 Philip French wrote: “Goldman and the director, Stephen Hopkins, have elected to give us, almost scene-for-scene, Jaws on dry land.” Jaws is referenced in the titles of reviews by Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey (“Jaws on safari”) and the Washington Post’s Richard Harrington (“Jaws Inspiring”). Jaws is evoked as a point of comparison in reviews appearing in the New York Times (Maslin), the Boston Globe (Carr), Sight and Sound (Newman, “The Ghost”), Boxoffice (Major), and Film Journal International (Gagne). There are certainly striking comparisons. The lions’ first on-screen attack is staged like the opening attack in Jaws, Ghost also focuses on three men bonding during a hunt, and Jerry Goldsmith’s score occasionally feels like an imitation of John Williams’s work. 306 production express disappointment in its quality. Director Stephen Hopkins declared it his worst film (Logan). Goldman concluded that his script “was not good enough” (94, original emphasis). Since its release, Ghost has not received critical reappraisal, nor has it achieved paracinematic cult status. Roger Ebert felt that Ghost “lacks even the usual charm of being so bad it’s funny. It’s just bad” (“The Ghost”). In many ways, it is a slight work – notable neither for its great quality, nor for being especially abysmal. Yet several factors make this an important case study. Ghost is one of at least five films inspired by the case of a pair of killer lions known as the “Tsavo Man-Eaters.” There have been other spectacular real-life incidents of animal predation, but none has inspired so many cinematic retellings. 4 The Tsavo Man-Eaters are important figures in the world of Animal Attack cinema. Explaining the lasting appeal of this true event helps one understand Ghost, but it also offers insights into what makes the entire subgenre tick. I argue that the Tsavo story resonates for two primary reasons. It turns an ugly incident of abusive colonial domination (the construction of the Uganda Railway) into a palatable tale of heroism. Secondly, it offers a compelling myth about a conflict between Civilization and Nature. Ghost’s engagement with these colonial and environmental themes foregrounds elements that are central to Animal Attack cinema, but which are often left sub- textual. Animal Attack texts often involve Western characters facing dangerous wildlife in former colonies or the domestic wilderness of settler colonial countries (alternatively, the animals invade the metropole). As with the inept special effects in the Jaws sequels, the fact that 4 There are certainly other cases of animal predation that have had significant impacts on popular culture. Perhaps most notably, the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks solidified and disseminated fears about the unlikely risk of unprovoked shark attacks. That incident could therefore be linked to many killer shark films indirectly. However, the influence of those attacks on cinema is nebulous. The characters in Jaws reference the event, but Peter Benchley denies that it inspired his novel (“Corrections”). While the Jersey Shore attacks have featured in many television documentaries, they only inspired one direct dramatization: the television film 12 Days of Terror (Sholder, 2004). 307 Ghost tackles these topics overtly, yet without particular finesse or skill, makes it a useful object for allowing viewers to engage those issues directly and critically. My analysis of Ghost focuses in particular on how it uses and positions African landscapes. Ghost recreates turn-of-the-century Kenya in a South African nature preserve, just after the end of apartheid rule. Press surrounding the film never addresses or questions the ethics of celebrating Europe’s colonization of Africa in South Africa at this pivotal historical moment. The environment is positioned simply as an exotic selling point. The temporal enclave of the nature preserve becomes an ideal location to recreate the natural world as it appeared in the past, while also obscuring the human tolls of historical trauma. In its recreation, the production fails to convey topographical and ecological features that help explain why these attacks occurred, and the role humans played in creating those conditions. The land functions not as a specific location at a specific time, but rather as a generic manifestation of exotic African wilderness, at once lovely and frightening. This space comes to represent Nature, and it stands in opposition to the similarly abstract concepts of Modernization and Civilization. My analysis demonstrates how Ghost exemplifies both the problematic ways that Animal Attack films often interact with the legacies of colonialism, and ambivalent modern attitudes towards the natural world. Before addressing Ghost’s engagement with the story’s colonial and ecological themes, it helps to consider the facts in the Tsavo case, other adaptations of this story, and the way the past becomes legend. The Man-Eaters’ Legacy The lion attacks happened in conjunction with the construction of the Uganda Railway, also known as the Mombasa-Victoria Nyanza Railway, a project spanning the turn of the century. Initial surveys were conducted in 1893 (Gunston 53; Ruchman 252). Construction began 308 in either 1895 or 1896. 5 Most of the work was done by 1901, and the project was completed by 1903 or 1904. 6 It ran through Kenya (then British East Africa), connecting Mombasa on the coast to Kisumu by Lake Victoria. When it was finished, a trek that could take three to six months became a four-day trip (Graham et. al. 339). Samuel Ruchman describes the railway, which was almost 600 miles in length 7 , as “an endeavor of epic proportions, qualifying as one of the great engineering feats of the late nineteenth century” (256). This project played a strategic role in maintaining the British Empire. The Suez Canal in Egypt provided convenient access to India. There was a fear that, amidst Europe’s ‘Scramble for Africa,’ a rival power “might either dam or otherwise interfere with the natural flow of the [Nile], resulting in disastrous effects on the agriculture – and thus the political stability – of Egypt” (Gunston 48). By gaining access to the Nile’s primary source at Lake Victoria, the British hoped to control both ends of the Nile and thereby monopolize it. The logic went: “Whatever Power dominates Uganda masters the Nile; the master of the Nile rules Egypt; the ruler of Egypt holds the Suez Canal, and, indirectly, the key to India” (Gunston 48). Efficient new lines of transportation through East Africa also facilitated commerce and settlement of the area by European colonizers (Mwangi 163-164; Ruchman 251). The project was controversial, in part due to its great expense. It cost over £5 million, the equivalent of about £450 million today (Graham et. al. 335; Gunston 65). To deflect criticism, 5 Samuel Ruchman gives the start date as 1895 (252); the Encyclopedia of African History says 1896 (“Kenya”). Henry Gunston explains the reason for different sources identifying different starting dates: “Those seeking to define precisely ‘the start of the Uganda Railway’ have three potential choices: [George Whitehouse, the railway’s Chief Engineer, arriving] at Mombasa on 11 December 1895; the official ‘First Rail’ ceremony on 30 May 1896; or the start of tracklaying on the mainland on 4 August 1896” (55). 6 Again, there is some disagreement on this front. Ruchman gives the end date as 1903 (252). Gunston notes this is when “much of the ‘finishing’ work had been done” and it was the date “when Uganda Railway Committee was dissolved, and a new Railway Administration took over” (65). Gunston adds: “However, the railway was not regarded as fully completed on its final alignment until September 1904” (65). 7 Ruchman says the railroad was “over 560 miles” (256). The Encyclopedia of African History says 582 miles (“Kenya”). Gunston says 584 (45). 309 defenders gave the project a progressive justification, arguing that it would disrupt the slave trade. In addition to easing the movement of troops and resources for material interventions, officials suggested that the mere presence of the railroad would combat slavery by having a civilizing effect on Africa. Indeed, it was the embodiment of Civilization. The 1893 Railway Survey declared: “Civilization alone will have an enormous deterring effect on slavery, and civilization can only reach such a distance in the wake of a railway” (Ruchman 262). The methods used by those overseeing the project belied this humanitarian rhetoric. Initially, the British tried to create a labor force by conscripting Africans, many of whom were former slaves. These locals proved difficult to control; many fled when faced with insufficient food, poor camp conditions, and hard labor (Ruchman 257-258). Seeking a new exploitable workforce, the British imported thousands of indentured Indian laborers to shift “over ten million cubic yards of East African earth and rock” (256). If the financial price was great, so was the cost in human life. By the endeavor’s end “nearly 6,500 were ‘invalided’ (maimed, severely ill, etc.), and almost 2,500 died, by the official count” (271-272). 8 Several thousand Africans were also employed, but their deaths were not deemed worth recording (Gunston 64; Ruchman 271-272). When Indians deserted or rioted due to ill-treatment, the British transformed work camps into quasi-police states (Ruchman 260). Ruchman argues that the techniques used to control Railway workers informed and shaped later colonial administration in Africa and India (Ruchman 252). The construction of the Uganda Railway was both impressive and brutal. It was significant for its role in the European power struggle in Africa, for facilitating Anglo colonization of Kenya, and for pioneering techniques of imperial domination. However, as this 8 Gunston confirms Ruchman’s numbers regarding deaths and casualties (64). However, sources differ on precisely how many Indian laborers were brought in. Graham et. al. put the number at 15,000 (344). Gunston says it was 20,000 (64). Ruchman claims it was 32,000 (272). Though the casualty rates are shocking whatever the number of total workers, this means the work force’s casualty rate could be anywhere between 28-60%. 310 summary suggests, it is also an understudied subject. Even relatively basic details can be sources of disagreement and controversy. This general lack of study might be partially due to the fact that the larger story is overshadowed by a sensational subplot. Today, the Uganda Railway is remembered primarily for what occurred at Tsavo. Between March and December of 1898, a pair of male lions preyed upon workers constructing a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River. The lions were shot by John Henry Patterson, who oversaw the affected leg of the project. Estimates of how many people these lions killed range from 28 to 135. 9 While these numbers are shocking, consider this toll in relation to the 9,000+ casualties associated with the Uganda Railway. Based on the most reliable estimates of 35 dead, the lions were responsible for only 0.4% of the recorded causalities. Put another way, the total casualties work out to 15 or 16 casualties for every mile of the Railway. These two lions killed slightly more individuals than the number of killed or incapacitated workers corresponding to two miles of the line. While the lions’ “crimes” are comparatively minor, they loom large in popular retellings that amplify the horrific nature of their attacks. In accounts old and new, the lions are presented as behaving in an unnatural and malevolent manner. In Patterson’s written record of the incident, published in 1907, he introduces the lions in this way: “Their methods then became so uncanny, and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of success, that the workmen firmly believed that they were not real animals at all, but devils in lions’ shape.” In relating the story, Ghost 9 The lowest number (28) refers to the confirmed number of Indian laborers killed by the lions (Yeakel et. al. 19040). In Patterson’s original account, published in 1907, he records that official number while hinting that the lions also killed “scores of unfortunate African natives of whom no official record was kept” (Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske 7). In a follow-up publication in 1925, Patterson concluded that these unrecorded deaths brought the total up to 135 (Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske 7). The Field Museum’s website still references the death count of 135 on a page highlighting its Tsavo Lions exhibit, while acknowledging that modern estimates are considerably lower (“The Tsavo Lions”). A scientific team doing stable-isotope analysis of the lions’ diet using hair and bone samples estimates that the actual number was 35 (Yeakel et. al. 19042). 311 screenwriter Goldman declares the lions “evil”, insisting “lions have never behaved like that again…. No accounting for it” (80). Yet lion attacks are not unheard of in the Tsavo region; attacks took place before the Man-Eaters appeared and continued after their deaths (Gunston 59; Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske 18). Also, while these attacks may be exceptional, they are not inexplicable. A report by Julian C. Kerbis Peterhans and Thomas Patrick Gnoske, natural historians with the Field Museum, outlines numerous environmental, historical, and cultural factors that contributed to these attacks. Even if one accepts the highest death toll of 135, Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske rule: “Given the circumstances at Tsavo in the 1890’s, instead of asking how so many humans could have been dispatched, we wonder why there weren’t more” (35). Even a century after their deaths, interpretations and narrations of the Tsavo Man-Eaters story vary wildly. People’s understandings of these events can be influenced by how they contextualize the story, what evidence and authorities they take seriously, and the individual’s training and worldview. Goldman is a storyteller and dramatist; he offers a more sensationalistic understanding of the case than historians like Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske. Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske’s rationalization of the case comes across as more logical than Goldman’s diagnosis of the animals’ “evil” intent. Still, the available evidence determines these historians’ abilities to understand this event. Their assessment depends in part on Patterson’s own recordings and recollections, which are likely to be biased, partial, and/or exaggerated – particularly those written accounts intended for mass audiences and produced years after the fact. Just as any attempt to understand the world must pass through human perception, attempts to understand the past are filtered through the imprecise and subjective lens of memory. Kendall Phillips notes that poststructuralist and multicultural critiques cast doubt on whether there can ever be an accurate or objective historical record, “a singular and authentic account of 312 the past” (“Introduction” 2). In lieu of authoritative History, memory emerges “as a way of understanding the complex interrelationships among past, present, and future” (Phillips, K. “Introduction” 2). Memory offers an understanding of the past that is partial and partisan (Blair et. al. 6). It draws upon an originating incident, but it addresses the “concerns, issues, or anxieties of the present” (Blair et. al. 6). It engages the past to deal with the present in hopes of ensuring the future (Casey 17). By interpreting events in the past, memories help individuals and collectives understand the world and construct a sense of identity and belonging (Blair et. al. 6). It is worth interrogating documents about the past in order to understand their relation to these historic events and their intent for the present and future. In the case of the Tsavo story, the past is engaged as a way of avoiding having to confront ugly historical truths. It distracts from the violence of colonialism and tries to recast it as a benign or even necessary practice. Of course, clumsy attempts to whitewash the past can end up having the opposite effect and can reveal important truths about the ideological operations at work in these attempts. Patterson recounted these events in his 1907 memoir The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, which was celebrated as an exciting real-life adventure story, but which also served ideological ends. Theodore Roosevelt was among the book’s fans, declaring it “the most thrilling book of true lion stories ever written” (12). 10 Yet Patterson’s story provides more than entertainment. Michael R. Canfield argues that the narrative “reinforced the colonial perspective that whites and colonists were brave people who battled Africa’s beasts while those lower on the hierarchy of races turned and ran” (283). 11 Even as it inspired Roosevelt to go to Africa and shoot some lions of his own, 10 Fredrick Courtney Selous provides a preface to Patterson’s The Man-Eaters and notes Roosevelt’s endorsement of the tale in their personal correspondence. Selous quotes Roosevelt’s declaration: “that the incident of the Uganda [sic] man-eating lions… is the most remarkable account of which we have any record.” Selous was himself a legendary hunter who entered myth when he inspired the Allan Quatermain character. 11 In a chapter entitled “Reign of Terror”, Patterson dismisses his Indian workers as essentially cowardly. Describing the panic that gripped the camp, Patterson writes: “Now the bravest men in the world, much less the ordinary Indian 313 Canfield notes that Patterson’s memoir “provided a cautionary story on the perils of Africa” (283). The Man-Eaters was a comforting and coherent text for Westerners in the early twentieth- century. It painted a flattering picture of white imperialists, demonstrated the inferiority of non- whites, and confirmed fears about primitive Africa. Given Canfield’s interpretation, it is notable that Western filmmakers resurrected this narrative at two key moments in world history. Three films about the Tsavo Man-Eaters were made throughout the 1950s, as numerous African countries began agitating for and declaring their independence. Ghost was released in the immediate aftermath of South Africa moving away from apartheid rule. 12 Patterson’s story, with all its colonial baggage, reemerges at times when the legacies of colonialism are being dismantled. Of course, the public engages Patterson’s adventures selectively. In a way, it becomes the lions’ story as much as, or more than, the story of Patterson. Patterson named his memoir after the lions, but both are dead before the book’s half-way point. The Man-Eaters is primarily an episodic collection of anecdotes about Patterson’s time working in Africa, with an emphasis on his hunting expeditions. Yet the Man-Eaters story defines the book. Indeed, Patterson’s battle with the Man-Eaters remains his most iconic exploit. This, despite the fact that Patterson was a colorful character whose life was full of colonial romance and adventure, from fighting in the Second Boer War to becoming a Zionist hero. 13 coolie, will not stand constant terrors of this sort indefinitely.” Throughout the book, Patterson offers frequent comic asides about his terrified Indian attendants fleeing when his hunts get serious. 