The Animal Turn
Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – Not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. Each season is set around themes with each episode unpacking a particular animal turn concept and its significance therein. Join Claudia Hirtenfelder as she delves into some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn in scholarship, thinking, and being.
The Animal Turn
S8E1: Trans-Speciesism and the MARS Test with Natalie Khazaal, Tobias Linné, and Ellen Gorsevski
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The Animal Turn podcast launches Season 8 with a dive into the intersections of media, racism, and speciesism. Tobias Linné, Ellen Gorsevski, and Natalie Khazaal join Claudia on the show to discuss how race and species intersect each other in animated film and the development of their Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test to evaluate the ways in which they do.
Date Recorded: 31 March 2025
Featured:
- Media, Racism, Speciesism: Issues and Solutions for Creaturely Racism in the Anthropocene edited by Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski and Tobias Linné
- Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test finds Oscars so AnthropoScenic in contemporary animated films by Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski and Tobias Linné
- Many meats and many milks? by Tobias Linné
- Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberlé Crenshaw
- Critical Animal and Media Studies edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman
- Connecting racial and species justice: Towards an Afrocentric animal advocacy by Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues
- Afro-Dog by Bénédicte Boisseron
- The dreaded comparison: human and animal slavery by Marjorie Spiegel
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
Pollination Project
The Pollination Project empowers volunteers across by providing the funding they need.
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Modern Language, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, School of Literature, Media, & Commun
iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.
- Leave a Review on Podchaser
- Check out The Animal Turn Merch.
- Support us on Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, and Buzzsprout.
Season Eight Introduction
Ellen W. GorsevskiThis is another iRaw podcast .
Natalie KhazaalSo when we were thinking about how to combine the different isms in a way , we were thinking about what really is very deeply interconnected and goes down to the root of discrimination , and we discovered that racism and speciesism are especially racist and speciesist tropes are deeply interdependent .
Claudia HirtenfelderOkay , everybody , it's been a long time coming , but finally season eight is here . Welcome back to the Animal Turn podcast . Today we launch season eight , and this was a bit of an unexpected season . I started 2025 with a different plan in mind , but when I got an email from Tobias to see if I was interested in working with him and his fellow editors , natalie and Ellen , on covering a project related to animals and media , how could I say no ? Tobias , natalie and Ellen have been working together on a special issue called Media , racism and Speciesism you know me and that word , speciesism and they were planning a symposium on the same matter at George Tech University . Prior to the symposium in March , I met with some of the folks who would be contributing to the special issue as well as the symposium . In March , I met with some of the folks who would be contributing to the special issue as well as the symposium to speak to them about animals and media , with attention to thinking about how this also intersects with matters of race . We originally hoped to release the season prior to the symposium , but eventually settled on expanding the season from five episodes to ten because there was just too much to talk about . So that explains some of the delays with getting this season out , but I think it's going to be well worth the wait .
Claudia HirtenfelderFor a number of reasons , this season is a bit different to what you're used to . I have privileged folks who have contributed to the project , and some of them are not familiar with or work in animal studies , but they are rather scholars that have worked on matters related to race and human inequality in media . For this reason , each episode is not focused on a specific one-on-one interview , but brings together several individuals in a kind of panel discussion where we speak about a range of concepts and ideas related to media . The first half of the season is conceptual , we dive into specific concepts , and the second half of the season then starts to focus on specific mediums , like news , like podcasting , and this allows for a whole range of different views , intentions and ideas . Because multiple people join me in each episode , the episodes are slightly longer . For this reason , I've opted to not include animal highlights in this season . That said , when I was in Atlanta in March , I did decide to search out and find a whole bunch of animal stories from that city . So there will be a special season on animals in Atlanta and if you haven't already subscribed to the Animal Highlight . Go find that podcast wherever you listen to your podcast on Spotify or Apple wherever and subscribe . There's some really great content and increasingly it's content that's independent of the animal turn .
Claudia HirtenfelderSo let me tell you a little bit about my three guests today . Natalie is an associate professor in the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech and the director of the Arabic and Middle East and North Africa programs . She's also an American Council of Learned Societies fellow for her work on Arab atheists . She's also written and is writing more and more about the relationship between animals , media and equality more and more about the relationship between animals , media and equality . Ellen is an associate professor in the School of Media and Communication and is affiliated faculty in the transdisciplinary areas of American Cultural Studies , peace and Conflict Studies , rhetoric and Writing Studies and Women's Gender Sexuality Studies . At Bowling Green State University she teaches classes such as environmental communication , activism and engagement , as well as environmental rhetoric and the rhetorics of sustainability . Tobias Linne , who you would have heard on the show before he , joined me previously when we had the episode looking at animals and media , and he's wonderful and I'm very thankful for involving me in this project . He has a PhD in sociology and is an assistant professor in media and communication studies at Lund University . He founded the course in critical animal studies at the same university in 2012 , and he has acted as the director of Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network since its inception in 2016 . His research deals primarily with animals in the dairy industry and its intersections with food , gender , race and species .
Claudia HirtenfelderNatalie , tobias and Ellen secured money for the season and they made it possible through a seed grant from the Pollination Project , as well as funding from the School of Modern Language , the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts , as well as the School of Literature , media and Communication at Georgia Tech University . I must also say thank you once again to Animals and Philosophy , politics , law and Ethics Apple for their co-sponsorship of the season . All right , so that was a long introduction . It's a slightly different season . It's an interesting season , loads of different views and ideas . I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it . So we kick off the conceptual ideas , or we start to lay the foundation , I think , by thinking a little bit about the connections between media , species and race , and we start off with the concept . I'm going to struggle to say
Meet the Guests and Project Overview
Claudia Hirtenfeldertrans-speciesism . All right , enjoy .
Claudia HirtenfelderNatalie , ellen and Tobias , welcome to the Animal Turn podcast . It's really so great to have you on the show . Tobias , you reached out to me a good couple of months ago to say , hey , I'm working with a couple of people who are doing some stuff on media and I think the animal turn could do some cool stuff and it's morphed into a whole project and you guys have been working on a great deal of things . I can't even begin to explain it , so I'm going to leave the explanations to you , but thank you so much for reaching out to the podcast , for letting me be involved in the project and visit you in Atlanta to see some of the work that you and your team have been working on . So thank you so much , natalie , ellen and Tobias .
