QUOTES/ANALYSIS ON JOHN BERGER TEXT- WHY LOOK AT ANIMALS?
Animals came from over the horizon. They belonged there and here. Likewise they were mortal and immortal. An animal’s blood flowed like human blood, but its species was undying and each lion was Lion and each ox was Ox. This – maybe the first existential dualism – was reflected in the treatment of animals. They were subjected and worshipped, bred and sacrificed.7
[...]
Animals were seen in eight out of twelve signs of the Zodiac. Among the Greeks, the sign of each of the twelve hours of the day was an animal (The first a cat, the last a crocodile.) The Hindus envisaged the earth being carried on the back of an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. 8
[...]
Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was
to see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which
people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a
monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an
epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man. They are not seen as
such because the wrong questions have been addressed to zoos. 21
[...]
The capturing of the animals was a symbolic representation of the
conquest of all distant and exotic lands. “Explorers” proved their
patriotism by sending home a tiger or an elephant. The gift of an exotic
animal to the metropolitan zoo became a token in subservient diplomatic
relations.
[...]
Children in the industrialized world are surrounded by animal imagery:
toys, cartoons, pictures, decorations of every sort. No other source of
imagery can begin to compete with that of animals. The apparently
spontaneous interest that children have in animals might lead one to
suppose that this has always been the case…. Yet it was not until the
nineteenth century that reproductions of animals became a regular part
of the décor of middle class childhoods – and then, in this century,
with the advent of vast display and selling systems like Disney’s – of
all childhoods…
[...]
A zoo is a place where as many species and varieties of animals as
possible are collected in order that they can be seen, observed,
studied. In principle, each cage is a frame round the animal inside it.
Visitors visit the zoo to look at animals. They proceed from cage to
cage, not unlike visitors in an art gallery who stop in front of one
painting, and then move on to the next or the one after next. Yet in the
zoo the view is always wrong. Like an image out of focus. One is so
accustomed to this that one scarcely notices it any more; or, rather,
the apology habitually anticipates the disappointment, so that the
latter is not felt. And the apology runs like this: What do you expect?
It’s not a dead object you have come to look at, it’s alive. It’s
leading its own life. Why should this coincide with its being properly
visible? Yet the reasoning of this apology is inadequate. The truth is
more startling.
[...]
The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer
visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can
a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s
gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly
beyond. They scan mechanically. They have been immunized to encounter,
because nothing can any more occupy a central place in their attention. 28
No comments:
Post a Comment