12 Ghost was in development for over a decade, so it should not be taken as a direct response to the end of apartheid. Goldman developed the idea in 1984, began pitching it in 1989, and finished a draft in 1990 (72-73; 77). However, the 1980s were also a period of unrest in South Africa that culminated with the rise of the ANC in the 1990s. 13 In addition to fighting in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), Patterson led numerous safaris while in Africa. Audley Blyth committed suicide during an infamous 1908 expedition. Rumors suggested that Patterson’s affair with Blyth’s wife contributed to his suicide. The incident inspired the Ernest Hemingway short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” That story received its own film adaptation, The Macomber Affair (Korda, 1947), in which Gregory Peck played the Patterson surrogate. During World War One, Patterson served in the Middle East and led a group of Jewish volunteers who were hoping to advance the cause for a Jewish state. Patterson became a 314 This particular incident’s longevity and legendary status might relate to the fact that there are striking visual artifacts associated with it. Edward Casey does not characterize memories as fragile or fickle, but notes that they “are continually subject to revision” (38). Public memories serve important cultural functions, but they are beset by alternative interpretations of the past that can prompt reevaluation (Blair et. al. 9). These tenuous public memories are “typically understood as relying on material and/or symbolic supports” (Blair et. al. 10). These can include physical objects and locations as well as visual texts. Patterson photographed the lions after shooting them, but that was only the beginning of their visual preservation. After using the lions’ skins as rugs for years, Patterson sold them to the Field Museum in 1925 (“The Tsavo Lions”). Their stuffed remains are still on display in a prominent diorama. Ghost references the exhibit in Samuel’s climactic voiceover: “If you want to see the lions today, you must go to America. They are at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Even now, if you dare lock eyes with them, you will be afraid.” This might overemphasize the exhibit’s potency. Rachel Poliquin explains that they were not properly skinned for taxidermy; bullet holes and their use as rugs made mounting difficult: “As a result, the lions appear far smaller in death than they were in life” (101). Samuel’s claim about their eyes seems especially dubious. The skins are real, but, as Kim Newman points out, the eyes “are presumably glass these days” (“The Ghost”). Samuel’s testimony reflects Goldman’s reaction to the exhibit. Goldman first heard about the story in 1984 and visited the Field Museum soon after. He explains: “I mean this – they are scary. There is clearly a madness at work, some raging insanity; I have never seen anything like passionate Zionist and, as “the first commander to lead Jewish forces on to the field of battle for two millennia,” became an important figure in Zionism (Connolly). Patterson became friends with the parents of future Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu; Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan, the IDF officer killed during the Entebbe raid, was named in Patterson’s honor (Connolly). Patterson’s ashes were reburied in Israel in 2014 at a ceremony attended by Netanyahu. 315 them. I felt when I first heard about them just exactly what I felt that day when I saw them and what I feel now: that they were evil” (77, original emphasis). While Goldman’s account comes across as melodramatic, there is a gravity to these particular skins. Poliquin observes that, when one looks at these skins, one is looking at material “at least partially grown on a diet of human flesh” (107). This is supported by the fact that scientific teams were able to analyze the hair of these remains to determine how many people these lions ate (Poliquin 108; Yeakel et. al. 19042). Traces of their killings linger in their preserved physical remains. Yet the exhibit is not obviously designed to elicit fear. An important part of this display is not simply the presence of these skins, but also their presentation. Belying their infamy, the lions are posed to appear restful, perhaps even playful. One reclines on the ground, while the other is frozen in mid-trot and gapes at visitors. As with many such dioramas, the animals are not only positioned as if in life, they are situated in a recreation of their habitat. Poliquin describes the scene as “a fastidiously constructed vision of their natural habitat to create an aura of nature untouched. Here are the thorns, the red dirt, the particular shape of the area’s sedimentary rocks” (101). There is even a sky-blue background surrounding them (See Figure 5.1). Figure 5.1 – The Field Museum diorama featuring the stuffed remains of the Tsavo Man-Eaters. The bodies are posed in a recreation of the lions’ natural habitat. Though free of overt narrative elements, the diorama includes a steel bar (bottom right) in reference to the construction project they disrupted. Image Credit: “Field.” 316 The lions themselves are not enough. There is a recognition that the stage needs to be set. The lions cannot be appreciated without evoking their natural home. An authentic sense of the environment and setting are established as necessary ingredients in presenting the Tsavo Man- Eaters. Poliquin notes that the exhibit lacks obvious references to the drama and narrative associated with the lions. The exhibit gives a sense of objectivity befitting the museum setting; it is a “more truthful (because more emotionally neutral)” display (Poliquin 101). Poliquin argues that the diorama is nevertheless still a staged spectacle, one “infused with propaganda about what nature is, and for whom” (101). The presentation is shaped by an interpretation of what will be the most truthful staging, not just of the lions but also of the fabricated African wilderness housing them. In the Field Museum’s diorama, the lions serve as props. They lend credence to constructed notions about colonialism, nature, and animals. Lions continue to function as props in the films subsequently made about Tsavo. In fact, the living lions used in Ghost were placed in their own diorama. Bongo and Caesar, the two lions used on Ghost, were brought in especially from Canada and were exceptionally well-trained. 14 All the same, “safety precautions led to strict limitations on how the animals could be used” (Williams, D. 37). Rather than having the lions interact with the actors, the animals were shot separately and then that footage was digitally combined with footage of the humans. In order to film the lions, the crew constructed “an open area 14 Originally, the production brought over two lions “from Los Angeles, but one was sent back after a week because he attacked a trainer…. It was an accident – the lion was frightened – but he was instantly back on the plane and gone” (Williams, D. 37). Bongo was certainly a seasoned pro. Zsigmond marveled that Bongo’s trainer, Michael Hackenberger, could safely coax the lions to play-tackle him by tying a piece of raw meat to this throat (Williams, D. 39). Hackenberger later reflected that Bongo “is one of the most significant movie lions of all time. He has done more [production] work than any other lion and, in fact, more than any Canadian actor or actress” (“Cinema”). Unfortunately, Bongo died of lung cancer in 2001 at the age of 14 (“Cinema”). Though there is no evidence that Hackenberger mistreated Bongo, years later he would become embroiled in an animal abuse scandal. 317 approximately 150’ square, sealed off by carefully camouflaged fences” (38). This enclosure even had its own version of the diorama’s painted blue backdrop: a bluescreen that would allow the lions’ images to be digitized later (38). And while the real lions shrunk during the taxidermy process, making them appear less imposing, these movie lions were enlarged in the compositing process so that they would “appear even more threatening” (38). Though the tools change, the project remains strikingly similar. Indeed, the diorama is a static visual object hinting at its own dramatic interpretation of the events at Tsavo. Poliquin fails to mention a minor, but important, detail. Off to the side in the exhibit is a dust-covered segment of railroad track. This is not a scene of “nature untouched.” The track seems abandoned; it is certainly divorced from its function. At the very least, the detail nods to the project the lions disrupted. It might also offer a vision of an alternative world in which the lions won and drove off the humans. This leaves them free to bask in the undisturbed dirt, surrounded by a border of unwelcoming thorns. The scene is free of overt or sensationalistic narrative details. The ground is not spattered with blood and the lions are not surrounded by bones (apart from the lions’ skulls, which are part of the display). Still, this early exhibit chooses to insert a hint of the Nature v. Civilization narrative that I argue is key to the lions’ legend. If the exhibit is free of melodramatic narrative, the various films made about the Tsavo Man-Eaters would supply that element. These films attempt to offer their own visually striking commemoration of these events. Spotting dramatizations of the Tsavo incident can be difficult. None cites Patterson’s book as its source material. With the exception of Ghost, none features Patterson as a character. Tell-tale elements mark a Tsavo film. The most obvious of these is a pair of male lions working together. Even if Patterson does not appear, he provides the template for a distinct protagonist: an engineer who takes up the gun. This hero’s efforts are in defense of the final key ingredient: a 318 railroad. Reducing the Tsavo incident to a series of unique abstractions is an important step in the effort to translate a historical event into a colonial/environmental legend. In theory, it becomes a quintessential manifestation of themes important in many Animal Attack narratives: the human fighting a wild beast that represents hostile indigenous life and/or an exotic intruder in the human realm. As will become clear in this rundown of films, however, these narratives’ abilities to make that leap and cement themselves in the popular imagination have not been wholly successful. Before Ghost, the most noteworthy dramatization of the Tsavo incident was its first cinematic adaptation: Bwana Devil (Oboler, 1952). Bwana erroneously credits a non-existent book called The Lions of Gulu as its inspiration. In interviews, Arch Oboler connected Bwana to the Tsavo case. Oboler learned of the story while visiting Africa in the 1940s after the end of World War II. In a 1972 interview, Oboler half-remembers the incident as “a true story of a couple of lions which had complete contempt for our species, and who killed something like 300 people” (Koszarski 22). Thanks perhaps to the passage of time and/or the nature of anecdotes, Oboler more than doubles the most fantastic estimates of the number killed. Interestingly, Goldman claims to have first encountered the Tsavo Man-Eaters tale as a story told around the campfire while visiting Africa (73). These oral retellings potentially facilitate the exaggeration and generalization that elevates the case to mythic status. Bwana keeps the basic details of Patterson’s story in place: a pair of lions attacks workers building the Uganda Railway and the head engineer, Bob Hayward (Robert Stack), must kill them. The low-budget production was the first color stereoscopic feature film, shot using a 319 process called “Natural Vision” 3-D. Novelty made Bwana a financial success, but critics reviewed it harshly, 15 and it is primarily remembered for its significance as a historical oddity. After Bwana, the story inspired two more films in the 1950s. Both were shot in Kenya while it was still a British colony. Like Bwana, neither was well-received at the time, nor have they stood the test of time. First was Men Against the Sun (Stafford, 1953), a British production and one of the first narrative features shot in Kenya (Diang’a 2; “Men”, Monthly). It centers on Hawker, a railway engineer who saves his workers and his missionary love interest from killer lions. Men was recognized as being more ambitious and better technically executed than most British ‘B’ pictures, in part because of its exotic location shooting, but it was otherwise dismissed for its poor acting and convoluted plot (Chibnall & McFarlane 208-209; “Men”, Monthly). Next came Killers of Kilimanjaro (Thorpe, 1959) 16 , a British-American co-production. This time, the railway engineer in East Africa is an American named Adamson. As with the Remington character in Ghost, this is an instance of Americans inserting themselves into the colonial narrative. Feature stories and reviews cite J.A. Hunter’s African Bush Adventures as Killers’s inspiration (Godbout; “Killers”; Tube). However, Killers also draws upon Patterson’s exploits and is commonly counted among the Tsavo dramatizations. 17 Hal Erickson suggests that its screenwriters combined the works of Patterson and Hunter (75). As alluded to above, the element clearly signaling the Tsavo connection is the engineering and railroad angle, which does 15 One critic for Monthly Film Bulletin described Bwana as “abysmal… crude and flatulent” (G.L.). Variety criticized Oboler’s “extremely poor” direction and writing (Brog). A Los Angeles Times editorial discussing 3-D as a technology dismissed Bwana, saying “the film itself means nothing” (Schallert, “Hollywood”). 16 The original title was Adamson of Africa. The title-change angered Chief Thomas Matealla, of the Tanganyikan Chagga tribe, who had worked with producers filming in his chiefdom around Mount Kilimanjaro when the production had a more innocuous name (“‘Killers’ Kills”). 17 Killers is listed alongside more obvious adaptations in feature articles by BBC News (Connolly), the Irish Examiner (Buckley), and Natural History Magazine (Packer). 320 not feature in Hunter’s accounts. Though dangerous lions factor into the plot, the main threat in Killers comes from Ahmed, a slave trader hoping to exploit the railroad. Being produced shortly before a wave of African countries gained independence, Killers presents a scenario emphasizing the humanitarian anti-slavery rhetoric initially used to justify the Uganda Railway to the public, and the threat posed to Africa by non-white troublemakers. There would not be another Tsavo film until Ghost, which was then remade as the Telugu-language Mrugaraju (Gunasekhar, 2001). While Ghost is the adaptation most directly connected to Patterson’s exploits and account, Mrugaraju takes the greatest liberties with the original case. 18 Mrugaraju splits the engineer and hunter into separate characters. The engineer becomes a woman, the estranged wife of the hunter who must save her from the murderous lions attacking the railroad. Recasting the film as an all-Indian story is the most significant change – one that complicates the racist colonial romance so central to other retellings. The fact that Mrugaraju preserves the engineering and railroad angle supports the notion that the Nature- versus-Civilization element is an even more crucial part of the narrative’s appeal. These retellings change the story in ways big and small as filmmakers from different contexts try to mold the story into an appealing film. Ghost, to its credit, embraces the mutability of the narrative by framing itself explicitly as a story told from memory. Of course, this framing serves unsavory ends. Though the film focuses on Patterson, it lets Samuel tell the story. By not having Patterson tell the story of his heroics, Ghost runs less risk of seeming like a self- 18 Although the dramatization with the least connection to the Tsavo case might be Prey (Roodt, 2007). Indeed, I question whether Prey is connected at all. Those involved in Prey do not mention the Tsavo story as an inspiration. Prey never suggests that it is based on a true story, nor do the characters reference the Tsavo case. Though Prey has been connected to the Tsavo case, this suggestion comes from informal blogs and user-edited websites. Prey is set in the present-day and features a family stuck in a broken-down Jeep, menaced by a pride of lions rather than a pair of rogue males. The family’s patriarch is an engineer overseeing the construction of a hydro-electric dam in South Africa. His occupation and involvement in a modernization project in Africa could be seen as points of connection beyond the presence of killer lions. However, it is dubious to classify Prey as an adaptation of the Tsavo Man-Eater story – hence my decision not to list it alongside the other films officially. 321 aggrandizing tall-tale. It also serves an ideological function. Ghost is not just a film set in the past. It is a film, crafted primarily by white American and European men, that holds a curiously outdated and romantic view of colonialism. It presents that view using antiquated tropes about Great White Hunters saving primitive peoples from a land that has too much control over them. By making Samuel its narrator, it also lets colonialism off the hook. In the world of Ghost, there is no need to feel shame about colonialism because the colonial subjects are grateful for the actions of their white saviors. In addition to celebrating these events, Samuel frames this as a story for Africans, rather than a comforting tale exonerating former colonizers. It is not a colonial romance, it is a quintessential African story, “the most famous of true African adventures.” Though its execution has uncomfortable connotations, the memory framing creates a complicated and reflexive play of temporalities that encourages the audience to question the relationship between the past, memory, and storytelling. Samuel’s narration uses the past tense, as he recalls these events from an unspecified point in the future. He references the Field Museum exhibit, suggesting that he speaks from a time after 1925. But unless Samuel is a ghost, any future for his character would still be the past for audiences in 1996 and beyond. When Remington wonders whether anyone will remember these events, the audience already understands that the survivors will remember and pass on their memories. Like Samuel in the narrative, Ghost and the other Tsavo films all retell this story to construct and/or maintain an understanding of this event for a mass audience. Part of what makes this case intriguing is that none of these films has been particularly successful in that aim. None is well regarded or fondly remembered; they all failed to connect with critics or have a lasting impact on audiences. Ghost is the most high-profile retelling of this 322 story. Popular and academic articles referencing the actual incident will often make passing reference to Ghost in order to orient readers. In that sense, Ghost has linked itself to the event successfully. Yet Ghost is still relatively obscure. The Tsavo Man-Eaters narrative does not have a proven track record of resonating with audiences after the early 1900s. Indeed, critics and audiences sometimes actively reject this narrative and its ideological implications, as will be discussed in greater detail later. Yet filmmakers are continually drawn to it as an exceptional adventure narrative with strong horror elements. People keep putting this story on screen, attempting to make audiences connect with it and thereby reinsert it into the public memory. Why this case in particular? Even if one accepts the highest (and probably inaccurate) number of kills attributed to the Tsavo Man-Eaters, there are more terrible cases of individual animal predation in history, none with the cinematic legacy of the Tsavo Man-Eaters 19 . Without a proven track record, what encourages these retellings? I argue that it relates to how the Tsavo story offers simplistic and cathartic engagement with sensitive topics, including the legacies of colonialism and the environmental consequences of modernization and industrialization. In the remainder of this chapter, I shall discuss how Ghost, the most prominent of the Tsavo films, addresses those themes. This investigation offers more than just insights into this particular film, 19 “Gustave” is a crocodile in Burundi, identified by its enormous size and a distinctive scar on top of its head. Gustave is described as a “serial killer” in the media and is rumored to have killed hundreds of people since 1987 against the backdrop of a violent civil war (Potts). One film has been made about Gustave: Primeval (Katleman, 2007). The Beast of Gevaudan is rumored to have “killed over a hundred victims” between 1764 and 1767 (Brottman 42-43). Speculation about what kind of animal it was vary. Theories include a large wolf, a lion or tiger, or a hyena – possibly one trained to attack and kill by a local farmer and innkeeper (Beresford 134; Brottman 45- 46). In the film based on the case, Brotherhood of the Wolf (Gans, 2001), it is presented as being a trained lion. Jim Corbett killed a number of big cats in India with formidable reputations, including the “Panar leopard that had reputedly killed and eaten as many as 400 people” and the Leopard of Rudraprayag, rumored to have killed 125 people over the course of eight years (Morris, Desmond 57-58). Corbett also shot a tiger he claimed had killed 436 people (19). Corbett’s adventures inspired the film Man-Eater of Kumaon (Haskin, 1948) and the TV film The Man- Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (Hay, 2005). Cole Gagne’s negative review of Ghost lamented that Corbett’s stories had not been given a sufficient big screen treatment and hoped that Ghost’s “failure doesn’t scare Hollywood away from the big-game subject for another couple of decades” (125). 