Claudia HirtenfelderSo this is going to be the first episode on a season that's focused on animals , media and power , and today we're going to be talking about a word I can never say , which is be talking about a word I can never say , which is speciesism . I think I add an extra S in there , but we're going to talk about trans-speciesism Please forgive me , listeners , I will get it one day and the Mars test , which is a test that you've kind of developed to measure a whole host of things . We'll get into that later in the show , but before we start talking about the concept et cetera , I'd like to get to know you in the show . But before we start talking about the concept et cetera , I'd like to get to know you a little bit . So , tobias , you've been on the show before , so I think folks might know a little bit about you when we spoke about media actually previously . But , natalie , you've been spearheading this project as well . Can you tell us a little bit about you and maybe the project ? And then we'll jump over to Ellen and Tobias .
Natalie KhazaalYeah , I'd be happy to . I have researched media and disenfranchised communities or disenfranchised groups for a long time . And these disenfranchised groups are , you know , like I do , a wide . Are you know , like I do , a wide ? I select a wide category of groups like that , from non-human animals to atheists , to refugees and immigrants . But they all have in common this treatment or being treated in ways that disenfranchise them , in ways that discriminate against them . And how does the media , what role does the media play in that particular process , in the outcomes , in the way they are portrayed and framed and what happens to them ultimately ? So this is kind of the direction of my research for a long time .
Natalie KhazaalIn this particular project we chose to look at Oscar-nominated movies and we particularly chose Oscar-nominated animation , feature films and also short films in order to look how , what role the media plays in this kind of process , in these kind of communities . And we believe and we know that racism and speciesism are deeply interconnected , they run parallel lines , they reinforce each other and oftentimes the ways in which people are discriminated cross over and serve to discriminate future other communities . It's almost like an infection in a way . Future other communities . It's almost like an infection in a way . So we wanted to look at the way Oscar-nominated animation portrays racial qualities or racialized humans and also non-human animals . Is there anything in common ? How are these interrelated , how are they connected and how can we understand animated films where racialized human characters are animalized , are portrayed as animals or animals symbolize marginalized human groups or have racist qualities or are portrayed with racist stereotypes ? How do we address any obstacles in connecting speciesism , which is the discrimination against other species , and racism , or the discrimination against other human races in animation ?
Claudia HirtenfelderSo it's a really interesting interconnection and I know it's one that's very difficult to navigate and that folks in critical animal studies scholars have been trying to speak about this tension for a long time , and there's a lot of critique around it but also a lot of , I think , potential for understanding different structures , different ways in which discourse operates and power operates and power operates . So it's really interesting and it's fascinating that you said you've also looked at other disenfranchised groups like atheists , because I think a lot of people wouldn't think of atheists as a disenfranchised group . Did you start out looking at animals and then atheists ? What's your personal story Before we get into this project ? How did you come to look at animals or even consider animals in this kind of this project ? How did you come to look at animals or even consider animals in this kind of way ?
Natalie KhazaalI considered animals because of my personal involvement with issues that relate to animal rights , to the treatment of animals in my personal life , and then that became also a topic that I was really interested , became interested in in my , in my research , and I very soon discovered that this topic was not something that I would be discriminated against myself in academia . It was something that actually other people appreciated and valued , which was really good because I was very enthusiastic . The first , some of the first publications that I had are with an excellent , amazing researcher and a best friend of mine from Barcelona , nuria Almeron , barcelona , nuria Almeron , and we really had an amazing time looking at the ways media incorporates speciesism in its framework of animals across the globe , from the US to Spain . In terms of atheism , I particularly look at atheism in Arab communities , and in these communities atheists are really disenfranchised .
Natalie KhazaalIn some spaces they are not free . In many of these spaces they're not free to even admit publicly , or even in their own family , to their parents or spouse or siblings , that they are atheists and that they don't believe in any supernatural forces . Because of very strong bonds , communal bonds that involve a central role , given a central role to religion , and because of that they really are disenfranchised . A lot of them Some of them have been , you know have suffered tremendous amounts of harm , being imprisoned , being beaten , being physically assaulted , being even killed . A lot of them cannot tolerate the type of discrimination that they face in their communities and end up immigrating outside of these communities .
Claudia HirtenfelderWell , interesting work , natalie . Side of these communities Well interesting work , natalie . Ellen , let's go to you . So you've also got a really long history and , I guess , career with looking at and considering media .
Personal Journeys to Animal Studies
Claudia HirtenfelderWhat's your journey to coming to animals and thinking about animals and media ?
Ellen W. GorsevskiYeah . So it's really kind of like a lifelong arc from childhood to kind of early career to now . It's like I was the weirdo in my family who didn't like to eat meat . I mean , I would cry when my parents tried to make me eat it when I was a little girl and I never really had an articulation for them other than you know why are we doing this ? There's so much other good stuff to eat .
Ellen W. GorsevskiThen fast forward to my graduate school years . I was focusing on nonviolent rhetoric of expat and marginalized communities such as Tibetans in India or other kinds of political or war refugees , and so I was focusing more on rights of marginalized minority communities such as in Myanmar , and also looking at the treatment of ethnic Albanians in former Yugoslav states , in particular in Macedonia . But my focus was initially more on humans . But in my doctoral program at Penn State , my teaching assistantship was for teaching mainly just public speaking classes , and so one of the key topics that came about over and over again was how Penn State I'm pretty sure they still have a creamery and a dairy program but there would be students who would learn about kind of the you know really sort of horrific practices in that , in that , and they would give speeches about . You know what happens to cows in the dairy industry the modern technologicalized dairy industry and one of the things was bovine growth hormone , BGH , and how the cows get mastitis and they get really bad infections because they're over milked and overproducing these crazy unnatural amounts of milk and so then they have to introduce more antibiotics , which then contributes to antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria like superbugs , bugs . So I started percolating more , but it didn't really reach my kind of professional foray into researching intersections until I was teaching classes on gendered communication and what I discovered was really interesting .
Ellen W. GorsevskiYou know how , when a woman is trying to leave an abusive situation , typically a woman with children . I listened to this interview with a woman who ran a , you know , like a women's and children's shelter for people fleeing domestic or intimate partner violence , and the theme that came up with her over and over was a lot of people would refuse to leave a situation where maybe they might even be killed because of their pets or their farm animals , like their beloved horses and if you have a horse and you need to move it quickly , like many of these , women and kids , leave without any , anything but the clothes on their back in the middle of the night so they can escape while the abusive person is working a late shift . They refused to leave because they didn't want to leave their horses . And horses takes quite a bit of planning . You have to have a trailer come in , get the horse . You have to have a receiving horse barn or facility that can house the horse and usually most places , and even in a rural area like this , there's a , you know , maybe a three to six month wait list to get your horse in . So it's not an easy phenomenon .