323 or even this particular case. It also reveals important truths about how the larger Animal Attack subgenre, and modern Western culture, understands the world. A Colonial Environment The Tsavo Man-Eaters story can be framed as a tale excusing and justifying colonialism, and this goes some way towards explaining its continued appeal. The “exoticism” of the colonial experience lends colonial narratives a degree of romance, partially explaining why Americans seek to insert themselves needlessly into this particular drama (as is the case in Killers and Ghost). However, the actions, consequences, and legacies of colonialism are also possible sources of anxiety and guilt for Westerners. This makes Westerners potentially receptive to narratives that reaffirm the superiority and decency of colonizers or imply that the long-term effects were beneficial for the colonized countries. The Tsavo incident played out around a project that depended upon the abusive coercion of, and the callous disregard for, Indian and African laborers. However, the Man-Eaters story obscures or minimizes that unsavory context. It highlights a colonizer who saves the lives of helpless Indians and Africans, two groups impacted negatively by colonial domination. A story of exploitative labor practices turns into a melodramatic monster narrative with a heroic European at its center. Ghost indulges in this redemptive fantasy. This is especially obvious in scenes where crowds of anonymous non-white extras celebrate Kilmer, the handsome white movie star. However, while segments of the population might welcome such narratives uncritically, contemporary filmmakers risk angering large segments of the population when perpetuating romantic visions of colonialism. Before Ghost, one sees this backlash play out in the critical responses to Killers of Kilimanjaro. Killers was released in 1959 in the UK, and in 1960 in the US. This was before 324 Kenya gained independence, but critics were still hostile towards the film’s imperialist imagination. Jon Cowans notes that Killers was regarded as “retrograde” for its time and suggests that its blatant celebration of colonialism contributed to its financial failure (336). Cowans writes: Although it is hard to prove why this impressive-looking CinemaScope film with a major American star [Robert Taylor] missed the box-office charts, perhaps by this time trailblazers of empire in Africa seemed dated. The New York Times called the film a ‘compendium of jungle clichés,’ while Commonweal found it ‘very sleazy indeed,’ and Britain’s Monthly Film Bulletin, struck by the film’s ‘antique morals,’ wrote that ‘anyone who has a conscience about Africa and takes the preposterous story seriously will be appalled.’ (70) 20 Ghost might indulge in similar romanticism, but, as Klaus de Albuquerque puts it, it does so “under pc [sic] wraps” (48). Regardless of how Ghost tries to modernize and sanitize the story, critics still took offense at its handling of this material. Even positive reviews note that Ghost plays like “an old- fashioned Boy’s Own epic” and complain about the “cavalier and stereotyped manners in which the black and brown natives are depicted” (Halligan; Irani). The Washington Post’s Richard Harrington observes: “the great-white-savior/hunter-in-the-Dark-Continent routine… doesn’t play particularly well in 1996.” Writing for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr complains that the story is “at least two generations out of date.” Carr notes that it “seems a bit late in the day to feel choked with pride at the colonizing imperative of the British.” To Carr, the murderous lions 20 An additional example of this condemnation can be found in the British magazine Picturegoer’s review: “This comic-strip idiocy might have been tolerably entertaining if [the film] weren’t so intolerably smug about Africa, the Africans and the nobility of the white man in even bothering to bring civilization to this backward continent” (“The Killers”). 325 make for more sympathetic figures than the colonial agents: “it’s easier to root for the lions than for the macho British colonizers trying to tame Africa so they can more efficiently loot it.” Ghost handles the colonial element of its narrative in an inconsistent and ambivalent way. Unavoidably, it valorizes a particular colonial agent and endeavor. At the same time, it is not naïve enough to offer an unambiguously positive portrayal of colonialism in 1996. The film condemns and celebrates colonialism simultaneously. It attempts to do so by contrasting Patterson with another fictional character: Robert Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson), Patterson’s superior. A posh Englishman, Beaumont represents the elites driving the colonial enterprise and reveals their cynical and greedy motivations. Patterson is positioned to elicit audience empathy. He is white, but he is an Irishman and therefore a colonial subject like those working under him at Tsavo. 21 Beaumont’s belittling treatment of Patterson during their initial meeting emphasizes Patterson’s low status in the imperial hierarchy. When Patterson announces that his first child is on the way, Beaumont dismisses him with an abusive stereotype, stating that he does not “give a shit about your upcoming litter.” In addition to this expression of personal prejudice, Beaumont voices noxious imperialist ideology in blunt terms. He describes the Uganda Railway as serving “the glorious purpose of saving Africa from the Africans.” Through Beaumont’s character, Ghost acknowledges that Patterson’s work facilitates a “race” between European powers, where “the prize is nothing less than the continent of Africa.” Yet Ghost needs audiences to condone Patterson’s participation in this project and hope for his success. It must distinguish between the philosophies guiding Beaumont and Patterson. 21 Patterson reveals at one point that one of his parents was Protestant and one was Catholic, making him a neutral representative of a divided Ireland. 326 The environments with which these characters become associated, and their respective attitudes towards Africa, play an important role in making those distinctions. England privileges Beaumont, a self-described “monster,” while limiting Patterson due to his nationality. Ghost presents England as a less desirable environment than Africa. Early on, the audience learns that Patterson has always wanted to go to Africa. The exact reasons for his infatuation remain obscure, but it clearly offers something different from England and an escape from oppressive London. I use the generic label “Africa” because that is as specific as characters get when discussing the location, except when referring to the construction site at Tsavo. This might be to avoid confusion, as modern-day Kenya was not a recognized country at this point. However, as will be discussed later, it also creates a generic catch-all Africa better able to receive the fantasies of Western audiences. Ghost presents Africa as a lovely space, but for much of the film that loveliness is colored by the land’s dreadful qualities. It is a case similar to the locations discussed in Chapter Four. Like those films, Ghost uses its first shot to hint at the environment’s duality. Goldman’s score suggests a beating heart and creates a tense atmosphere. Ghost opens on the image of a field of long, golden grass waving in the wind (See Figure 5.2). These grass fields are important for the mechanics of Ghost’s horror. They function like the bodies of water in movies about aquatic predators. They are an attractive surface that conceals a threat that occasionally breaks the surface. In a shark film, it might be a ripple on the water’s surface or a dorsal fin cutting through the water. In Ghost, the lions are given away periodically when their tails or manes poke out of the grass. This opening shot foreshadows a feature of the land that becomes essential for later stalking sequences (See Figure 5.3). It also introduces the high-key lighting and warm 327 palette characterizing scenes set in Africa, and therefore much of the film. 22 Opening with this shot allows the audience to appreciate the difference between Africa and London, a setting characterized by low-key lighting and cool colors. Figure 5.2 & 5.3 – The Ghost and the Darkness opens on the golden tall grasses surrounding the work camp. Though attractive, this vegetation also provides cover for the lions as they stalk and hunt. Only two scenes at the beginning of Ghost take place in London. The first is set indoors. There is the faint ambient sound of rain throughout, and, as Patterson walks down a long, echoing corridor, the light on the walls comes through rain-streaked windows (See Figures 5.4). It gives the sense that the outside and inside are similarly dreary and gloomy. Patterson finds Beaumont in a formal meeting room, surrounded by maps of Africa and the world (See Figure 5.5). The second English location is an exterior scene, as Patterson’s wife sees him off on his journey. The scene takes place at night on a bustling street, lit dimly by gas lamps (See Figure 5.6). Horse-drawn carriages are in the background, and these harnessed animals are the only things in England that might be considered part of the natural world. These are otherwise entirely constructed environments. 22 In an interview, Zsigmond explains why the color timing in the film is “a bit on the warm side. I thought Africa should have a bit of yellow to it, but I also felt that would help with the period feel as it moves toward the sepia- tone” (Williams, D. 40). Zsigmond’s statement links both Africa and the past – two things that should be viewed through a nostalgic yellow lens. 328 Beaumont’s maps give a sense of how people like him relate to the world. Dennis Cosgrove describes maps as providing a means of knowing places remotely, “negating the time, discomfort and potential danger of travelling to see such things in person” (6). Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that a map approximates “God’s view of the world since its sightlines are parallel and extend to infinity” (123). It is a view divorced from history (122). Tuan puts this in contrast to the view of landscapes, which approximate “the human way of looking at the world” and which introduce a temporal dimension into the spatial perspective (123). Tuan notes that maps tend to Figures 5.4 – Patterson walks through long dark corridors, past rain- streaked windows in one of Ghost’s few British locations. Figure 5.5 – Patterson learns of his mission from Beaumont in a well- appointed meeting room decorated with multiple maps. Figure 5.6 – Before Ghost transitions to Africa for the remainder of its running time, it features a murky nighttime scene in London. The harnessed horses drawing carriages are the closest this exterior comes to natural elements. 329 concretize the constructed concepts of borders and nations (178). They give a nationalistic understanding of the world, encouraging “people to think of their countries as self-sufficient, discrete entities” (178). This is a view that appeals to Beaumont, whose maps are color coded to differentiate colonial territories. Beaumont is a nationalist, or at least a man who understands the nation as his means to wealth and power. From his control center in the imperial metropole, he hopes to monitor and exploit all sections of the world remotely. He uses his power to satisfy immediate pragmatic goals without worrying about long-term consequences. The space of Tsavo is introduced abstractly in this scene. Beaumont points to it on a map. The film provides a close- up on the name and flat rendering of the environment, then gives it an extra edge with a well- timed thunder clap (See Figure 5.7). When Beaumont does visit Tsavo late in the film, Patterson asks him if it was a pleasant journey. “How could it be?” asks Beaumont, “I hate Africa.” Beaumont prefers a relationship to these locations that is impersonal, detached, and pragmatic, in contrast to the genuine affection displayed by Patterson. In both London scenes, Patterson states his desire to leave England for Africa. To Beaumont, Patterson declares: “I love Africa. I’ve always wanted to go there.” In the company of his pregnant wife, Patterson is more reluctant to leave. She reminds him: “You’ve been desperate to see Africa all your life.” He concedes that he is “desperate to see Africa, but it’s just a place.” There is a clumsy repetition in their exchange. Before the film shows Africa, the characters Figure 5.7 – Before the audiences sees Tsavo, they are presented with a flat rendering of the space on a map. This rendering does little to capture the melodrama and visual spectacle of the location presented in the film. 330 emphasize Patterson’s desire to see Africa. This tacitly promises the audience an aesthetic treat. Patterson downplays Africa’s importance by describing it as “just a place,” but his wife reminds him of his higher calling: “You build bridges John, you have to go where the rivers are.” There is literal truth to this statement, but Ghost plays with the metaphorical connotations of building bridges and connecting locations. There is a sense that this humanitarian colonial agent can serve as a benign mediator for the awful English officials. He will bring to the colonies the fundamental good of modernization, which comes from Europe. The comment by Patterson’s wife about rivers suggests that Africa is a place where the wilderness needs to be overcome and bypassed. This is in contrast to England, where everything the audience sees has already been developed. With his wife’s blessing, Patterson walks into the steam emanating from the train. As soon as it obscures him, he reemerges from the steam into a daytime market scene in Africa. People wear brightly colored clothes and trade exotic goods (See Figure 5.8). Rapidly beating drums enter the soundtrack to accompany the mix of languages chattering in the background. The London street was bustling, but the details of that scene were confined to the background and not treated as serious subjects of interest. Ghost spends little time in this African city, but its presentation gives the scene more energy and showcases the setting as a worthwhile spectacle. After establishing the contrast between staid English cities and vibrant Africa ones, Ghost offers a different type of picturesque Africa as Patterson travels to the construction site. Another Figure 5.8 – Patterson goes directly from a dark street scene in England to a bustling market place characterized in part by its warm and bright color scheme. 331 colonial subject, a Scotsman named Angus (Brian McCardie), 23 meets Patterson at the station and promises him “the best seats on the train” for their journey. These turn out to be two seats on the front exterior of the train. This setup resembles a technique used in what Tom Gunning refers to as “early landscape films,” which were “shot by cameras mounted on the fronts of locomotives tracking into famous landscapes” (“Landscape” 36-37). The film uses the men’s train ride to justify a travelogue-like montage of attractive shots of African wilderness. This sight-seeing sequence aligns the audience with Patterson during his delighted first encounter with Africa, the object of his desire. This is the honeymoon before things go sour. During this sequence of twenty-six shots, Ghost employs an odd point-of-view. Four of these shots approximate Patterson’s perspective from the train, in that the camera tracks sideways with an unstable downward gaze, as if it were looking down from the train. These point-of-view shots are all of African wildlife. In moving and static shots, this sequence provides a greatest hits compilation of charismatic and iconic African animals: herds of wildebeest and antelopes, giraffes, hyenas, hippos, and elephants. Lions are one of the few notable animals missing, but they serve a specific function in the film. For most of the animals that Patterson and Angus see, Patterson offers some piece of amusing trivia. Angus marvels at Patterson’s already knowing so much about Africa, despite having just arrived. Patterson explains that his knowledge comes from his passion for and study of the continent. It grants him a degree of immediate authority over the land and its animals. That sense of domination is also supported by the varied perspectives used during this train sequence. 23 Angus is a devout Christian with a missionary impulse. Angus offers a joking characterization of his ultimate aim: “When I came here, I had one small goal: to convert the entire continent of Africa.” While this could come across as sinister, Angus is presented as cheerful, friendly, and comically buffoonish. He offers a sanitized version of the evangelical component of the colonial mission that was often destructive to indigenous peoples and their cultures. 332 Gunning argues that early landscape films utilizing trains altered the traditional criteria for picturesque landscapes. Landscapes no longer had to be distanced, static views of pristine nature (Gunning, “Landscape” 37). These films were about penetrative movements into nature, creating the sense of immersion referenced in Chapter Four. Gunning notes that these mobile train shots, which often kept the train tracks visible, foregrounded the ways that technology mediates modern landscapes (37). Landscapes can no longer be viewed as “a refuge from technology, but, in a complex manner, as its product” (37). Gunning cites Wolfgang Schivelbusch in arguing that the railroad created a new kind of landscape, one favoring a rapidly changing variety of sights over a contemplative view of a single location (41). The train shots give viewers “a fantasy of total visual dominance. It is our eyes, liberated from any visible body, that fly down the track, ‘swallowing up space’” (58, original emphasis). Riding on the train enables Patterson and the audience to consume these picture postcard sights of Africa rapidly. It represents the pleasing synergy of technology and nature, as technology benignly facilitates people’s pleasurable encounters with the wilderness. When the camera roams from Patterson and the train, it further emphasizes that sense of ownership. Many of the shots in this train sequence are not motivated by the men’s point-of-view from aboard the train. A pair of static time-lapse vista shots, showing how the day progresses and the clouds shift in the sky, bookend the sequence. 24 There are three wide landscape shots that actually feature the train. In two of these, the train is in the middle ground (See Figure 5.9). In the third, it is far off in the distance (See Figure 5.10). This liberated perspective, which can know the land from so many angles and from different temporal registers, can be understood as 24 A daytime time-lapse is the fourth shot in the sequence, following an initial shot of the train, a close-up of Patterson and Angus, and a moving shot of giraffes. The final shot in the sequence is a nighttime time-lapse that takes the film to black before introducing the camp. 333 approximating Patterson’s response to and understanding of the African landscape. This play with placements, perspectives, and time rates feeds into an important element in Ghost related to the significance of trains and modernization. It is through this element that Ghost tries to justify – at least partially – Patterson’s actions at the behest of the British Empire. Consider how Ghost initially presents the experience of train travel. Patterson enters a cloud of steam in London at night before reemerging into a daytime African market. A radical shift in time and place occurs in an instant. Ghost then presents the experience of riding on the train as a well-paced montage of attractive scenery and exotic animals. During this montage, the camera has free reign. Sometimes it seems tethered to Patterson and the train, but it can also go far afield on its own. Not only does the montage compress the time of travel, the time-lapse shots emphasize how a process that should take a long time can play out quickly. Ghost’s depictions of train travel simulate “the annihilation of space and time” that Schivelbusch argues characterized early nineteenth-century perceptions of train travel (10). This montage conveys to modern audiences the sense of wonder associated with an antiquated form of travel and technology. Figure 5.9 & 5.10 – As Patterson travels to Tsavo, there is a montage of attractive shots showing off the African landscape. Some of these shots are motivated by the character’s perspective, but in other shots the train upon which the characters are riding can be seen. The montage employs a liberated POV for the viewer’s benefit. 334 Ghost is set at the end of the nineteenth-century, and therefore falls outside of the time period to which Schivelbusch alludes. However, the Uganda Railway was something new in this part of Africa. It can therefore be understood as enabling modernity’s annihilation of time and space to occur in a new environment. When discussing the function of bridges, Patterson describes them in terms of their ability to foster connectivity that once seemed impossible. He says that bridges “bring land over water, bring worlds together.” That phrase, “bring worlds together,” suggests a sense of spatial annihilation, foreshadowing a future of interactivity and cosmopolitan globalism. 25 The train ride gives an exhilarating teaser of the utopic potentials of this railroad, once it is completed. That promise will help sustain Patterson through his trials. The work camp that this trip leads to is one of the key environment’s in Ghost’s spatial imagination. Mary Louise Pratt identifies “contact zones” as important spaces in the colonial imagination. Pratt explains that contact zones are often synonymous with ‘colonial frontier.’ But while the latter term is grounded within a European expansionist perspective (the frontier is a frontier only with respect to Europe), ‘contact zone’ is an attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect. (6-7) The camp functions as both a colonial frontier and a contact zone. It is a frontier because this is the outpost of modernity’s progress into the African hinterlands. The people are coming into contact with a wild and untamed world (dramatically represented by the lions) that they must 25 One article studies the Uganda Railway’s effects in conjunction with a study of the effects of introducing fiber- optic cables to East Africa in 2009. The article’s authors argue that both projects “fundamentally alter the ways in which parts of the East African region were connected to one another as well as to the wider world” (Graham et. al. 335). Even in academic forums, connections are drawn between this turn-of-the-century innovation and modern advancements in technological connectivity. 335 defeat. However, the camp is also a space in which various colonial subjects – the Irish and Scottish, Hindu and Muslim Indians, and Africans – are forced together. When Patterson arrives, these groups are in conflict. Workers eye Patterson with suspicion and Samuel explains: “The workers don’t like each other at all. Obviously, the Africans hate the Indians, but the Indians also hate other Indians!” Even the Europeans in the camp are skeptical. The British camp doctor does not share Patterson’s optimism. He declares the project “a sham. Who needs it? It’s ridiculous. It’s only being built to protect the ivory trade and make rich men richer.” Patterson brings these groups together when he kills a random lion that attacked a worker. This unity under strong leadership facilitates a period of great productivity, one in which all the men take pride in their work and share Patterson’s sense of the project’s potential worth and importance. The more serious lion attacks threaten to destroy the harmony Patterson creates. When the men stop working out of fear, Patterson comes into conflict with Abdullah (Om Puri). Patterson tries to assure Abdullah that he will kill the lions, keep the men safe, and build the bridge. “Of course you will,” Abdullah says. As Patterson turns to leave, Abdullah continues sarcastically: “You’re white. You can do anything.” At this, Samuel rolls his eyes. Samuel again serves to reassure white Western audiences that they should not feel guilty about this story. He works closely with the whites and knows their genuine good intentions. Though Samuel only offers silent exasperation, Patterson is patronizingly patient: “It would be a mistake not to work together on this thing, Abdullah.” Ghost casts Abdullah’s frustration not as a justified response to his European superior’s flippant dismissal of his concerns for worker safety. Abdullah is injecting unnecessary concerns about race and inequality into an already tense situation, thwarting Patterson’s efforts to create a harmonious working environment. Abdullah and Patterson will continue to butt heads throughout the film, and Abdullah will eventually lead the 336 workers in a walkout – as if these transplanted indentured laborers had the freedom to come and go as they please. In order to defeat the lions, Patterson must rely on the ever-loyal Samuel and Remington, who is himself a hybrid/cosmopolitan figure. An American, Remington travels around the world and works closely with Maasai warriors in his efforts to hunt lions. At the end of the film, Abdullah and the workers will return after the lions are killed. Signaling the end of tensions, Abdullah salutes Patterson, who returns the gesture graciously. The lion situation becomes the trial that must be overcome in order not only to complete the project, but also turn the disharmonious camp into a healthy contact zone. Through both their shared labor on this impressive project and their overcoming of a terrible obstacle, the men form productive relationships based on mutual respect. The contact zone of the camp allows Ghost to position itself as an anti-conquest narrative. Pratt describes these as stories of benign co-presence that allow “European bourgeois subjects… to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony” (7). Ghost’s version of Patterson fits the template of what Pratt describes as the “main protagonist of the anti-conquest… the ‘seeing-man’… the European male subject of European landscape discourse – he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess” (7). Whereas the real Patterson had an obsessive interest in knowing Africa’s wildlife through hunting and killing, this Patterson wishes simply to see the (good) local animals and possess them through knowledge of their predictable natural habits (See Figure 5.11). Figure 5.11 – In his journey to Tsavo, Patterson makes literal the trope of the “seeing-man.” 337 While Patterson’s efforts eventually turn the camp into a contact zone, Tsavo and the camp are introduced as highly unpleasant and hostile environments. Ghost establishes the camp with an extreme close-up on the long thorns of a bush (See Figure 5.12). The camera pans over to reveal Patterson and Angus on the train as it creeps through these thick, thorny bushes. The camp offers some level of visual pleasure. It is a striking setting full of bustling workers and impressively constructed sets, which Ghost shows off with a sweeping aerial shot (See Figure 5.13). C.S. Tashiro notes that historical films often present such “saturated frames” that strive to both “achieve a convincing image of history” while also showcasing “the production’s ability to gather and dress extras” and construct impressive sets (68). Undercutting the film’s indulgence in pure spectacle, Samuel informs Patterson: “Tsavo is the worst place in the world.” Samuel, an African, can disparage the land in this way without coming across as prejudiced. He is merely expressing an unavoidable fact. While the camp is an environment of dusty red earth, one can see green hills in the distance (See Figure 5.14). It suggests that there is something lovely further down the line. Samuel explains that tracks are being laid on the opposite side of the river at a rate of two miles a day. 26 All that is needed for the joyful train ride to continue on to those green mountains is Patterson’s bridge. Tsavo is a location that future travelers will be able to bypass quickly – it will be edited out of subsequent montages. 26 This off-hand comment suggests that construction and progress are carrying on at an otherwise smooth and efficient pace, undercutting the construction process’s high casualty rate. Again, the casualties associated with every two miles is equivalent to the number of people killed by the lions. Figure 5.12 – The audience’s first view of Tsavo as a physical location is a close-up shot on the thorny bushes surrounding the work camp. It creates an immediate negative impression of the location. 338 The sense that the surrounding location is an ideal area for leisure and tourism is subtly introduced in Patterson’s meeting with Beaumont. Along with the maps in the background, one can see an advertisement poster declaring: “The Highlands of East Africa – Winter Home for Aristocrats” (See Figure 5.15). This sense is further reinforced through the early presentation of Africa. Despite Patterson and Ghost viewing this land with the eyes of tourists, tourism is not the only enterprise for which the railroad paves the way. The Uganda Railway facilitated the displacement of African locals and the arrival of European settlers (Mwangi 163-164). Ghost acknowledges this implicitly through the fictionalized character of Patterson’s pregnant wife. With all of these constructed characters surrounding the actual historical figure of Patterson, it is worth asking what purpose they serve in the narrative. Giving Patterson a loving wife and child makes him a wholesome hero. It also introduces the element of a family that the patriarch must make safe in a potential new home. Figure 5.13 – An aerial shot of the work camp showcases the impressive scale of the constructed set. Figure 5.14 – Though the camp may be a grim location, attractive hills can be seen in distance. It suggests that there is something better waiting further down the line. 339 When Patterson departs for Africa, his wife suggests that she and their infant will come visit (join?) him in Africa, an intention she reiterates in a subsequent letter to Patterson. After the men drunkenly celebrate killing one of the lions, Patterson dreams about his wife and baby reaching the camp. As they arrive at the station, his wife’s white dress marks her as being out of place in the dusty red of the camp (See Figure 5.16). She represents a delicate and refined world. As Patterson races to meet them, he notices a lion’s tail flicking just above the surface of the grass fields surrounding the train station. Patterson screams a warning, but the lion leaps from the grass, tackling his wife and child to the ground before mauling them. In a hoary horror cliché, Patterson wakes to discover this was only a nightmare. However, as he leaves his tent, he finds that the remaining lion has killed Remington while he slept. Figure 5.15 – The poster in Beaumont’s office is a colorized version of an actual poster used to advertise the Uganda Railway and East Africa as a tourism destination. Note the wildlife coming to greet the tourists, including lions. Image Credit: “Uganda.” 340 Patterson’s dream serves as a subconscious reminder: as long as these lions exist, he has not performed his duty of making the land safe for vulnerable white women and children. After killing the final lion, Patterson’s wife and baby arrive at the camp for real. The déjà vu of the scene causes Patterson to survey the surrounding fields. This time they conceal nothing. They are just attractive seas of grass. Ghost demonstrates a modern awareness that colonialism was a destructive force, but it cannot avoid the elements of colonial nostalgia that come with its narrative. The film celebrates a project much deadlier in its execution than the central lion attacks. The Railroad seems like a benevolent project in the abstract, one bringing modernity, globalism, connectivity, and even equality. Patterson forms positive relations with a previously surly and disharmonious collection of Africans and Indians. However, the construction of the railroad was a brutal project paving the way for further abuses throughout the British Empire. Additionally, it facilitated the exploitation and colonization of the surrounding land. However, Ghost elides those facts. Ghost not only turns the Tsavo story into a benevolent anti-conquest narrative, it frames Patterson’s work as performing the essential task of using technology to tame the natural world and bring civilization. The film presents Africa not as a land scarred by the traumas of colonialism, but as a generic exotic wilderness space. At this point I shall address how Ghost and the discourse surrounding it frames the film’s shooting locations. Ghost’s sanitized treatment of Figure 5.16 – In Patterson’s dream, his wife and baby come to visit him at the camp. Dressed in white and given a halo by the light, his wife and child are pure figures in a dusty and unpleasant environment. 341 colonialism is especially unsavory, given that the legacies of colonialism impacted where the film could be shot. These legacies are still evident in the ways that people talk about and evaluate the locations used in Ghost and other films about the Tsavo Man-Eaters. A Wild Land When a film set in Africa shoots on location, it becomes a selling point for the film. Neither Men Against the Sun nor Killers of Kilimanjaro was well-received by critics. Yet in both cases, critics made positive mention of the films’ Kenyan settings. Kenya was available to these productions in part because they were British films and Kenya was still a colony. Monthly Film Bulletin’s describes Men’s narrative as a mess but adds that the “photography of the East African settings… is excellent” (“Men”, Monthly). The land becomes an exotic point of attraction in an otherwise unremarkable film. Picture Show also mentions that Men is “well photographed in authentic African backgrounds” (“Men”, Picture). Unlike a film that recreates Africa on a soundstage, these “authentic” backgrounds give the proceedings additional heft. Similarly, while critics savaged Killers, many praised the film’s visual spectacle. The reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune described the film as “a travelogue as well as an adventure picture,” adding that the shots of local wildlife “are not to be overlooked since they are a major item in a production dedicated to promoting a lame love story and an equally improbable basic situation” (J.P.). While the story itself disappoints, the visual spectacle of Africa, shot “boldly in CinemaScope and Eastman Color,” offers some redeeming value (J.P.). Others also identified the location as one of the primary pleasures in Killers, with Variety’s reviewer describing “the vicarious appeal of touring the dark continent via CinemaScope and technicolor” (Tube). While critics objected to the stereotypical and patronizing images in Killers, the use of the loaded term “dark continent” gives an antiquated sense of Africa as a mysterious and 342 dangerous land that Western audiences are lucky to glimpse, and a place in need of (Western) enlightenment. Monthly Film Bulletin suggests that it would be difficult for even inept filmmakers not to provide some visual satisfaction given the setting and technology available: “Technicolor and CinemaScope can hardly go wrong with safari shots backed by William Alwyn’s wide-prairie music” (“Killers”). All these reviews mention the specific technologies used to mediate these landscapes and turn them into a proper cinematic spectacle. While critics praised the authentic African settings of Men and Killers, Bwana Devil was criticized for not at least delivering the pleasures of seeing an exotic location in its full glory. Critics attacked virtually every aspect of Bwana, but its visuals received especially harsh notices. Many complaints were directed at the primitive 3-D technology, which produced a low-quality image 27 and made for an uncomfortable viewing experience. 28 The name of the stereoscopic process, “Natural Vision,” promises an image closer to life than other films, one that would give a sense of immersion – hence the tagline: “A lion in your lap… A lover in your arms.” It should also deliver a satisfying simulation of visiting the depicted land. Yet critics found that “the system is far from natural” (G.L.). Part of what was wrong with the visuals was the settings. Oboler not only got the story idea while on his African trip in the 1940s, he also shot footage that would later be incorporated into Bwana. His footage was shot on a conventional camera, four years before production on Bwana began (Brog). This African footage was used for rear projection process shots. While the foreground had a 3-D effect, the background lacked depth, creating an “uneven” effect (Crowther). Oboler defended his method, arguing: “once you get past around 35 to 40 feet in real life you have no [sense of] 3D” (Koszarski 22). However, 27 The New York Herald Tribune’s review likened the film to “watching action reflected in a pool of water into which stone after stone is dropped” (Gurnsey). 28 Monthly Film Bulletin warned: “the experience is tiring and may produce headaches” (G.L.). Variety’s reviewer complained that the “glasses are annoyingly uncomfortable and not easily kept on” (Brog.). 343 critics noted a disconnect between the foreground and background, which were “way out of visual synchronization” (Gurnsey). It is difficult to give viewers a sense of immersion when it appears that even the film’s characters are not on location. The African footage inserted into Bwana is a hodgepodge of material, including footage of wildlife and native peoples as well as landscape shots. The footage was also gathered in a variety of locations. Several countries blend together to create a generic version of East Africa. Bwana is upfront about its confused and confusing geography, with its opening credits proclaiming that Bwana was “Photographed and recorded in the Belgian Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and California.” Even the U.S. was used to craft Bwana’s Africa. Exteriors in Bwana that were not composite shots, and that therefore produced a more satisfying and realistic effect, were shot “in the San Fernando Valley and the Paramount Ranch in Malibu” (“AFI”). Hikers in California can still walk through “the grasslands of Africa” by going along Malibu’s “Bwana Trail,” where the film was shot (Randall 146). Some critics were unimpressed by Bwana’s attempt to make California play Africa. The New York Times’s Bosley Crowther complained that this “African adventure film… [was] photographed in very poor color in what appears to be the California hills.” Crowther implies that the film loses an exoticism that should be part of its appeal as an African adventure. A consensus emerges that the look of Bwana is too low-quality to recommend it, and part of that relates to its “African” locations, which appear too phony and too domestic. Ghost was celebrated for filming in Africa, but there are important levels of artifice to its presentation of authentic environments. As with Men and Killers, even critics with few positive things to say about Ghost praised the look of the film. This often meant celebrating not only the individuals considered responsible for the film’s aesthetic presentation, but also the 344 environments in which Ghost was shot. Many reviews single out the contributions of the “legendary” and “great” Vilmos Zsigmond (Irani; Linehar). Zsigmond’s reputation allows his contributions to be cited as lifting the rest of the film “above the ordinary” (Linehar). Critics’ repeated invocation of Ghost’s noteworthy cinematographer frame the visuals as the result of an artist’s vision. In addition to applauding Zsigmond’s work, many reviews make special mention of “the magnificent African scenery” and “the land’s rugged beauty” (Lacey; Klady). It suggests that the raw material Zsigmond had to work with was itself exceptional. Different critics frame the relationship between cinematographer and environment differently. Some write about the land as a work belonging to Zsigmond; Janet Maslin uses the possessive when describing the settings as “Zsigmond’s warmly beautiful African landscapes.” Others list the man and the land as equal, but distinct, collaborators. Cole Gagne mentions: “the film looks handsome, thanks to ace lensman Vilmos Zsigmond and the beautiful scenery of the Songimelvo Game Reserve in South Africa” (124). Phillip French, most likely referencing the early train journey described above, declares that Ghost looks “good in a travelogue way.” As with Killers, travelogues are invoked and provide a telling point of reference. Travelogues are non-narrative works offering visual pleasure by showcasing unfamiliar and attractive scenery. Though Ghost might not work on a narrative level, multiple reviews suggest that its display of African landscapes makes it a visual treat. Critics describe the land variously as “handsome,” “dramatic… epic,” and “exotic” (Carr; Linehar; Irani). The scenery provides a pleasure independent of the rest of the film. Those who describe these lands as if they were the possession or creation of a human artist are not far off the mark. A fair bit of manipulation, craftsmanship, and artifice were necessary to recreate turn-of- the-century Kenya. 345 Though the events in question take place in Kenya, Ghost was filmed primarily in South Africa. A production unit went to Kenya to collect “scenery and wildlife footage” to accompany Patterson’s arrival in the country (Williams, D. 37). The end result is a montage that feels disconnected from the narrative’s main events. The montage functions as a misdirect. The audience is presented with footage of Kenya before being taken to a constructed set in South Africa. There is nothing unusual about Ghost shooting in a location different from the narrative’s setting. All the texts analyzed in Chapter Four use this trick. Several logistical factors explain the production’s decision to bypass Kenya for South Africa. Independent Kenya had hosted major Hollywood productions in the past. Out of Africa (Pollack, 1985) was shot there almost a decade before Ghost. However, when Ghost’s producers looked into filming in Kenya, they faced “bureaucratic difficulties and political obstacles” (Askew 39). Kenya, not having a well- developed domestic film industry, also could not provide “the technical support [the production] needed” (Williams, D. 37). For years after Ghost chose not to film in Kenya, the country’s “lack of security and infrastructure” would continue to deter Western filmmakers from using it as a location (Dunn, K.). 29 In contrast to the logistical problems associated with Kenya, multiple factors made South Africa an attractive location. Even before the end of apartheid, independent American productions defied “the United Nations’ cultural boycott, the U.S. trade sanctions and the moral 29 To Walk with Lions (Schultz, 1999) filmed in Kenya and reports described it as a difficult and unpleasant experience: “Co-producer [Pieter] Kroonenburg is disenchanted by his experience in Kenya. ‘Security is inadequate,’ he says, ‘and the government’s promised financing has yet to materialize’” (Dunn, K.). The article describes Kenya as “one of Africa’s most corrupt countries,” and notes concerns about “deadly attacks by bandits against tourists in Kenya’s ungoverned parks” (Dunn, K.). The article references Ghost’s decision to avoid the country. As will be seen later in this chapter, framing Africa as a rewarding yet dysfunctional and perilous environment in which to shoot also factors into reporting on Ghost. 346 stigma” to shoot in South Africa (Robb 1). 30 The incentives were obvious: “year-round sunshine, varied spectacular scenery, and a weak currency” (Matloff). When apartheid ended in 1994 and the boycotts were lifted, South Africa was eager to attract foreign productions. South Africa’s Film Commission offered Ghost’s producers “generous tax concessions and a great welcome” (Askew 39). Unlike Kenya, South Africa had a production infrastructure in place, offering access to cheap local equipment and crew (Williams, D. 36). The only problem was that Ghost needed to compete for those resources against other foreign productions rushing to shoot in South Africa at the same time (36). 31 As referenced above, along with the financial and material incentives came a bonus from the natural world. With South Africa reopening to global markets, it emerged as a viable host for international film productions. This opened up a range of new environments to filmmakers. An American Cinematographer article highlighting Zsigmond’s work describes how “the recent dismantling of apartheid in South Africa has created a new gateway to the majestic landscapes… located in the previously boycotted nation” (Williams, D. 34). Ghost became “one of the first Hollywood productions to take advantage of this location opportunity” (34). That novelty caused many reviewers and promotional pieces at the time to alert viewers to the fact that Ghost, which was set in Kenya, was really shot in South Africa. This information would not have been impossible for viewers to access if reporters and critics had not called attention to it. Ghost lists its filming locations at the conclusion of its end credits. However, the small number of viewers who would see that would only be able to apply that information to Ghost in retrospect. By 30 Producers would publicly deny this fact, claiming that they had not used South African money and had shot in other African countries (Robb 1, 76). Cannon Group, Inc. was “one of the leaders in shooting films in [apartheid] South Africa” (Robb 1). Among their films shot in South Africa were American Ninja (Firstenberg, 1985) and Mercenary Fighters (Nissimoff, 1988), which landed star Peter Fonda on the U.N.’s Blacklist (Robb 1). 31 Zsigmond explained: “as South Africa is a very popular place to shoot right now, we lost a lot of the local crew people we hired, especially in the lighting department, to other shows” (Williams, D. 36). 347 making the location a factor in selling the film, viewers were primed to watch Ghost with a conscious sense of how it plays with locations. And the use of South Africa was a selling point. This was an exciting opportunity for viewers. Ghost was not only showing viewers attractive African landscapes; these were a particular set of landscapes that people might have felt were off-limits from an ethical perspective previously. It was now morally acceptable to enjoy these landscapes. Ghost could even be seen as a reward to South Africa for doing the right thing in terms of race relations. However, this particular film’s engagement with colonialism complicates its presence in, and use of, post-apartheid South Africa. Reports explain that Kenya was dismissed as a filming site because it was underdeveloped, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Those infrastructural problems can be understood as symptoms and consequences of a long period of European colonization. Kenya was ruled by a destructive system, facilitated by the Uganda Railway. So, when Ghost wanted to recreate (and celebrate) the Uganda Railway a century later, Kenya could not support its production because it was still unstable. South Africa’s apartheid system can be understood similarly as a malignant legacy of colonialism. The end of apartheid signaled an important break from the past, one opening up South Africa to the international community. Ghost used that progressive development to come to South Africa and reenact the continent’s colonial past, and an important moment in the development of colonialism in Africa. David Williams begins his American Cinematographer article by explaining that American cinema has a tradition of evoking Africa as an exotic location but shooting on soundstages or in the environs surrounding Los Angeles (34). Williams cites Tarzan, The Ape Man (Van Dyke, 1932) to illustrate how early Hollywood films could create a fantasy Africa without ever going to the actual location (34). This also applies to Bwana Devil and many of the 348 “animal pictures” referenced in the Introduction. Citing films like African Queen (Huston, 1951), Out of Africa, and White Hunter Black Heart (Eastwood, 1990), Williams declares: “Those producers that have braved the adversity of Africa’s landscapes have been regularly rewarded with spectacular images” (34). Williams suggests that venturing beyond those domestic and controlled spaces and into Africa comes with heightened risks (it brings adversities that must be “braved”), but offers great rewards. Indeed, several reports on Ghost’s production focus on the dangers posed to cast and crew by natural conditions and local wildlife. 32 As with The Grey, these reports lend an aura of authenticity to this adventure narrative. However, using that kind of rhetoric in relation to Canada carries different implications from those invoked when applying it to South Africa. David Williams’s description suggests uncomfortable parallels between how Africa is framed in discussions of Ghost’s production and the kinds of discourse one might associate with colonialism. Though motivated by financial concerns, those involved in the production are presented as assisting locals benevolently. Michael Douglas, who produced Ghost as well as starring, describes how: “The nice thing about movies on location is that they drop a lot of money in very strange places with no pollution. You drop a lot of money in an area that really needs or appreciates it, and then you’re gone” (Cohen, D.). Douglas characterizes the location as exotic – presumably he means that it is “very strange” in relation to the United States. He also 32 Several sources mention the troubles created by heavy rains, which caused a river near the filming site to flood (Cohen, D.; Churchill; Askew 52). One source quotes Hopkins referencing “several deaths of crew members, including two drownings” (Dawes). While other sources cite the weather problems, it is difficult to find sources confirming this vague claim of fatalities during the production. While the trained lions on set were no problem, wild hippos in the nearby river are cited as a source of concern (Cohen, D.; Churchill). Hippos are a comic feature in Patterson’s journey to Tsavo. Patterson tells Angus that they fart through their mouths and makes a joke about them kissing over a shot of a yawning hippo. While hippos are a non-factor in this tale of deadly lions, hippos are exceptionally dangerous. One report notes: “attacks by lions on humans are quite rare. Fewer than 100 people are killed by lions each year” (Lawler). In contrast, “the hippopotamus is the world’s deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year in Africa” (“What are the world’s”). 349 suggests that the production is doing a massive favor to the shooting location, as if the film will have no material or symbolic consequences. Descriptions of the threats posed by weather and wild animals suggests that this part of Africa remains undeveloped (Cohen, D.; Churchill). These descriptions suggest that modern Africa is not far removed from the Africa presented in Ghost. Yet when Westerners come to Africa, it can yield great riches. In the case of colonialism, those riches might be literal material wealth and resources. For the producers of Ghost, those riches are the visual treasures of striking environments. Even as the press heralds the South African identity of Ghost’s landscapes, the environment must be transformed to create the proper illusion. Filming took place in the Songimvelo Game Reserve in the North Eastern Transvaal, near the eSwatini border. 33 An important part of getting the period details right involves a faithful recreation of built human structures. Production designer Stuart Wurtzel planned and oversaw construction on the “key sets – a railroad station, the bridge and a small town” (Williams, D. 37). Variety’s Leonard Klady congratulates Wurtzel for having “seamlessly recreated a 19 th Century Africa that feels vital” (87). However, in addition to those built sets, the surrounding land needed to be altered. Kelly Askew describes the basic topographic challenge facing the production in this way: “the rolling hills of South Africa’s northern Transvaal” had to be turned into “the rich clay soils and savanna plains of Kenya” (32). Zsigmond describes how “more than a square mile of land around [the set] had to be planted with trees and bushes transported in from a long distance away. This was a lot of work and very expensive, but being there added tremendous texture to the film that we never would have had anywhere else” (Williams, D. 37). Zsigmond adds the caveat that Kenya, which might have provided that texture more naturally, was not a viable 33 That puts it roughly 1700 miles from the location of the original incident. 350 option for the reasons described above (Williams, D. 37). Zsigmond’s description only hints at the crew’s bizarre labors. Askew details how the Greens Department cultivated the land: Tens of thousands of dollars were spent in hand-planting ten acres of tall savanna grass and additional acreage of thornbush scrub. After trucking in and transplanting six eight- ton truckloads of thornbushes every day for six weeks, the local variety was deemed not thorny enough (compared to the Tsavo variety), so the Greens crew painstakingly glued on additional rubber thorns. An acacia tree [a stereotypical requirement for any film set in East Africa] had to be procured…. Acacia trees are few and far between in the Transvaal. One was finally found and delivered by helicopter together with an avocado tree purchased from Afrikaner retiree Marie Coetsee. The film purchased her tree for 1000 South African rand (275 U.S. dollars at that time), but then paid $36,000 to helicopter it and the acacia to the set! Countless truckloads of rich red clay soil were brought in to cover up the sand gray soil of Songimvelo (50-51). 34 Askew describes an impressive endeavor, one executed with an anal-retentive attention to detail. Still, the recreation is imperfect. Askew explains: “liberties were taken with ‘accuracy,’ yet justified on the basis of not being too far off the mark” (52). Askew suggests that the treatment of the landscape was “part of a larger investment in surface realism that shaped [Ghost] in all its phases” (50). Tashiro notes that historical films often try to use the scale of what they do recreate to “mask the necessarily partial representation” (69). The end result might 34 In a footnote, Askew further details the specific costs of all these elements: “The actual amounts in South African rand (the rate of exchange was $1 = R3.6) were as follows: R34,000 for thorn trees; R27,000 for replanting them; R50,000 for red soil; R9,000 for grass; R3,500 for the avocado tree (price of acacia tree unknown); R130,000 to deliver trees by helicopter” (64). In regard to the avocado tree, Askew’s numbers are off. In the primary text, she suggests that the avocado tree was R1000 ($275), while in the footnote she claims it was R3500 ($970). Based on the numbers Askew provides in her footnote, it suggests the production spent about R253,500 ($70,416) on treating the surrounding land. Askew puts the budget at $80 million (32). Though the Greens Department spent a significant amount of money, this would only constitute 0.09% of the overall budget according to Askew’s figures. 351 be a South African landscape with selective Kenyan flourishes, but if one can appreciate the impressive work that has been done to make the area around the camp look right, one can perhaps forgive the film for the fact that the workcamp seems topographically at odds with its surroundings. In essence, the film “depends either on an inadequate knowledge or on a tacit agreement with the viewer not to recognize the deficiencies of re-creation” (Tashiro 70). Not all viewers will be willing to go along with this illusion. Klaus de Albuquerque experienced a sense of spatial confusion in response to the mash-up, writing: “this was not the Tsavo I remembered. The rock outcrops were different, the vegetation too green. There were none of the familiar anthills or solitary baobabs” (48). At the same time, de Albuquerque concedes: “to geographically clueless audiences, anything that looks remotely grassland, qualifies as African savannah” (48). As de Albuquerque describes it, Ghost presents a generic landscape that reads broadly as African to the uninformed. This confused and generic topography matters because unique ecological factors contributed to the killings. Goldman inserts into the script the notion that a malevolent love of killing motivates the lions, rather than hunger. The script even suggests that there might be a supernatural component to their actions. Samuel explains in his voiceover: “Some thought they were not lions at all, but the spirits of dead medicine men come back to spread madness. For others, they were the devil, sent to stop the white man from owning the world.” 35 Samuel’s phrasing is curious, though it fits his role as an apologist and booster for colonialism. It suggests that only a demonic force would have an interest in stopping the progress taking place in Tsavo. 35 This detail seems drawn directly from Patterson’s account. Patterson explains: “the workmen firmly believed that they were not real animals at all, but devils in lions’ shape.” Others thought them to be “the angry spirits of two departed native chiefs… [seeking] to protest against a railway being made through their country, and by stopping its progress to avenge the insult thus shown to them.” This explanation also supports a reading of the lions as anti- modernity/colonial agents. 352 It also presents an interpretation of the lions as radically opposed to the process of modernization and colonialism (which are closely linked in Ghost’s presentation). Samuel does not state whether he accepts these explanations, but he does declare the lions “evil.” That sense of evil spills over onto the land. Samuel, who describes Tsavo as “the worst place in the world,” asks: “what better place for evil to walk than Tsavo? Because this is what the word Tsavo means: a place of slaughter.” What Ghost never addresses is the fact that the environmental conditions in Tsavo, which made it an ideal place for these attacks, were caused by colonialism and the exploitation of Africa’s peoples and resources. Askew references the obsessive work that went into making the bushes surrounding the camp sufficiently thorny. These bushes were an important part of the Tsavo environment and they provided ideal cover for the ambush tactics of the lions (Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske 21- 22). They allowed the lions to take their prey unaware and escape before being shot. As mentioned earlier, Ghost foregrounds these unpleasant thorn bushes when Patterson arrives at camp, and they periodically become a factor in the story – as when the men attempt to use the bushes to construct barricades around the camp. Ghost also makes an offhand reference to the ivory trade in Africa, when the bitter doctor dismisses the railroad as cynically motivated. What Ghost does not make clear is that the thorn bushes were unusually thick at the time of the railroad’s construction because of the ivory trade. Elephants would normally thin out the thorn bushes, but elephants had been effectively eliminated from the area due to overhunting (22). The absence of elephants meant more thorn bushes. This not only provided the lions cover for stalking, it also meant that grazing ungulates, which would normally make up a significant part of the lions’ diet, could not thrive in this environment (3). As a result, the lions needed to find alternative food supplies. Even without the unusually thick thorn bushes, ungulates would have 353 been scarce for two additional reasons. Nearby swamps that would have provided an important water source were drained in order to reduce the risk of malaria outbreaks during construction (24). Additionally, the ungulate population in sub-Saharan Africa had been almost eradicated by an epidemic of the rinderplast virus, which was introduced and spread by European colonizers (Sunseri). 36 The route taken by the project was also a contributing factor. The railroad was constructed along paths already worn through these thick thorn bushes. These paths were created by slave caravans traveling through the region (Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske 9). These caravans would abandon the dead, dying, or infirm along the path, which offered an easy food option for predators (9). As the railroad appropriated these caravan lines, it left its own trail of casualties due to poor conditions. Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske argue that social predators, like lions, have their own forms of culture. An understanding of food sources and hunting grounds would be among the information and practices solidified and passed on in these predatory cultures (2). Generations of lions in the area became used to the notion that easy prey could be found in this part of an otherwise inhospitable land. Indeed, for years after the railroad’s construction, sources record incidents of lions returning to the line to attack trains and pull people from carriages (35). The issue is not that Ghost fails to communicate this information directly via exposition- laden dialogue. Ghost’s presentation actively makes it appear that these are not issues. Despite the doctor’s comment about the ivory trade, the audience sees many elephants and ungulates during Patterson’s initial journey. Later, when the men stalk the lions through a dense grove of 36 Thaddeus Sunseri notes that it is difficult to pinpoint when rinderplast came to Africa, as the 1880s epidemic occurred during the early stages of germ theory. Sunseri adds: “there is no reason to assume that there was a single source of the epizootic at a time when competing colonial militaries provisioned their expeditions into Africa, often through Aden and other Arabian ports.” Probable sources include the Italian military bringing cattle into Ethiopia and the British and Germans bringing cattle into East Africa. Sunseri notes that rinderplast’s devastation of livestock weakened the Maasai, facilitating the advancement of British colonizers, and driving Africans to seek work on the Uganda Railway. 354 trees, a zebra startles them by bursting out of the vegetation. It suggests that there are plenty of viable prey animals in the area – the lions’ tendency to eat people becomes a matter of sadistic pleasure. Additionally, the thorns and dry earth seem to be exclusively around the construction site, as opposed to the prevailing condition of the land. Patterson and Remington find the lions’ ghoulish den nestled amidst the lush green hills near the camp. If the conditions of the land were captured, it would turn the lions from (possibly supernatural) thrill killers into a pair of standard predatory animals driven by environmental pressures. Alternatively, the nature of the surroundings would give new resonance to the notion that these animals are radical anti-colonial agents. Instead, they become evil but generic lions in a generic African setting. The physical appearance of the lions matters because it reflects (or in this case obscures) how environments shape living creatures. If viewers took Samuel’s direction and visited the Field Museum, they would notice that both lions lack manes. The mane is an iconic feature of male lions; Deirdre Jackson describes the mane as “the lion’s most distinctive feature” (49). Yet mature male lions in Kenya’s Tsavo Region do not have them. While the precise purpose of the mane remains unclear, scientists suggest that manes have beneficial functions, including attracting females and intimidating other males (Patterson et. al. 193). Those advantages come with tradeoffs. Manes “entail growth and maintenance, make lions more conspicuous to prey and cumbersome in maneuvering, harbor parasites, and impede heat exchange” (193). In a hot, arid region like southeastern Kenya, manes would overheat the lions and make it difficult to navigate the region’s thick thorn bushes. 