Ellen W. GorsevskiSo I started thinking more about marginalized people like women , you know , being abused , and children , and then the intersection between their pets and their animals . It's dogs , it's cats , so a lot of shelters don't accept animals , so it's a big , big problem and started thinking more about that and portrayals in the media . And then that's when I started kind of including it in my discussion of structural and systemic violence as well as cultural forms of violence . And then later I got this opportunity in the past couple years to work on this special issue and that's where I met Natalie and Tobias and it's just been such a joy and one of the most intellectually challenging projects of my life and my career and so frustrating in a good way but rewarding . So yeah , I'm just indebted to them . I've learned so much , so yeah , that's kind of how I got into it .
Claudia HirtenfelderWell , what a story , and I think the I mean what you talk about there with regards to shelters is coming up more and more , I think , in animal studies , particularly around homelessness and disaster relief . You know , folks are looking at and it's going to unfortunately be more and more need for it as we move forward where people do need temporary shelter , and quickly , and places that are exclusively and only providing to humans are oftentimes not suitable because people do come with pets in tow . You know , you look at the conflict situations currently happening around the world . I know when things started in Ukraine , one of the first scenes you saw were people just desperately trying to leave with animals in tow . And yeah , it's definitely .
Claudia HirtenfelderYou know , crisis situations go from a variety of different scales , but the extent to which animals are included or excluded , both in representations of those crises but also in the actual practicalities of managing and responding to them , is abysmal really , and I do want to . I hope that I will talk a little bit more about these gendered intersections as we move forward , because I know that this project focused in particular , on the kind of intersection between race and species , and so I'm curious why , with your three backgrounds , why gender is not an active thing , but we'll get into that . I'm going to put a stopgap on that while I just switch to Tobias . Tobias , how about you ? You were recently promoted , so now you're like the big dog at Lund and everyone has to talk to you and you are officially in charge of everything and everyone , right ?
Tobias LinnéKind of like that . No , I got elected head of department of communication a few months ago , but I still see myself as a teacher primarily , and as a researcher within human animal studies or critical animal studies , and I think my way of getting into this field , I think , is similar to what many other scholars in this field , in the sense that I started out doing something completely different . So my background is actually in economic sociology that's what I wrote my PhD in but then , having always had an interest in animals and having been involved in animal rights organizations since my teenage years , I connected those , but it took me some time , you know . So I was working in academia and doing these other things teaching primarily , which I love , but in the meantime , at the same time , I was also doing animal rights activism , you know , outside of my academic career . And then , by some lucky chances this might have been in 2010 or something I learned about this new field called critical animal studies , which was I had never heard of it I met some scholars by chance and you know it just , it was such a revelation for me to you know , to understand that I can do this as part of my academic career . I can work with animals . And now , when I think about it , it's strange because , you know , as a sociologist , we learn that you know , the object of study is social relations , but it's just that within mainstream sociology , those social relations are always between humans and other humans and not between humans and animals , which is , of course , you know , very strange when you think about it , because who can deny that we have social relations with animals , for example with pets that live with us ? So that brought me into animal studies and quite early on I started to become interested in intersectional animal studies .
Tobias LinnéSo the first project I did in critical animal studies was a project that revolved around dairy industry . And the dairy industry is , I mean , a great example of an industry that is sort of built on gendered exploitation , uh of other animals . So we , the cows , uh reproductive abilities are used uh in the dairy industry to produce , uh to produce milk , um . So I worked quite a lot on on the intersections , on gender and speciesism and it's funny , you mentioned why we haven't , you know , addressed gender in this article .
Tobias LinnéI think we would have wanted to but you know it sort of fell outside of the scope of the article . I mean , we struggled enough with , you know , getting species and race in the same test . So even though I think for future it would be a great idea to also add gender , but you know also discussions about ability , like you know , ableism and speciesism and those intersections , which I think there has been a great lot of work done over the past couple of years . Yeah , so there are definitely other dimensions , but I'm still happy that we stuck to species and race for this particular test , although that doesn't mean that we don't think that these other dimensions , for example gender , doesn't deserve to be investigated more . I think they totally do .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , of course , and I mean you can't do everything all at once . I think , as great as an intersectional approach is and acknowledgments of these intersecting oppressions and the ways in which oppression cross-cuts other oppressions , trying to have a conversation about them in a short paper or in a short presentation with nuance right we don't want to flatten out the complexity as well requires sometimes making cuts for conversations we had and I think when looking at species and race in film or in media , it operates , it seems to operate in slightly different ways to how species and gender operate . You seem to deal with different kinds of stereotypes or issues . Is that a fair thing to say or is that too broad ? So , for example , you know , I know one of the things you talk about in the test is this idea of like animated humans , so how humans , and that seems to have a much more racialized tone than it does , a gendered tone you would have , let's say , girls and boys cross-cutting with other animals , but race seems to operate just slightly differently .
Natalie KhazaalSo when we were thinking about how to combine the different isms , in a way , we were thinking about what really is very deeply interconnected and goes down to the root of discrimination , and we discovered that race , racism and speciesism are especially racist .
Racism and Speciesism Interconnections
Natalie KhazaalAnd speciesist tropes are deeply interdependent and like to be set in ways slightly different than gender . But how are they interdependent , you know , when we consider just race and speciesism ? So our question was if somebody does would look at racist tropes or at racism without considering speciesism , what would they risk missing ? For example , they would risk not identifying the deeper origins of racial hierarchies , which is not just about the intra-human dynamics and how people are , you know , in a hierarchy between different human groups , but also the roots to broader systems of domination over non-human animals . They would risk thinking that dehumanization , when other human races are referred to as other species , usually species that humans don't think are cuddly and cute cockroaches , pigs , monkeys , whatever this is not just a metaphor , but it is actually deeply embedded in the structure of oppression . And we would also , if we don't consider them together , we would very often fail to see the full scope , for example , of exploitation . Take , for example , colonialism . So colonialism doesn't just exploit people or racialized humans . It exploits and reshapes an entire ecosystem , reshapes an entire ecosystem . It reorganizes human-animal relations in a way that also reinforces racial oppression . It's not only and exclusively about racial domination .
Natalie KhazaalWe could also look at oppression in a larger setting , where racism and speciesism have similar justifications . For example , you know about economic utility , enslaving humans , factory farming , animals , about biological determinism , like certain races or certain species are naturally , naturally suited to be oppressed or subjugated or used , or legal , legally excluded , being denied rights , being put in arbitrary categories . So all of these things really relate very deeply together . Take also , for example , the role of agriculture in racial oppression . It's not about just racial oppression , but agriculture , especially animal agriculture , is already a system that discriminates and oppresses against other animals , and putting these together has a profound role in how we look at them , how we consider them .
Natalie KhazaalFor example , during the pandemic , immigrants and refugees are the people who work the most in factory farms under horrible conditions . They are injured very often . Some people , you know , are decapitated when they are cleaning the machines . And when they had to go to work during the pandemic , a lot of us stayed at home , could stay at home , but they had to go to work . They , as some of them even you know , shared they had to take a Tylenol out of fear to be fired and still go to work . And when they do go there because they are the only people who would accept such a horrifying job out of necessity they have to make the decisions to kill other , discriminated and abused and tortured animals .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , it's .
Claudia HirtenfelderI mean , it's definitely tricky because I could hear here , for example , our class is also definitely intersecting here with some of these material relations , right , so it's not just a matter of race and even nationality with regards to who takes these jobs , because I know I was in Canada when all the borders closed and the only immigrants that were still allowed to come in and out of the country were seasonal workers , right , and not just seasonal workers with animals , seasonal workers with fruits and vegetables too .
Claudia HirtenfelderBut , if I hear you correctly , natalie , here it's a matter about recognizing and I know that Kimberlé Crenshaw , when she introduced the idea of intersectionality , it was really revolutionary , but it faced some criticism shortly thereafter about saying that it created this idea that you've got different streams of oppression or different inequalities and somehow they just have moments of intersection . But in fact , thinking about it more like articulated categories is perhaps more useful , because it's understanding that things like racism or sexism or differences in class and speciesism , they literally shape and inform one another . So prying them apart is , while it's analytically necessary kind of in the world we live in , to understand how speciesism operates Please forgive me for my pronunciation To understand how it operates , you have to also understand how oppressed others have to almost keep it going and keep it under wraps .
Ellen W. GorsevskiThe other thing I can say is , for example , in the wonderful co-edited volume of the Critical Animal and Media Studies volume , which is fantastic , there's a fantastic representation , especially of really leading scholars like Carol Adams who wrote the Sexual Politics of Meat , and so there's already been so much really nuanced , brilliant thinking about gender and vis-a-vis animals and how the media twists and turns , both kinds of subjugations . So not that more couldn't be said . I think a lot more could be said . But in trying to create our Mars test , you know the Bechdel test already existed and the DuVernay test existed to look at just race and just gender . But nothing as far as we could find and we've found yet is there any kind of really crystallized systematic treatment of looking at race vis-a-vis species . And so , yes , class falls into this . But I also think , with regard to what you were mentioning with Kimberly Crenshaw , she's a legal scholar and so Natalie's , you know , very perceptive , insightful highlighting of legal exclusions of non-human animals vis-a-vis race and discriminatory treatments . That's really just . It's not been articulated in a clear way .
Ellen W. GorsevskiAnd so we decided looking at animated films , which are a really interesting genre because adults tend to watch them with their kids and they're also this dual audience creation by the creators are thinking how can I make this double entendre , so the grownups will get the joke . But then how can I make it ambiguous enough to get away with certain things ? And so the ambiguity existing in this world and the long tradition of Disney's and other , of Disney's , you know , and other history of animations and propaganda films , the work of Sam Kean and Faces of the Enemy , like Natalie was saying , is all about , you know , portraying the enemy as dehumanized . And indeed racism cannot function without dehumanization , nor can speciesism , and they're all of a piece . And so that's why we really wanted to focus on this particular genre of film . But it's the film I think it won an Oscar about a Nazi family living right next to the concentration camp and living in denial . I know which one you're thinking about .
Tobias LinnéEllen it came out last year .
Ellen W. GorsevskiYeah .
Tobias LinnéI can view it myself and Google it , but anyway , it was Oscar recognized , was Oscar recognized .
Ellen W. GorsevskiAnd in a sense it's this beautiful portrayal of the kind of societal and family individual level of denial . And yet we do the same thing with mass agricultural business , not looking right at the animals , particularly in a place where we live in an urban , suburban , ex-urban interface , where we're passing all of these production facilities and concentrated animal feeding operations which can be quite troubling , and so there's a lot of repression going on vis-a-vis animals , but it's so much less talked about and particularly less recognized in film .
Claudia HirtenfelderSo why don't we talk a little bit about the Mars test ? So listeners don't even yet know what Mars kind of stands for . So to kind of give a and correct me if I'm wrong here , but a kind of brief overview of your project is one you three together to talk about oscar-nominated animation films and you analyzed these films and then you've developed this kind of this test for trying to see the ways in which , for assessing the ways in which racism and speciesism operates , through the this test , right . Uh , in effect , like you said , like the , the bechdel test that a lot of , I think , listeners will know that's used with regards to gender , and you've been trying to kind of create this and we're going to talk now about what those different questions and categories are . And then in doing this , you also then decided to write your own special issue which listeners can access and a whole host of people decided to contribute to that special issue .
Claudia HirtenfelderAnd because there was so much interest in it , you then held a symposium in Georgia where even more people spoke about kind of media and the intersections of race and species . So it was really fascinating and again , it's thorny and it's politically difficult terrain , right , like even the example you gave there , ellen , of someone . I imagine some people would take exception to the fact that you juxtaposed a movie about concentration camp and Nazi Germany with kind of talking about factory farms , and it's a metaphor that's often used in animal rights conversations , but it's also one that's been criticized because people say that you shouldn't be creating these kinds of comparisons between people and humans , and I think that that's an example of kind of the sensitivity a lot of people have when it comes to talking about race and animals as well core point and the problem , you know , that we can address with using these intersectional perspectives , that we get away from comparing the suffering of oppressed groups .
Tobias LinnéBecause I don't think that's you know the way to do it that creates , you know , putting one group against each other , you know , and who suffers the worst .
Tobias LinnéFor me , you know , the real strength of these intersectional perspective is how they highlight the similarity among the oppressors and the oppressive systems . So not , and thus by using these intersectional approaches , at least there is a possibility that we can avoid comparing suffering , you know , different , the victimization of different groups , which I think is hugely problematic and actually counterproductive to what we want to achieve . So I think , for me , that was always and I will get back to that in my quote that you asked us to send in for this episode that I think that's the real strength of this perspective , that they let us , you know , see the commonalities of the systems of oppression rather than you know , because otherwise , I think history teaches us that you know , otherwise we often get into these comparing the suffering . You know who's worst off , is it , you know , the working class , or women , or , you know , or people of color , or whose suffering was worst , or animals , you know .
Ellen W. GorsevskiJust to tag on to what Tobias was saying , there's a wonderful scholar in the Department of Philosophy named Luis Cordero Rodriguez , and he talks about how anti-racist advocacy would actually strengthen its position if it endorsed species justice .