37 Why does the mane seem so central to the appearance of lions? Because the lions that the public tends to see are in captivity: they are at the zoo or they are trained animals appearing in 37 Supporting the notion that local conditions determine appearance, Deirdre Jackson notes: “An East Tsavo lion will sprout a full mane if transplanted to a less arid environment” (52) 355 the media. Lions in captivity not only have manes, their manes are unusually large. A variety of factors might explain why: “Better nutrition, higher testosterone levels, less abrasion or wear, and strong climactic effects… could all contribute to this difference” (Patterson et. al. 196). In practical terms, if a film like Ghost wants to feature real lions, at least partially, the easiest option is to use lions with manes. What audiences see is not a lion shaped by a hard-scrabble existence in the wild, but one formed through careful management by people. This pragmatic decision carries symbolic and ideological resonance. These are no longer specific lions; rather, they are the platonic ideal of Lions. I would not argue that there is anything wrong with this in an abstract sense. Reflecting on why Ghost was not more successful, Goldman speculates: “the time was wrong. Not the time of year when it was released, I mean the time for lions. In our long history, perhaps no other animal has had such graph changes. From being vermin to being gods. Now is a cutie-pie stage. Born Free and The Lion King. I don’t think the audience wanted much to hear about these two monsters that shredded so many lives” (95, original emphasis). In theory, a narrative like Ghost could serve as a correction or alternative to the “cutie-pie” image of lions – a reminder that these are formidable predators deserving respect, not stuffed toys. The problem is that lions are iconically associated with the African continent, as well as with notions of sovereignty and power. 38 It becomes troubling to have these symbols of Africa being destroyed in a narrative about the continent’s conquest. Ghost’s treatment of the landscapes is similar to its treatment of the lions. Ghost does not use the actual location, and the location it uses has been made to resemble the actual location only in a superficial and partial sense. In terms of its flora, fauna, and topographic details, the 38 Jackson explains that “the symbolic association of lions with kingship [dates] back millennia,” going as far back as the eighth century BCE (74). In parts of Africa “lions were connected with kingship…. Lion skins, manes and teeth were incorporated into royal regalia and African rulers were identified with the lion through their titles” (119). Europeans, including the British, also adopted lions as symbols of the state and the monarchy. 356 environment shown on screen differs from the actual location in important ways. Ghost either changes or fails to acknowledge the conditions that contributed to the actual incident and that reflected the detrimental impact colonial activities had on the environment. What one gets in Ghost is not far removed from the effect in Bwana Devil. Bwana features a compilation of images taken from different parts of Africa, supplemented with footage shot in the U.S. From scene-to-scene, the location in the background might be radically different. In Ghost, elements of different landscapes are overlain in a single image. In the foreground, the characters stand in the dusty, thorny terrain of Tsavo. Meanwhile, one can see the verdant veldt of South Africa in the background. The effect is similar: a generic version of Africa, a single location that represents multiple parts of the massive continent by smashing disparate elements together. Ghost enhances that effect by having characters repeatedly refer to the location simply as “Africa.” Arguably, Ghost goes even farther and makes its Africa a stand-in for any number of untamed wildernesses. It becomes not a specific location, perhaps not even a specific continent, but rather a quintessential representation of Nature. In the same sense, Ghost might be thought of as not recreating an actual event. Instead it offers a myth about the benevolent conquest of the natural world by the forces of modernization. Framing Ghost as a mythic confrontation between the natural world and the forces of civilization fits the rhetoric surrounding the construction of the Uganda Railway. As discussed above, defenders positioned the railroad as emblematic of civilization, and argued that it would civilize the surrounding land (Ruchman 262). Yet the wilderness was not going down without a fight. After the line’s completion, Winston Churchill, a booster for the Railway, celebrated the achievement in a public statement that positioned the African wilderness as a constant threat to progress: “Every clearing is intensely overgrown with sinuous plants. But for the ceaseless care 357 with which the whole line is scraped and weeded it would soon become impassable. As it is, the long fingers of the encroaching forest are everywhere stretching out enviously towards the bright metals” (Graham et. al. 341). Churchill endows the natural elements of the land with malignant intent, in a way not dissimilar to Samuel’s insistence that Tsavo itself is an evil place. Ghost uses the Tsavo narrative to dramatize that dynamic with something more extreme than creeping vegetation. An important part of Ghost is the implication that Patterson’s bridge would be a massive benefit to the local people and a benign element in the natural land. When things seem most hopeless, Remington laments to Patterson: “It would have been a beautiful bridge.” He says this as the men stand together in the golden grass, the green hills in the background. Remington describes how Patterson’s bridge is “just such a pretty design, and the setting’s so beautiful.” Patterson’s bridge would be a complement to the land’s aesthetic charms. It makes the lions’ vindictive attacks seem especially unnecessary. Nature has no need to rebel – it should simply accept the addition. After Remington is killed and the golden grasses are stained an ugly red, Patterson loses his composure (See Figure 5.17). When the lion roars as they burn Remington’s remains, Patterson takes a stick from the fire. Samuel follows his lead and the two men set the grass (the remaining lion’s cover) ablaze (See Figure 5.18). Patterson stands on the half-completed bridge with his gun in hand, framed by the burning fields, waiting for the lion to emerge for their final confrontation. As already described, by the end of the film these lovely grass fields seem unaffected by Patterson’s destructive outburst. Figure 5.17 – After the lions kill Remington, the attractive grasses around the train track are stained an ugly red. 358 The impression that nature wants to stop the progress of modernization, that elements of the natural world inevitably butt heads with the civilized world, is an important feature in the Tsavo case. I argue it is what makes the Tsavo case resonate and persist through the years. Adaptations of Patterson’s story typically feature the pair of lions and the African location, elements supporting an interpretation of this story as a work of colonial nostalgia. But the other essential components in any Tsavo adaptation are the engineer protagonist and the railroad construction project. The action in Ghost plays out around a railhead cutting through an otherwise undeveloped land. Behind the scenes, humans have manicured the land carefully. In the diegesis, however, the only signs of human activity are the railroad and the work camp. When the lions use the surrounding vegetation to stalk and kill those trying to complete this project, it becomes a dramatic incident of Nature and Civilization meeting and clashing. I capitalize Nature and Civilization because what Ghost presents are iconic visualizations of those concepts. In the same sense that cinematic texts lend weight to a particular vision of the past through vivid reenactments, they can concretize imprecise and ephemeral concepts like Nature and Civilization. What does it mean to refer to Nature, as opposed to Civilization? While “nature” has numerous connotations and definitions, in this sense it means “all that [is] not man: all that [is] not touched by man, spoilt by man: nature as the lonely places, the wilderness” (Williams, R. 291). In contrast, Civilization can be understood as designating the domain of the human. The imprecise binary laid out here resembles the distinction between Human and Figure 5.18 – In anger, Patterson sets the lion’s cover on fire. Despite Patterson’s destructive tactic, the land appears unaffected by the film’s conclusion. 359 Animal. Trying to divide Nature and Civilization neglects the important ways those categories interact with and shape each other. Human imagination influences what people identify as nature or natural. Many critics agree: “The very notion of nature is a cultural construct” (Gibson 75). There is a conceptual element to that construction, but there is also a physical component to the construction of nature. Raymond William observes: “a considerable part of what we call natural landscape… is the product of human design and labour, and in admiring it as natural it matters very much whether we suppress that fact of labour or acknowledge it” (292). Raymond Williams comes at the topic from a Marxist perspective, and he takes issue with the way that “nature” becomes a refuge from industry enjoyed primarily by the privileged elites who pollute and exploit nature (294). It is not just class-determined labor that goes into crafting a distinct space designated as “natural.” Violence has been used to create many of these largely human-free realms. In bringing up the way Ghost constructs a sense of the natural world, I am not interested in accusing it of faking nature. That antiquated charge carries the dubious implication that “there is a real nature ‘out there’ that can somehow be brought ‘in here’ – into the film” (Ivakhiv 205, original emphasis). It is inevitable in the modern world that civilization and nature blend together and become imprecise hybrid concepts. However, it is important to consider how Ghost conceals that hybridity to give a sense of a purely natural realm. As with the ways Ghost changes the conditions of the land, this background operation has ideological significance. In order to unpack the effect, it is worth considering precisely where in South Africa the production shot. Where did the crew go not only to give the sense of an unpeopled natural world, but the natural world as it existed a century ago? 360 The settings in historical films lend credence to their recreations of the past. Well- executed settings bring the past alive in the same way that quality period costumes and props might. These environments function as tools for the creation and maintenance of public memory. The roles played by settings are most notable in relation to human structures. Perhaps a film artfully recreates old structures through practical or digital special effects. Perhaps a film shoots in a well-maintained building or neighborhood that has changed little over the years. In Ghost, one sees this effect in the scenes set in London or in the design of the railroad and the work camp. In the case of Ghost, however, the filmmakers must also simulate the natural world as it appeared in the past. In order to do this, they use an area where the progress of human development is meant to have stopped, an area ostensibly cut off from the human world: a nature preserve. Many Animal Attack films make use of temporal enclaves as sites of horror. Rob Nixon describes the temporal enclave as a “timeless island” set apart from modernity and progress (178). Animal Attack films tend to favor scenarios where humans are stranded in an area too far removed from civilization for them to get help. Chapter Four was full of examples of this kind of scenario. Several Animal Attack films play out in national parks 39 , a setting that gives the proceedings a dimension they might not have if the action simply took place in a random stretch of wilderness. These parks are environments designated for human protection and purposefully maintained as seemingly timeless spots, in part for the pleasure of leisure-seeking tourists. The idea of that plan backfiring in a spectacular way gives a perverse dimension to the standard proceedings of an Animal Attack film. Ghost both does and does not take place in such an environment, having been produced in a protected game reserve but not identifying it as such. 39 Examples include Grizzly (Girdler, 1976), Mosquito (Jones, 1995), and Backcountry (MacDonald, 2015) 361 Nature preserves and national parks serve valuable ecological functions, but their legacies are complicated by the colonial violence often involved in their establishment. Many of these locations were home to indigenous peoples, who were forced to relocate (Nixon 245; Buell, L. 67). Rob Nixon notes that, in South Africa, there is a “history of [African people] being territorially dislodged by game lodges and other conservation projects that, while modest in relation to the country’s broader history of forced removal, nonetheless created, under the banner of wildlife conservation, dispossessed conservation refugees” (182, original emphasis). Songimvelo, where Ghost was filmed, is implicated in this process. Songimvelo was formerly part of KaNgwane, a semi-independent territory set aside by South Africa’s apartheid government for the Swazi people (Shevlin). It was used as farmland until 1986, when the South African Nature Foundation took over and displaced its residents (Ramutsindela 64). As a result, “almost the entire park is currently subject to land claims” (Shevlin). In many ways, the goals and accomplishments of areas like Songimvelo are laudable. Songimvelo is Swati for “taking care of nature,” and South Africa is an important place for such endeavors (Shevlin). Nixon notes that South Africa is only surpassed by Brazil and Indonesia in terms of the richness of its biodiversity (175-176). One report notes that Songimvelo’s “long and diverse history of small-scale cropping and livestock… led to the virtual disappearance of wild herbivores and carnivores by 1985. Since the inception of the reserve in 1986, a total of 20 species of large herbivores has been reintroduced” (Stalmans et. al. 390). Songimvelo now offers an important home for wildlife, including critically endangered species (Shevlin). Yet these positive developments depended on the expulsion of marginalized people. It is an uncomfortable truth that the costs of conversation are often unevenly distributed, with disenfranchised people being forced to make concessions for the sake of the non-human. In the case of nature preserves, the issue is 362 compounded by the fact that the expulsion of locals paves the way for the space to become an exclusive site for the privileged. It allowed Songimvelo to play host to foreign film producers seeking to capture a sense of ‘authentic’ African wilderness. Songimvelo can also accommodate tourists hoping to escape briefly into the ahistorical natural world. Compared to other nearby reserves, Songimvelo is relatively undeveloped for tourism (“The Saddleback”). Ironically, what development it does have is partially the result of Ghost’s efforts to present it as an uninhabited space. One report profiling Songimvelo as a tourist destination notes: “We have to thank Hollywood… if it weren’t for [The Ghost and the Darkness], there wouldn’t be anywhere to sleep at Songimvelo. The guest camp at Kromdraai was built to house the film crew during the shoot and they left it behind for us all to use” (Shevlin). Ghost’s development of the undeveloped land made it easier for people to come and spend time in this unpeopled environment. I describe these preserves as offering tourists an escape into the natural world. Nixon differentiates this from the notion that these reserves offer an escape into the past – a time before human development (184). Nixon explains: “To enter this refuge is to enter a charmed space that is segregated, among other things, from the history of its own segregation” (184). These are spaces superficially divorced from the politics, inequities, and violence necessary for their creation. They exemplify Raymond Williams’s argument that the ‘natural’ is a construct that obscures realities of inequity. That makes Ghost’s use of the land to recreate the past, and a loaded past at that, especially interesting. Songimvelo does not presume to present the world as it was at a specific moment in the past. It is not framed as though one were entering an area frozen in time at the moment of the site’s dedication. If that were the case, Songimvelo would be only a decade removed from when Ghost began filming. Yet there is a vague sense that development in this area has been retarded 363 or stopped. Thanks to human intervention, one is getting a sense of this land as it might have existed before human development. It serves as an option for recreating the natural world of the past largely because of how modern people think about nature preserves – as spaces cut off from the march of history. Conclusion The production of The Ghost and the Darkness ran from November 1995 to March 1996 (Askew 62n12). Kelly Askew, an anthropologist, was enlisted to be the primary handler for the Samburu people that the production flew in from Kenya. They would be playing the Maasai warriors in the film, since the Maasai “do not travel from their homeland” (Williams, D. 41). Askew met them at the airport on 14 December 1995 (40). Right away, Askew reports that there were issues. She felt the uncomfortable aftereffects of apartheid as the South Africans they encountered treated the Samburus as if they were exotic objects. There were “problems with people – on set and off – treating [the Samburus] like inanimate objects by posing for pictures with them without their permission. Our complaints on this matter led to the release of a production-wide memo reminding everyone that the Samburu were guests of the production and deserved the highest respect” (59). Co-producer Grant Hill sent that sensitivity memo out to all the cast and crew on 16 December 1995 (Askew 65n42). 16 Dec. also marked the first meeting of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It is ironic that The Ghost and the Darkness was being filmed while one of the great dramas of public memory was beginning to play out in the same country. In 1996, South Africa began to hold its Truth and Reconciliation hearings. The goal of these proceedings: was to place in historical context what happened in Southern Africa in the period 1960- 1994. In a continental context, this represented the last great chapter in the struggle for 364 African decolonisation [sic]. In a South Africa-specific context, it was the climactic phase of a conflict that dated back to the mid-seventeenth century, to the time when European settlers first sought to establish a permanent presence on the subcontinent. (“Volume” 25) The Commission bracketed everything that had occurred before the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. However, it acknowledged that the groundwork for the violence of apartheid was laid in 1652 with the importation of the first slaves (25). Katherine Mack notes that the Commission’s ostensible aim was to create “an official memory of the period under consideration” (133). Essentially, they sought to provide a reliable account of “a contentious and painful history” (Mack, K. 133). Ultimately, the Commission did not offer a definitive account that could satisfy all people and put the past to rest. They created instead a “‘contentious debate’ about the past” (134). They allowed the people of South Africa to “engage in and do public memory,” something crucial for a nascent democracy (138). The Commission was aiming to, and succeeded in, engaging the past to help ensure the nation’s future. At the same time, Ghost was manipulating one of the country’s nature preserves in an attempt to recreate the past and obfuscate colonial misdeeds. Ghost is a striking and understudied postcolonial text. The representations it offers are not so very different from the first retellings of the Tsavo story almost a century prior to its production. Yet Ghost is doing more than trying to excuse an ugly past. It tries to construct a natural world that is historical and ahistorical, an embodiment of the abstract alterity of a wilderness that exists in contrast to, and sometimes in conflict with, modernity and civilization. The protected physical land of Songimvelo in South Africa becomes a resource open to manipulation by foreigners in order to create this illusion. 