Ellen W. GorsevskiAnd so you know he sees these tracks as mutually constituted and deeply entangled . And so we also see in a lot of literature which I had not known of before . For example , there's a brilliant , very short read short story by Alice Walker , the very lauded , you know , amazing African-American writer , about her ruminations on her shared commonality between this horse , which is experiencing all these kinds of abuses , like solitary confinement and being forced to be used for reproduction , and her own experience as an African-American woman thinking back . And the story called why Am I Blue was actually banned in California by the state of California in the 1990s I think it was around 1994 because it was so incendiary and asking these questions . So it's not just , you know , scholars who are interested in animal issues , it's also really brilliant thinkers like Malaklou . And there's a wonderful new book called Afro Dog by Bénédicte Boisseron and you know .
Claudia HirtenfelderSo there's a lot of scholars who are really really carefully thinking about . We shouldn't , we should probably be having that conversation . And I think , tobias , what you said there about you know , instead of thinking about competing oppressions , kind of fights for the limelight of different , you know , you end up having fighting amongst folks that should actually be allies , perhaps in dismantling . In dismantling , and the comparisons become quite interesting , even maybe from a geographical perspective , when you start to look at the mechanisms and the technologies that are actually used to oppress different people . The same technologies are used by those in power to you know , things like barbed wire was invented as an agricultural device , which was then used as a tool in concentration camps . So these comparisons are , and can be done in ways that are perhaps not sensitive enough .
Claudia HirtenfelderBut I think there is , and there should be , scope for trying to understand why dominant groups find the need to do things like dehumanization , as you said , and using these technologies . But let's come to media now . So you know , I think , like you said , a lot of scholars have maybe spoken about some of these material entanglements , some of the economic entanglements , the legal ones . Why is it important to think about the intersection of race and species when it comes to film and , in particular , animated film , as you guys are doing .
Animation's Influence and Body Switching
Natalie KhazaalWell , first of all , why animation is important when we come to look at racism and speciesism . There are a bunch of reasons . First of all , it is , you know , a source for socialization for children , educational policies , media literacy programs . But it's not just entertainment for children . We know a lot of movies for adults , like BoJack Horseman , south Park . It's a top-ing medium or genre globally . It has wide distribution , a lot of profits . It affects society because it actually is a test ground to see what is acceptable in any given period . And so when we have this medium that we can , in which we can test the , you know , the scope of acceptability , it becomes really , really , really important . Maybe Ellen and Tobias can talk about racism , but in terms of speciesism or how species are represented in animation , we have a bit of a paradox here . On one hand , it's the most important genre for humans to actually see , especially for children to learn about animals . The other genre is documentaries . But this genre is very important because for children it's a primary genre and the paradox is that the more species go extinct , the more they disappear from our world . The more they abound in animation , the more animals are present there , the more we can see that huge difference between reality and what is portrayed in animation movies , for example in feature films , in nature documentaries . They are more realistic and so the public can pressure movie makers to treat them with more humane means . However , in animation that's not the case , because nobody is being hurt technically . That's why in animation movies you can do anything to the animals . You can basically kill them and then in the next scene they are again alive . So they are like immortal . You can squash and stretch them . That's a special technique that is used in animation . So when an object or an animal or even a human is , you know , moving and before they touch a surface they stretch . When they touch a surface they squash and then they stretch again . And this , you know , evokes the feeling of motion in the viewer . So it's very good . But also it imbues , it embeds the animal , the non-human animal , with this quality of being very like plasma-like . So you also almost get like a pure sensation of this animal force , this like vital force , like the scholar Thomas Lamar has discovered , and that is an experience of speciesism , because you learn that these animals you can be so cruel to them , you can be so violent to the animal , body , deform , and yet the animal body is invulnerable , it's immortal . It's also like a cute body . We here have the Bambi effect the large head , the big eyes , the expressive mouth , the human speech . You know that kind of behavior . And so what does that do to a distracted audience that really kind of like is seeking entertainment , but also with that it almost like experiences speciesism in their bodies , this embodied experience of speciesism .
Natalie KhazaalWe have some evidence that , depending on what kind of animal species is portrayed in some cute movies , then people go ahead after the movie and start adopting these animals , even if the animals are not really good in human spaces , because they expect the same kind of behavior and communication with real animals that they have learned from cartoon animals .
Natalie KhazaalAnd that's really dangerous and very injurious to real animals , because after you discover that they're not so cute they have to actually take care of them . They're not very happy . A lot of them they get dumped or , you know , or killed or any sort of you know harmful effects . And we never really see in animal movies except for a few that we've identified , like Kid Bull or the winner this year in the Oscars flow that really put the standpoint of the actual non-human animal , their own agency , what they want to do , put it front and center and don't just represent animals as like the best friend who is working towards the human goals , who is just supporting humans , who is like this cute and , you know , funny , humorous effect . So that's why we thought that there is something to be discovered when we look at animation specifically .
Claudia HirtenfelderI think that's so powerful . I mean , making that connection with the material world I think is also very important . It's not only a matter of people adopting animals , but entire industries working around and , you know , using children to also create . Like you go into any place , there are tons of , you know , stuffy animals et cetera , that kind of exploit animals , humans , children's consumption of these films . But there are also live animals that are bought and sold .
Claudia HirtenfelderThe exotic pet trade and fish trade in particular is something that's really not spoken about and I think it's again . It's perhaps another paradox , but you have something with regards to like Finding Nemo , where after that the uptick in clownfish and desire and demands for clownfish was just astronomical . And now clownfish , these tiny little beautiful fish and anemones , also key attractions in aquariums et cetera . So they've become this kind of iconic species that people are aware of and know of and wouldn't have known of had the film not happened . But then you've also got Dories and Mimos in tanks around the world and people only see Dory and Mimo . They don't think about the individual that's in the tank and obviously the tons of money that's involved in these animals being purchased .
Tobias LinnéSo Finding Nemo is literally a movie about a fish wanting to escape the fishbowl and get back to the ocean . And yet what you said , it created a huge surge in people wanting these fish and I think that shows the complexity of animal representations in these media genres . And I just wanted to return to you to your initial question . You know why animation , and I think uh , as as natalie uh put it very well , animation is very a power . I I see animation almost like a trojan horse kind of thing here . You know a testing ground , you know where you can do almost anything to animals or try out you know treatment of animals and represent it in different ways , because it's not real , you know it's just animation . So I think in that sense it is a sort of a Trojan horse , because those things they might look innocent , you know , because they're in animation .
Tobias LinnéAnd I mean , if we look at media studies , you know popular culture , and especially children's popular culture , has always been seen as less important than you know , like real important high culture , and I think that's a total misconception . You know , I think these popular culture examples and representations are much , much more powerful than we imagine them to be , powerful than we imagine them to be and , and and I mean , then that doesn't mean you know that I don't personally think that that means that we need to avoid all animal representation , but I mean we need to start discussing it and taking taking it serious and the material effects that it has . And you mentioned Finding Nemo . I think Finding Nemo is a great example . I often use that when I teach . A more positive example , I think , would be the movie Ratatouille , which stars a rat , and I mean I've been working with rescue rats for the past five years and how much that movie has meant for , you know , for rats in terms of a positive , a more positive view on rats and yeah , which is , you know , usually needed for those animals .
Claudia HirtenfelderI mean , animation is also such an important tool of imagination , right ? Unlike other films , like you were saying , with documentaries , it elicits imaginaries , which is quite powerful . And I know something you spoke about at the symposium that I think is also interesting here is it's one it's thinking about positive and negative representations , it's thinking about the material effects of the film for actual animals , but something that often seems to be lacking . So , natalie , you mentioned Flow and I did watch Flow after you mentioned it , and it's an absolutely . It's a Latvian listeners , it's a Latvian film that won at the Oscars and it's remarkable no speech throughout the whole film , but you get a real sense of the different animals involved and without any speech , you still know what their desires are , what their wants are .
Claudia HirtenfelderWithout any speech , you still know what their desires are , what their wants are , what their fears are . It's beautifully done and they move in ways you expect the animals to move . So the main protagonist is a cat and you kind of really get a sense of what the cat's interests and wants are . But oftentimes , I think in animation , while you might have , you know , dogs or cats talking , they're not really talking about dog or cat interests or wants or needs or desires . It's not really driven by things that they would find interesting . They're almost used as quasi-humans , and I know that this is one of the three tiers of the Mars matrix . The way you start to question how these films operate .
Ellen W. GorsevskiThere's been so much incredible advancement on non-human animal communication and communication between and among and across trans , you know , species communication , um , that recognizes and understands animal standpoints .
Ellen W. GorsevskiSo , for example , for the horse world someone like Stacey Westfall has been such an inspiration to me in trying to communicate better with the horses and understand how they understand cues or human communication , and it goes for any kind of species .
Ellen W. GorsevskiThere is , whether it's the tiniest spider or , you know , the most large , charismatic megafauna , you know , in the animals and species , you know , kind of guidelines that we took as sort of the springboard for developing this , and so there's no reason why creators in Hollywood or us as consumers of media can't have both entertaining animations or representations of animals , but also ones that are actually really enriching and teach us things in a positive way rather than what we found a lot of instances of regressive , backwards-looking practices that are couched in some kind of ambiguity so they can get away with it . But if you go to the Jim Crow museumcom and you look up all their listings of racist cartoons across time , there are still these tropes that are reemerging and recycling and there's no reason for it . You know we have to point them out , and so the Mars test gets us to be attuned both as viewers , and we hope you know to invite Hollywood and entertainment industry to engage with these ideas too .
Claudia HirtenfelderI know body swapping was a key theme that kind of came up here that brings to fore some of these kind of species racism dynamics , that when body swapping happened from a white character to an animal versus a black character to an animal , that this operated in different ways , that there were kind of clear patterns . Could one of you perhaps talk me through that , maybe with some examples ?
Natalie KhazaalYeah , I'd be happy to , and after that we should also give just a broad overview of the Mars test . But in terms of the body switch we identify , these are our results . In our sample we have just about as many examples of body switch of racialized characters into non-human animals and sort of like white characters to non-human animals . So what is concerning about that trend is , first of all , the historical tendency of racialized humans to be discriminated in ways that dehumanize them , in ways that either treat them as like other non-human animals or in terms of how their abusers view them or being called by the names of other species , especially in movies as well . And so here that already is a discouraging tendency .
Natalie KhazaalBut what was really striking to discover was that when white characters switched to non-human animals , they actually gained more powers and they became a lot more capable of dealing with the particular situations in which with which they were dealing .
Natalie KhazaalSo this is basically a trajectory of empowerment . When non-white characters , when the racialized characters became , started embodying the body of a non-human animal , that was really for them , disenfranchising , they were struggling to regain back their humanity . It was all kind of a fall down and they had to struggle to go back up to the place where they initially were . And so here we see how , even though there is superficially equal numbers 50-50 in our sample of nine years , from 2016 to 2024 , of these movies , yet we see that deeper difference , racialized difference that animation reinforces , and unless you actually look at the sample and compare it , it's very difficult to see , it's very difficult to actually for any viewer , just a regular , you know human who is looking , who is watching , especially if it's a child , that's , you know , very difficult to see and yet Could you give me some examples here , Natalie , to help , just to help make this tangible .
Natalie KhazaalYeah yeah , absolutely . For example , a really interesting movie called Wolfwalkers . It's an Irish movie and it is a really , really good movie in which the English girl switches into the body of a wolf . She becomes like a wolf walker and then she starts we see her portrayal . She starts seeing stuff that really enhances her powers . She sees , she like , literally they show how she sees the smell and how her muscles are much stronger . She's capable of escaping a lot of soldiers and she's also capable of connecting to her true deep morality and to the nature , to her true deep morality , saying that it's wrong to kill , you know , wolves , it's wrong to kill Irish rebels and also to her true self of being one with the rest of the world . She becomes one kind of like in the pack of animals , so she gains powers .
Natalie KhazaalIn the movie Nimona , the character Nimona switches to different megafauna animals and in that case she's able to protect and save her I guess sidekick , or maybe even like main character Ballister , Braveheart , I think and protect him from those who are chasing him . Basically save him
The Mars Test Explained
Natalie Khazaal. Movies like soul , the musician and soul he falls into a hole just on his way to , to , to , to to um , to participate in the dream of his life to become a musician and actually play music , and then he dies when he comes back because he's not finished living . He comes back in the body . This is a black . He is a . He's a black character .
Claudia HirtenfelderHe comes back in the body of a cat . Sorry , this is a black . He's a black character now in Soul . We're talking now about it .