365 The way Ghost uses this space reveals important contradictions at its heart. It is a contradiction at the heart of modern culture. Ghost celebrates spaces like Songimvelo. It identifies it as an area that has succeeded in erasing signs of human development and creating a more natural space, what one might have seen in an indeterminate past. The evidence of that success is beautiful scenery that audiences can enjoy. Yet Ghost also uses that environment to present a narrative about how significant parts of the natural world are unpleasant, dangerous, and require destruction. Ghost indulges the fantasy that people can introduce development and technology into an area in order to get rid of the parts of nature that they do not like, while preserving those elements that they do. It suggests that nature can be compartmentalized conveniently. It is an ecological fantasy not dissimilar to how Ghost tries simultaneously to condemn and celebrate colonialism using the figure of an individual with good intentions whose actions produce a positive effect, despite his working at the behest of a racist and monstrous system. In the next and final chapter, I consider a set of films which deconstructs that notion of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too peaceful coexistence. These are films in which attractive and remote wilderness spaces react violently to the intrusion of humans, as if the ecosystem were a body fighting off a disease. 366 CHAPTER 6 “I Still Believe Man is Master of the World” Addressing Ecological Concerns Using Animal Attack Narratives The elderly industrialist and the young environmentalist sit together in a wood-paneled study, surrounded by the old man’s stuffed hunting trophies. A twist of fate brought this odd couple together and present circumstances conspire to keep them in each other’s company. They, along with the industrialist’s extended family, shelter in a luxurious mansion that sits incongruously in the middle of a swamp. The denizens of the wetlands are behaving oddly. Snakes, lizards, spiders – they are becoming aggressive. Then there are the frogs. They coat the estate’s manicured lawns and paw at the study’s picture windows as if trying to gain entry. Their croaking is incessant. The industrialist reassures the young man that spraying some pesticides will put everything right, but the environmentalist takes little comfort in the idea of killing all these animals. The industrialist dismisses his concerns: “That is where you and I part company. I still believe Man is Master of the World.” The environmentalist asks: “Does that mean he can’t live in harmony with the rest of it?” In reference to the droning frogs, the industrialist retorts: “You call that horrible racket out there harmonious?” Though allied due to the siege, the men’s worldviews are irreconcilable. After a pause, the environmentalist offers a theory: “I know it sounds strange as hell… but what if nature were trying to get back at us?” The environmentalist premise informing Frogs (McCowan, 1972) is not unconventional. Inevitably, humanity’s abuse of the natural world will have dire consequences. What is unusual about Frogs is the way it animates this premise. In the real world, humanity might face a gradual decline in living conditions as the effects of environmental degradation take their toll on the ecosystems that sustain life on this planet. In Frogs, pollution creates a malignant imbalance in the 367 natural world that causes all animal life to rise up and take revenge against humanity. It is a melodramatic, spectacular, and absurd way to visualize an often-invisible and intangible concern. This chapter analyzes a set of films that all feature the aggressive mobilization of entire ecosystems, as multiple species act with unnatural coordination against humanity. Though the animals are unaltered physically, the strategic maneuverings of these cohesive animal armies make them an overwhelming threat. All Animal Attack narratives have elements of fantasy, but these multi-species swarm narratives are arguably the most outlandish. They also tend to be the most direct in terms of delivering environmentalist messages. I have argued that all Animal Attack films focus on dramatic disruptions of conventional modern relationships between humans and the natural world. They therefore all have at least an implicit ecological dimension. Chapter Three explored that relational dynamic through a set of films troubling the connections between, and the borders dividing, humans and animals. In three of those four films, the prominent use of indoor settings directed audience attention towards the human and animal figures and away from their environments. Both Willard and Monkey Shines play out in mundane domestic settings, and most of Phase IV takes place in a high-tech lab. This chapter extends that relational focus and looks at several films problematizing the place of humans and animals within an ecosystem. The animals remain active chaos agents in these films. However, the outdoor settings and the narrative framings of these films call attention to the notion of Earth as a home and resource shared by humans and non-humans alike. My analysis begins with The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963). Though an iconic forerunner of the unnatural swarm narrative trope, The Birds is significantly different from the films it inspired. It lacks an explicit environmentalist agenda. It was released just as ideas about ecological systemicity were being popularized; its own ecological sensibilities are incipient, ill-defined, and probably 368 unintentional. Yet the basic setup in The Birds (a world radically out of order and detrimental to human wellbeing), was recognized by filmmakers in the 1970s as having the potential to speak to ecological anxieties. In part, this is because The Birds was inspired by an actual ecological crisis. The environmentalist significance of The Birds was therefore coded into the film’s DNA and it can be illuminated through the study of the real-life incident that inspired the film. After setting the stage with The Birds, I address the place of apocalyptic narratives in the larger environmentalist movement. Many within the movement are suspicious of these narratives. Their outlandish scenarios have been used to discredit serious prognostications about the consequences of environmental degradation. I argue that past dismissals of these films reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how these texts might operate in larger environmentalist conversations. Many different kinds of texts are necessary in order to engage the public about issues related to worsening ecological conditions. While imperfect, these disaster films offer accessible means of approaching complex issues and debates surrounding ecological crises. I then begin a series of three case studies, looking at Long Weekend (Eggleston, 1978), Day of the Animals (Girdler, 1977), and Frogs. These films take up and tweak The Birds’s legacy by using swarm narratives to address ecological concerns consciously. As with the other chapters in this section, my analysis pays special attention to the settings in these films. I focus on the ways in which these films construct the sense of an all-encompassing ecosystem, especially through their sound design. Despite their differences, these films are animated by the common thesis that modernity has alienated people from the ecosystems in which they live. They are now in conflict with those systems, whether they intend to be or not. Being produced in the 1970s, these three films were made after the explosion of popular environmentalism that The Birds just pre-dates. By the time 369 of their production, Ursula Heise notes that the general public was beginning to embrace a “vision of global ecology…. [and the idea] that all the planet’s lifeforms are linked in such a way that they come to form one world-encompassing, sentient superorganism” (19). It was an understanding of planetary operations reminiscent of “James Lovelock’s well-known Gaia hypothesis, according to which Planet Earth constitutes a single overarching feedback system that sustains itself” (Heise 19). It is a romantic vision, but one that can also appear strange to humans, who might also feel themselves excluded from that collectivity (Heise 20). These films can be seen as attempts to explore those feelings of alienation, as well as attempts to reckon with the responsibilities that come from recognizing one’s self as being part of (but potentially harmful to) those systems In all these films, privileged individuals attempt to retreat to a less-developed environment (a wild or rural setting), only to have that attractive ecosystem attack them. Humans are not welcome in these spaces. The environment reacts as if it were a body and the humans were an infection. These films take the notion of divisions separating Humans from Animals and Civilization from Nature literally. They argue that this alienation can only yield results that will be detrimental to humanity. In that way, these films offer warnings, utilizing strategies taken from environmentalist rhetoric to communicate with their audiences. Though their scenarios may be absurd, their presentational strategies are governed by clear and coherent logics. The way these films presume to deliver their environmentalist messages rankles large sections of an ecocritical community wary of, and hostile towards, this narrative strategy. I seek to demonstrate the value of using this outlandish setup to address serious environmental issues. This is not to say that there are not problems with the ways in which these films engage environmentalist concerns. Indeed, they illustrate many of the broader reasons given by ecocritics 370 for objecting to apocalyptic environmentalist fantasies. While these flaws must be acknowledged, I argue that critics are too quick to dismiss what is, in reality, a large and varied collection of texts. Apocalyptic environmentalist fiction is a diverse subgenre. Even these three films, which share a unique and outlandish central premise, use different presentational strategies. Their differences reflect their distinct attempts to reconcile narratively the responsibilities of the individual with the responsibilities of society, as well as their goals of entertaining while delivering a message. First, I discuss Long Weekend, a conventional horror text in which the individual ecological misdeeds of an Australian couple on holiday represent larger societal indiscretions. The metaphorical nature of this story risks turning the couple into overly perfect scapegoats. Long Weekend amplifies this effect by presenting their punishment by a resilient ecosystem as holding the key to restoring a pristine natural world. Day of the Animals goes too far in the other direction. It explicitly frames its scenario as being the result of large-scale pollution. While the pollution source it identifies, the release of CFCs through aerosols, implicates the individual, its narrative never makes the same connection. Though it is a well- intentioned environmentalist jeremiad, Day of the Animals’s human characters are not presented as being responsible for their misfortunes. They become casualties of something larger than themselves through sheer bad luck. Frogs lies in between these two extremes, and it closes out this chapter. Frogs is the most successful at implicating both the individual and society in the harm being done to the environment. The central family in Frogs pollutes the wetlands surrounding their isolated estate to such an extent that the wildlife turns against them. While they are individually irresponsible, they are also industrialists whose company pollutes on a grand scale. While the animals target the industrialists in particular, all humans become victims of the fallout. My analysis of Frogs 371 extends beyond the film itself to consider how the film was promoted to the public. This information provides a nuanced understanding of how the producers of Frogs intended the film’s campy scenario to be integrated into a larger constellation of environmentalist action and conversation. This is a point that many critics miss: these texts are not free-standing objects that can be neatly dismissed. These texts always require contextualization and they work best when put into larger conversations. At the outset, I shall consider The Birds. The Birds looms large in the world of Animal Attack cinema, and it is a text that critics read extensively. However, they do so only in a narrow way that misses an important element of the film’s significance. The Birds In The Birds, various bird species lay siege to Bodega Bay, a real town on the northern California coast. The Birds ends abruptly, its crisis unresolved and unexplained. As the protagonists evacuate during a lull in the avian assault, a radio report reveals that the military has cordoned off Bodega Bay and will soon advance. The report also hints ominously that the crisis is spreading and that neighboring areas are also being attacked. A final wide shot reveals a once- idyllic hilly landscape covered in birds (See Figures 6.1 - 6.3). As the humans drive off, the bird army’s squawks grow louder. The film ends with the birds dominating both visually and aurally. The Birds was produced shortly after the end of a giant animal movie cycle running from 1954-59. Those 1950s monster movies exploited concerns about nuclear fallout and atomic radiation primarily. 1 Arguably, The Birds offers a fresh take on that tired creature feature trope, 1 At least twelve such films were produced during this cycle. In two (The Deadly Mantis and The Black Scorpion), the giant creature is a prehistoric monster. Two others (Earth vs. The Spider and The Giant Gila Monster) offer no explanation for the animal’s size. In The Killer Shrews, the mutation results from a generic bit of mad science gone awry. In the other seven (Them!, Tarantula, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Beginning of the End, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Monsters from the Green Hell, and Attack of the Giant Leeches), radiation is the culprit. 372 Figures 6.1, 6.2, 6.3. In The Birds, one witnesses the picturesque landscape outside the Brenner house in Bodega Bay, California gradually being overtaken by birds. Early in the film, there are no birds present. Later, they begin to intrude as they line the telephone wires. By the film’s conclusion, they are everywhere and cover every surface. 373 while similarly engaging anxieties about how the fragile systems that support all life might be disrupted catastrophically. The animals are fantastically visual and physical manifestations of some intangible, invisible problem affecting this seemingly pristine small-town landscape. This reading requires considering the birds in relation to both the land they end up covering, and the real story of nature unbalanced that inspired this iconic film. An ecological reading of The Birds breaks from critical orthodoxy. Robin Wood notes that the initial question prompted by the film is: “What do [the birds] mean” (153)? The first explanation Wood offers is analogous to an ecological interpretation: “The birds are taking revenge for man’s persecution of them” (153, original emphasis). By placing it first, Wood implies that this is the most obvious or naïve interpretation. Accordingly, it is dismissed quickly. Wood declares that this line of thinking “does so little toward explaining the film as to appear merely irrelevant” (153). Wood concludes that the birds do not actually mean anything. There is a line of critical thinking that, while the birds are superficially important, they are ultimately meaningless. They are just another of Hitchcock’s “MacGuffins” (Morris, C.D. 251). While not all critics dismiss the notion that the birds are significant, few engage an ecological angle. Like Jaws, The Birds is a rare Animal Attack film with a sizable body of scholarship devoted to it. Also, like Jaws, most critics approach The Birds from an anthropocentric perspective. Steve Baker observes that critics often assume “that the only worthwhile animal stories are the ones…. where surface appearances are deceptive, and where irony and metaphor abound. They are the stories in which the only good animal, one might say, is the one that is not really an animal at all” (Picturing 125, original emphasis). If The Birds is a serious film by a serious filmmaker, the animals must symbolize human concerns. The task becomes discerning what these animals say about humans, or perhaps what kinds of humans these animals represent. 374 For many critics, the intangible, invisible problems that the birds represent are tensions around gender and sexuality. Supporting this interpretation, the early attacks coincide with escalations in the film’s romantic drama and therefore appear to externalize sexual tensions. 2 This basic understanding allows for multiple decodings. The Birds indulges the fantasies of an auteur and audience eager to drink in the terror of the film’s attractive female star (Tippi Hedren). This allows the creatures to be understood as representing a predatory, masculine sexual desire (Halberstam 128-129). 3 More often, critics read the birds as feminine. Barbara Creed views them “as fetish objects… of the castrating mother” (144). Halberstam’s feminist interpretation of The Birds comes with the disclaimer that, within academic circles, “the overdetermination of the gender reading of [The Birds] has effectively blocked out the other readings” (128). It is not just the gender/sexuality angle that overdetermines readings of The Birds. The tendency to read the text in psychoanalytical terms stems, in part, from critics adopting an interpretive strategy commonly applied to the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s auteur status influences analyses of The Birds, compelling critics to read it in relation to his oeuvre. For example, Creed understands The Birds as continuing the bird imagery deployed in Psycho, Hitchcock’s previous film and a text tailor-made for psychoanalytic readings (143-144). However, there are other ways to contextualize the film. Halberstam notes that The Birds was made in the early 1960s, during “the rise of feminism, the civil rights movements, student activism, and the war in Vietnam” (128). Given the historical moment, they observe that this story of an unnatural collective “bombarding the 2 There are several examples of this. The first attack, a blow to the head of Melanie Daniels, occurs right before she and Mitch Brenner can reunite after their initial meet-cute. When Annie, Mitch’s ex-partner, encourages Melanie to pursue Mitch despite his controlling mother, a gull slams into Annie’s door. When Mitch convinces Melanie to remain in Bodega Bay, despite his mother’s passive aggressive attempts to drive her away, a flock of sparrows invade the Brenner home. 3 Hedren’s subsequent revelations about how Hitchcock would sexually abuse and psychologically (and physically) torment her on and off the set lend weight to this interpretation (Lang; Smith). 375 exclusively white citizens of remote and elite communities” carries underexplored sociopolitical implications (128). Yet, even as Halberstam expands the contextual purview, they maintain an anthropocentric bias and neglect a significant factor in the zeitgeist. In addition to the social movements Halberstam notes above, the 1960s were the gestation period for the popular U.S. environmentalist movement (Buell, From Apocalypse viii). Ursula Heise characterizes 1960s environmentalism as an “attempt to drive home to scientists, politicians, and the population at large the urgency of developing a holistic understanding of ecological connectedness, as well as of the risks that have emerged from human manipulations of such connected systems” (22). Ecology was a relatively new field in the 1960s, the modern concept of the ‘ecosystem’ having only developed in the mid-1930s (Foster and Clark 7). The public was beginning to learn how things like pollution and resource mismanagement could have serious consequences for the health of the ecosystems in which they were embedded, on which they depended, and which they often took for granted. Understanding that humans were “subject to the forces of the environment” represents “a radical challenge to the notion of the human domination of nature” (Foster and Clark 10). Jane Bennett similarly argues that awakening humanity to “a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within human bodies,” making people aware of the agentic powers of non-human systems, is an important part of deconstructing “human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption” (ix). Rachel Carson played a significant role in disseminating information about this disruptive concept to the general public. Her writings conveyed the systemicity that governs the world, “the interconnections within nature and between nature and society” (Foster and Clark 5). One of her most influential texts was Silent Spring, released in September 1962. The title, Silent Spring, refers 376 to a fable that opens Carson’s book. Carson paints the picture of an idyllic “town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings” (1). The main indicator of the town’s ecological health is “the abundance and variety of its bird life” (2). The town, however, is blighted by a human-caused environmental catastrophe. As a result: “There was a strange stillness. The birds… where had they gone…. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh” (2). People assume that the natural world is an enduring and permanent thing, but, in this moment, people suddenly realize that something has gone terribly wrong in their surroundings. The Birds delivers a perverse riff on Carson’s parable. I do not imply that The Birds references Silent Spring intentionally. Though The Birds was released after Silent Spring, production began in early 1962 and was largely completed before Carson’s book was released (Moral 155). However, a parallel exists between Carson’s explicitly environmentalist book and Hitchcock’s film, which contains subtle and perhaps unconscious environmentalist themes. Bodega Bay’s population is entirely white, but I disagree with Halberstam’s characterization of it as an “elite community.” The Birds positions Bodega Bay as an idyllic small town that should be understood in relation to San Francisco, the urban environment in which the film begins. The narrative quickly relocates its socialite protagonist, Melanie Daniels (Hedren), to the small community, a transition conveyed through wide shots showing off the lovely rolling hills surrounding the California coast (See Figures 6.4 & 6.5). Characters describe Bodega Bay as an isolated space not yet discovered by tourists; its population consists of farmers, fishermen, and small business owners. It is markedly different from San Francisco. 377 Figures 6.4 & 6.5. The trip to Bodega Bay is presented through scenic wide shots, which emphasize Melanie Daniels’s escape from the urban into the rural and pastoral. San Francisco is presented as an unpleasant space. While the film spends little time in the city, characters reference San Francisco’s hectic pace, congested traffic, and population of “hoods.” 4 At the film’s beginning, a cloud of birds already hovers over the city (See Figure 6.6). Disaster here seems inevitable. If not elite, Bodega Bay is a privileged space in that it offers a way of life simpler than what one finds in modern cities. It should be immune to the chaos and risk one takes for granted in the city. However, the film’s events destroy this tranquil environment. Unlike Carson’s imagined town, Bodega Bay is terrorized by a murderous overabundance of birds whose abrasive electronic screeches dominate the film. The sounds of the birds are a significant element of the film’s design. Originally, the plan was to feature naturalistic bird noises 4 The Birds can afford to spend less time in San Francisco because audiences would have a greater sense of the city and its apparent personality based on its use as a backdrop in other works of fiction. San Francisco was (and would continue to be) a recurrent setting for crime fiction, contributing to a sense of it as a seedy urban environment. Figure. 6.6. At the beginning of The Birds, ominous flocks already hover over San Francisco. In the urban setting, disaster appears imminent and inevitable. 378 throughout (Wierzbicki 20). Hitchcock ultimately rejected this idea: “Every day I can hear the cries of gulls and crows. For this film I want something different, something unusual, something that will actually frighten people” (Wierzbicki 21). In the final product, natural birdsongs are only present in an early pet shop scene, where the birds are kept safely in cages and the humans are in control (12). The subsequent idea was to augment natural bird cries through electronic manipulation, but this too was dismissed. In the end, the bird sounds were totally artificial creations (Allen 101). Richard Allen notes that this gives the birds a machine-like quality (119-120). The sound “is not quite the birds, at least not the natural creatures we are familiar with. It suggests their objective presence yet evokes something alien, something larger than, or beyond, nature” (97). The end result gives the birds both a natural and an unnatural quality. There is something off about them. If they are a machine, their gears are grinding. As Carson illustrates, birds are an integral part of the natural world, but here there are simply too many of them and they are not behaving as they should. A shift in and distortion of the natural order makes the land uninhabitable for humans, finally resulting in a landscape littered with birds. Since The Birds never provides a definitive explanation for these events, how does one understand its catastrophe? Though it never identifies a cause, The Birds features a sequence in a diner that is playfully overloaded with characters’ theories. This scene is sometimes dismissed as unnecessary or an amusement (Truffaut 222). However, this sequence hints directly at an ecological interpretation of the film’s narrative. Given the context, this explanation potentially comes across as an attempt to tease the audience, rather than an idea that the producers want viewers to take seriously. Some of the theories offered by characters in this scene are absurd or hysterical. Yet it is worth considering what substance this breadcrumb contains. 379 Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies) introduces the environmentalist angle. Bundy is a ridiculous character, which undermines her credibility. Rather than a scientific authority, she is an amateur busy body, barging into people’s conversations to show off her knowledge. Yet, as paranoia builds, Bundy defends the non-human. She declares: “Birds are not aggressive creatures… They bring beauty into the world. It is mankind… who insists on making it difficult for life to exist upon this planet.” The Birds includes details in this scene that both mock Bundy’s passion and support her thesis that people are vulgar and destructive. A waitress interrupts her monologue on the virtue of birds to relay an order for fried chicken. When Bundy finishes, a man opines about birds: “Kill them all. Get rid of them – messy animals.” These details illustrate humanity’s capacity for destruction of life on earth, in ways both thoughtless and conscious. The diner scene also offers an intriguing clue for how audiences should understand these events. Bundy claims that birds would never launch a mass assault on people, but another patron reminds her of a possible precedent. He describes how a flock of seagulls descended on Santa Cruz, a town less than 150 miles south of Bodega Bay. While the birds there “made some mess…. They were all gone the next morning, just as if nothing at all had happened.” Bundy takes up the account, explaining that the gulls must have gotten lost in a fog and were drawn to Santa Cruz by its lights. Such an event did occur in August 1961. While the credited inspiration for The Birds is Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 novelette 5 , the 1961 Santa Cruz incident is also cited as a key touchstone for the film. 5 Hitchcock told Truffaut that all he got from du Maurier’s source material was “the basic idea…. Today I would be unable to tell you the story of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds.’ I read it only once, and very quickly at that” (Thomson). The two texts only share a basic premise. The novelette focuses on a Cornwall family weathering the attacks of a diverse bird army on their barricaded home. The story references the traumas of the Blitz, but also contains intriguing ecological elements. The bird attacks are linked to unusually cold weather caused by the Arctic air steam and are governed by the tides. The story begins and ends with the protagonist ruminating on the mysterious instincts that drive birds en masse, both their natural migrations and their unnatural violence. 380 The incident dominated the front page of The Santa Cruz Sentinel. The headline described it as a “Seabird Invasion” with “Thousands of Birds Floundering in [the] Streets.” The real events were messier than The Birds makes them sound. Rather than seagulls, it was sooty shearwaters that were “slamming into homes and other shoreline structures” (Aguilera). The “crazed seabirds” were also regurgitating anchovies (Bargu et. al.). When it was over, “dead and stunned seabirds littered the streets and roads in the foggy early dawn” (Aguilera). The paper ends its report with the note: “A phone call came to the Sentinel from mystery thriller producer Alfred Hitchcock from Hollywood, requesting that a Sentinel be sent to him. He has a home in the Santa Cruz mountains” (Moral 29). Hitchcock took notice when a seemingly-inexplicable case of the natural world thrown into chaos occurred in his backyard. It influenced Hitchcock’s pursuit of du Maurier’s source material as his next project. Screenwriter Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) explains: “I remember [Hitchcock] showing me a lot of newspaper articles about unexplained bird attacks as a reminder that these things do happen, so we weren’t dealing entirely with fantasy” (Moral 40). 6 While there were other inspirations, only the Santa Cruz incident warrants direct reference within the film. Striking and mysterious, it turned out that the 1961 Santa Cruz incident was not a one-off freak occurrence. Something similar happened near Santa Cruz again in 1991, now affecting brown pelicans. This time, researchers identified the cause. It was not lights in the fog that caused the chaos; it was ecological systemicity. Warm waters led to a mass bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia, a phytoplankton that produces neurotoxins. Fish ate the plankton and these toxins worked up the 6 Hitchcock also gave Hunter information about a 1960 incident in the southern California coastal town of La Jolla. This incident involved a migration of Vaux’s swifts, which typically “used hollow trees for their communal roosting sites. However, with increased urbanisation, chimneys became a crucial habitat for these small birds” (Moral 28). In La Jolla, 1,000 swifts entered a couple’s home through their chimney (28). This incident inspired the scene of sparrows invading the Brenner house through the chimney. Tony Lee Moral’s account of the The Birds’s production provides a list of other incidents that influenced the creative process (29). 381 food chain, causing erratic behavior in seabirds (Bargu et. al.). In 2012, researchers found compelling evidence that a similar mass-poisoning was responsible for the events in 1961. 7 The 1961 incident was spectacular, but it was neither an unnatural event nor one necessarily caused by human activity. Researchers note that “these harmful algal blooms can occur annually in the region” (Blunden). Furthermore, this toxic phytoplankton “has resided in the waters off California for millennia” (Bargu et. al.). Scientists only connected the toxins to die-offs of marine wildlife after the 1991 incident, but undoubtedly the 1961 poisoning was not the earliest such case. It was simply the most notable one due to its connection with The Birds. 8 While these blooms might be natural periodic occurrences, global warming is making the impact of this phytoplankton more devastating. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that “the 2015 bloom was the largest in at least the past 15 years” (Blunden). It extended “from southern California to British Columbia during spring and summer 2015” (Blunden). Part of the reason this bloom was so extreme was that it began earlier than usual due to rising water temperatures (Blunden). With the bloom lasting longer and covering a greater area, abnormally high levels of toxins entered the food chain. The NOAA suggests this was the result of years of “unusually warm surface waters in the region” and cites the incident in a report highlighting the effects of climate change in 2015 (Blunden). 7 Researchers “examined archival samples of herbivorous zooplankton – which feed on [Pseudo-nitzschia]… collected during ship surveys at the time” (Bargu et. al.). By studying their gut contents, scientists concluded that the phytoplankton was present in 1961 in similar abundance to recent confirmed cases. Additionally, oceanic conditions at the time were such that they would have “prolonged the residence time of the visiting seabirds,” giving them more time to be exposed to the toxins (Bargu et. al.). 8 Analysis of the event emphasized this connection to give the findings traction with the public. When the theory first emerged in the 1990s, the Associated Press framed it as solving the film’s enigma. In one example, the Chicago Tribune titled their story: “Expert Thinks He’s Solved Hitchcock ‘Birds’ Mystery” (Associated Press). This angle was also used in scientific writings on the case. A 2012 report in Nature Geoscience was titled “Mystery behind Hitchcock’s birds” (Bargu et. al.). The same report was highlighted by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution with the headline: “The Story Behind Hitchcock’s Crazed ‘Birds’” (Aguilera). 382 I do not attribute conscious environmentalist intent to a text with only tangential interest in such matters. For various reasons, The Birds cannot know what it is. However, a fundamental tenet of ecocriticism is that all cultural texts offer insights into how humans relate to their surroundings. Furthermore, the ignorance of the past should not necessarily limit modern interpretations of a text. Considering The Birds in relation to the available information allows it to be understood as an unwittingly prescient narrative about environmental catastrophes. Whatever symbolic significance the birds might possess, a key impetus for this project was a true case of nature behaving bizarrely that occurred near Hitchcock’s home. The film even references that true event in order to lend its fantasy some credibility. The narrative embellishes this original incident, imagining a more dramatic and violent version of it. At the time of The Birds’s production, and for decades afterwards, the Santa Cruz incident was understood only as a case of birds becoming disoriented. At worst, one could blame people for the artificial lights that confused the birds and drew them ashore. Yet it turned out that there was an identifiable cause for what happened: a toxic algal bloom that usually occurs in warm summer waters. In addition to being ignorant about the cause of this incident, at the time, global warming and climate change were not yet major concerns amongst the public or scientists: “Prior to the mid 1960s, geoscientists believed that our climate could only change relatively slowly, on timescales of thousands of years or longer” (“History - NASA”). It was not until 1965 that the President’s Science Advisory Committee would warn that “emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels could rapidly reshape Earth’s climate” (Peterson et. al. 1326). Yet, we now live in a world where, due to anthropogenic environmental changes, the effects of Pseudo-nitzschia are indeed more dramatic and violent than they were in the early 1960s, if not in the way that The Birds envisioned. As a result, regardless of authorial intent, The Bird’s 383 narrative of an idyllic coastal town made uninhabitable by an imbalanced natural world resonates with contemporary fears about climate change. Even as humans fret about their romantic melodramas, the world around them gets upended and destroyed by environmental catastrophe. Even before these revelations, other filmmakers would recognize how the basic scenario of The Birds had great potential for explicitly environmentalist horror scenarios. The Birds did not have the impact of Jaws; it did not produce an immediate wave of imitators. The 1960s were a largely stagnant period for Animal Attack films after their 1950s popularity and before their 1970s resurgence. 9 However, The Birds introduced a new angle to cinematic Animal Attack narratives: the concept of entire ecosystems out-of-whack. The time for this new trope would not come until knowledge (and anxiety) about precarious ecosystems was more widely disseminated. But after The Birds, Animal Attack films no longer needed to deal with isolated cases of exceptional animals that could be destroyed. While Bundy doubts that all birds would turn on people, she concedes that, if they did, people “wouldn’t stand a chance.” The Birds presents a systemic problem lacking an easy solution. Though it is a fantastic scenario, it approximates the complexity of environmental crises. In that sense, The Birds models how genre fiction might help process ecological catastrophe and the degradation of the planet’s intangible ecosystems. It was a representational and narrative strategy that would find traction in the coming decade, and it is a strategy whose merits ecocritics continue to debate. Apocalyptic Contexts Apocalyptic rhetoric and narratives played an important role in the environmentalist movement of the 1960s and 70s. Fredrick Buell explains that, during this period, “utopian enthusiasm and optimistic reformism” existed alongside “environmental apocalypticism…. 9 The only other clear examples of Animal Attack cinema produced during the 1960s were Black Zoo (Gordon, 1963), Night of the Grizzly (Pevney, 1966), and Deadly Bees (Francis, 1967). 384 concern about environmental crisis in no way canceled out exuberance and hope. But neither did hope nullify concern about crisis” (viii). Ursula Heise notes that apocalyptic fantasies were another way of “imagining the global” and processing the systemic connectivity of the world (141). They imagined how local actions could have catastrophic consequences for the planet. In that sense, doom-saying was a natural counterpoint to the optimistic belief that people could make a difference. According to this logic, individuals around the world should come together and respond to crises that affected everyone. Balancing the negative with the positive kept things from becoming too grim. The secular apocalyptic fantasies found in environmentalist fictions differed from Biblical apocalyptic fantasies; they often assumed, if only implicitly, “that the End of the World can in fact be prevented” (Heise 141). If they had a revelation to offer, it was that it was not yet too late. Things could be changed and improved. These heightened fantasies were intended as tools, texts that would inspire people to prevent the End of the World: “the destructive intensity of [these] scenarios is not so much an attempt at accurate prediction as an indication of the urgency of its call for social change” (Heise 141). Though not intended to be taken literally, the dire warnings found in these fictional texts may have ultimately hurt the environmentalist cause. Fredrick Buell observes: Though the imagination of disaster very much persists, old disasters quickly age…. recounting the sometimes hysterical warnings that didn’t come true, skeptics have argued with some influence that the problem was not with the environment but with those who raised the warning – the victims of what was called (among other things) the Chicken Little syndrome. (xiii) Apocalyptic fantasies seek to startle with exaggerated worst-case scenarios. These heightened warnings encourage their audiences to correct their actions before serious consequences occur. 385 However, overly-literal and skeptical audiences can choose to engage these texts as if they presume to offer legitimate predictions. Based on such a reading, they can be dismissed as inaccurate. Further extrapolating from that already erroneous conclusion, skeptics can imply that legitimate scientific predictions about environmental degradation are similarly misleading. Fictional and real prognostications are positioned as different flavors of the same baseless fearmongering. Such blanket denials facilitate continued inaction and contribute to our modern paradigm, where “people no longer fear environmental disasters in the future so much as they ‘dwell in crisis’” (Heise 141). In his book title, Fredrick Buell describes this acquiescence as the transition From Apocalypse to Way of Life. Despite their potential drawbacks, Heise notes that apocalyptic narratives are experiencing “a revival and continuation” in environmentalist fiction, in part thanks to popular awareness about the potentially devasting global consequences of ecological issues like climate change (141). Responses to this resurgence have been mixed. In academic circles, debates around the relative merits of these fictions tend to be overly simplistic. Indeed, they tend to play out as referendums on single text: The Day After Tomorrow (Emmerich, 2004). The Day After Tomorrow features the world’s spectacular destruction by a sudden surge of climate change, and the film becomes a synecdoche for a large and varied body of eco-disaster cinema. Paula Willoquet-