Natalie KhazaalYes , exactly , he's a black , exactly , sorry , thank you for saying he's a black character . And then he comes into the body of a cat , which the movie even calls like it doesn't call , but I don't think it calls it , but it's like a therapy cat . And then as a cat , he is clumsy , he cannot like speech with human speech , he cannot use his hands to play the piano , it's difficult to walk and it's difficult to do different things , and so this is really a view , a portrayal of disempowerment . There is another movie it's a short kind of one of the short films which portrays a black female in France who , after a conversation with a white friend who accuses her of stealing her sweater , becomes like a dog , very enraged , barking dog , and just runs through the streets of the city and is really angry and enraged and full of kind of anxiety and tension , and so she's really disempowered until her sister starts cuddling her and she comes back to her more calm self and she's able now to communicate back with everybody . So there is this sense really of disempowerment , of being lesser than , and so we see this in the body switch .
Natalie KhazaalWe still see that , even though we discovered that twice as many , for example , asian related animation movies were nominated between 2016 and 2024 , if we compare the same Asian-related animations between 2002 , when we first started seeing animations in the Oscars and 2015 . So twice as many characters there , twice as many Asian-related movies . But we don't see that same trend for Black characters . Very few Black characters are actually , you know , being portrayed as key characters or movies about them or by them in Oscar-nominated movies .
Claudia HirtenfelderWell , yeah , so it's definitely so . There's a number of elements to here , but there's also a question of how it's done . How are these different ? So you's also a question of how it's done . How are these different ? So you would miss a big chunk of the picture if you only looked at the kind of numbers .
Ellen W. GorsevskiYeah , just quickly to follow up on what Natalie was saying . You know , the media's media and animals representation test kind of drove us to look at , was Tobias had pointed out , what is the portrayal of animal captivity vis-a-vis human beings ? And also what is the portrayal the kind of thing that I discovered a lot of is ridicule , ridiculing the suffering which often overlaps with captivity of non-human animals and particularly anthropomorphized , racialized human characters . So it has implications , like Natalie was saying earlier , for understanding the suffering of racialized humans as being funny , as being something to laugh at and make light of , which is really highly problematic .
Ellen W. GorsevskiI'll have to look up the title , but it's a recent Disney one that has a Latina character who's very hot and inflammatory and she lives in sort of this animated version of an inner city and there's a portrayal of , you know , a quasi Latina baby that is drinking barbecue lighter fluid that you one would use to light their barbecued meat , right , and so it's lampooning a baby . And we know marginalized communities environmentally speaking are much more subject to like here in Flint Michigan , lead poisoning and other types of poisoning . So it's making a Latina community baby . Make the audience laugh at the baby drinking toxic things like ha ha . It's not funny , and if you look at it from a racialized perspective , that's a really deeply disturbing image , and so a lot of this ridicule really normalizes the suffering of both racialized beings as well as non-human animal species .
Claudia HirtenfelderI guess ridicules are sort of really tricky ones to look at in animation because you know a lot of kind of . You were talking earlier about this mechanism of trying to speak both to adults and to children , about this mechanism of trying to speak both to adults and to children , and children respond very quickly to quick laughs , right , something getting hit and something jumping , something being thrown and and you can kind of see I know you showed a clip from the Incredibles and I know the Incredibles at some point in that film every character kind of gets hurt or does something silly or falls down the stairs or whatever it is . But I remember that you showed a scene of a raccoon kind of just really being beaten up and taken to town and in the , in the kind of framing of animation it's viewed as it's not problematized that at all . Really it's like Tom and Jerry syndrome . Right when we grew up , tom and Jerry just beat each other up constantly . It was just what we we were used to seeing .
Claudia HirtenfelderSo I imagine kind of taking ridicule seriously in this genre becomes quite challenging because , yeah , I don't know , what do you , what do you think is that a fair thing to say ? You know , like I think seeing that in a real life film would be , you know , a baby drinking water for your people were like what the hell are you doing ? Like this is , but because you're kind of suspending reality in animation , it becomes quite tricky to so . Do you ever wonder or worry that people will say , well , you guys are just finding the . You're finding the things you want to find here about how animals are being treated and different people are being represented in these films . Do you ever worry that maybe you're just doing some self-fulfilling stuff here ?
Tobias LinnéI mean , I think people are always going to say that , you know , in relation to everything that we study and I mean , to some extent , we're always , you know , finding what we look for . So for me , I mean for me that just you know means that we need to to sharpen our arguments . You know about why this is important . I don't think we're going to avoid those accusations . I mean all the work that I've done .
Tobias LinnéFor example , I spent quite a long time working on the intersections of dairy and race and you know that's what a lot of people were saying . You know , like you're just seeing what you're looking for . You know already from the start and you know overanalyzing and drawing you know too deep conclusions , but yeah , I think we're always going to . You know deep conclusions , but yeah , I think I think we're always gonna , you know , face that criticism and I think , uh , what to do with it is is , you know , to sharpen our arguments and and to to show again , coming back to these like the real life effects of of uh represent representations , of representations , which is , you know , not something that we make up , it is real . You know those effects , yeah .
Ellen W. GorsevskiYeah , and if I could just quickly add on to that that in our study sample we found that more often than not it was the racialized characters who were ridiculed in cruel ways , so it wasn't just a representation .
Ellen W. GorsevskiSo , for example , the disjuncture between reality and cartoon . So it's not in soul , it's not the white character who literally dies falling down a manhole , it's the African-American character . And so for representation for children , you know , when we have George Floyd literally dying in front of the world in the street with no one doing anything about it , like the crazy disjuncture , whereas had that maybe been a white character , maybe that ha-ha funny moment of slapstick where he falls down wouldn't be that problematic . But because we are in a time in particular where policing of colored bodies , at least in the US , is really , really violent and unnecessarily so , you know , we've had people with mental illness episodes being shot rather than treated by a mental health first response emergency team , they just come and get shot , and so when that's happening in parallel with , like showing it as hilarious that a Black man is dying in the street , it does ask us to kind of pause it . We're not , because we're not finding that with the white characters at all . So it's really interesting .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , and I mean it's like you say , I think it also goes beyond interest . It's necessarily important to think about how representation functions , because it does seem so subtle that it seems like it's not , as you said earlier , that it's . You know , are we being silly and doing this ? And I think , as you guys have both or all three pointed out , you know it is a serious matter and one to consider , want to consider . Okay , so this has been really interesting , I think .
Claudia HirtenfelderI mean the concept was trans-speciesism and in many ways I think we're almost talking about racism and speciesism and how they operate together and function in and through one another , through representation , but also through the material effects of these representations . Now , the Mars test is media analysis of racism and speciesism . So we've been talking to some extent about the Mars test is media analysis of racism and speciesism . So we've been talking to some extent about the mars test , but , like natalie said , maybe just a kind of clean overview . So I know that the mars test is broken up into three categories and these three categories have different questions under it and the goal of these questions is to try and see and almost provide , I guess , something of a quantitative slash , qualitative assessment of how a film is doing with regards to these things and the three categories you had please correct me if I'm wrong were animated intersections , animated humans and animalized non-human animals . Is that correct ?
Natalie KhazaalYeah , it's correct . I mean these category names . We might tweak them a little bit , but basically these are the three different sections , and so we just want to give gratitude to those scholars who before us have looked into some of these ideas , not just in the Bechtel test and the Duvernay test , but also researchers like Carrie Freeman and also Deborah Merskin , who had the guidelines for how , to you know , portray animals in the media , and so we sort of like , looked at all of these and did come up with our three different sections . In the section where we focus on animated non-human animals , we have questions that really are meant to basically help researchers , help students who are looking at movies , and help people , non-profit organizations or even , like there's the general viewer when they see a movie , an animation movie , to help them understand how animals are portrayed in that particular movie . For example , are the non-human animal characters ? Do they have emotional lives ? Are they deprived of their emotional lives ? You know , do they have species appropriate goals or are they serving humans ? Are they captive ? Are they treated with violence ? Are they portrayed with stereotypes like pests or game or threat or a cute animal ? Does the movie ignore or misrepresent any threats , human or otherwise , to their habitats , to their welfare .
Natalie KhazaalIn the section about animated humans we ask similar questions . Animated humans we ask similar questions If the racialized characters are just background or mostly background , mostly symbols , if they're deprived of their own goals and just serve white characters , if they're portrayed with harmful stereotypes , if they lack any depth , or if the creative team is representative or not of the actual story of the movie . And when it comes to the third section , this section is a little bit still , you know something , a work in the making , because it's really really difficult to actually articulate how these are not just intersectional and how they are parallel and , you know , help each other , reinforce each other , but also put these questions in a way that just a general public can read the question and understand it very well . And some questions are easier to kind of understand and some questions are more difficult . We're still in the making but we have questions like does the movie suffer from bias in representation that connects species and race ? So here we see the interconnection . For example , dehumanized racialized humans . You know characters in the movies , for example
Scholarly Reflections and Quotes
Natalie Khazaal, they're animal-like or they're switching to animals , or we have racist stereotypes that are embedded in non-human animal characters . So here we see the connection .
Natalie KhazaalAnother question is if the movie hides or normalizes behaviors , for example that surveil control , contain racialized or non-human bodies , and if the movie hides or makes light of the role of agriculture in racial oppression , such as . You know how animal agriculture displaces racialized humans and non-human animals at the same time , or harms their health , their well-being . You know how farmed animals end up on the kitchen table without you know showing the racialized labor that is involved in this . Is the movie inconsistent , for example , when it criticizes the oppression against racial bias and the oppression against non-human species ? Does it do both at the same time or just one of them ? Or , for example , are these two types of characters we see in the movies , for example , racialized humans and non-human animals ? Do they support each other's struggle against oppression , against being oppressed , against being morally devalued , or do we see them actually oppressing each other as well ? So these are the kinds of questions and different , you know , iterations we are still working on . Do these ?
Claudia Hirtenfelderquestions have like a weight to them . So if I have , if I'm watching a film and I feel like doing a film review and I'm going through these questions , is it a matter of yeah , absolutely . You know , answering yes , no to these questions . And every time I say yes , I get one point , and if it gets 10 out of 20 , then okay , absolutely , yeah , absolutely Okay .
Natalie KhazaalAbsolutely , yeah , absolutely . We actually wanted this question , this test , not to only be a qualitative test where you read the question and then you go and analyze your movie , but we wanted to help people analyze a collection of movies and also enable them to do more of quantitative analysis , not just qualitative .
Natalie KhazaalAnd so we formulated each question to be able so you can sort of able to be able to answer more or less yes and more or less no . And if the answer is more or less yes , then the movie suffers from racism and speciesism . This is , you know , like a positive illness diagnosis , and if the answers are more or less no , then we give a clean bill of health . The movie does not suffer of that kind of racism and speciesism .
Claudia HirtenfelderAnd how many questions are there in ?
Natalie Khazaaltotal , we have five questions in each of the three sections and a total of 15 questions .
Claudia HirtenfelderOkay . So if one says yes to all 15 questions , then this is a film that's not doing well .
Natalie KhazaalYeah , it's doing really badly . It's very sick .
Claudia HirtenfelderOkay , and if it's 15 no's , then this film is really doing well in terms of its sensitivity , its nuance , its representation really doing well in terms of sensitivity , its nuances representation , and if a film gets like 10 , you're like could be better .
Natalie KhazaalIt also depends 10 on what you know . It could be . You know really good on racism but very bad on speciesism or vice versa . So here , looking at what sections you know , the person can also the researcher or student can also say where actually the gaps are or where the challenges that the movie still needs to resolve are .
Claudia HirtenfelderWow , really interesting . Well , I know that it's not yet published and when it is out I'll make sure that the listeners get access to things once it's all out and about , but really interesting work . So that's media analysis of racism and speciesism . And yeah , it's a challenging and interesting topic and one I think that hopefully more and more people will . I hope that some people will use your model and do both academic and popular media , popular kind of uses of it . I definitely see a lot of purchase . So we've gotten to that portion of the show now where we do our quotes . I should have given you the opportunity to just read them throughout the episode . So , tobias , you had already kind of mentioned that you have one already , so why don't we get started with you ?
Tobias LinnéThe quote . Yes , let me just look it up the quote . Yes , let me just look it up . Yeah , so I chose a quote from a book that I taught in my critical animal studies class , talking about race and species . It's by Marjorie Spiegel , called the Dreaded Comparison . Came out quite a long time ago and my quote is as follows it is vital to link oppressions in our minds , to look for the common shared aspects and work against them as one , rather than prioritizing victims' suffering , for when we prioritize , we are in effect becoming one with the master . We are deciding that one individual or group is more important than another , that one individual's pain is less important than that of the next . End quote .
Tobias LinnéSo yeah , as I said earlier , I think for me that has been very influential for how to think about this . You know tricky question of intersections between race and speciesism , where , uh , where , you know , uh , there are risks that we end up , you know , reinforcing ideas , uh , racist ideas or speciesist ideas , if we um , uh , keep , uh , keep comparing , know the suffering of the victims rather than focusing on the oppressive systems . So , and I think history again , like , has taught us that that is usually what will happen so I mean in the early 20th century , when we had and the suffragette movement , for example , those who fought for women's rights were often told by those who fought for workers' rights that you know well , you know we need to do this first . You know you need to wait for your turn now . First we need to address , you know , the class inequalities and then , you know , once we've done that , we can get to , you know , gender inequalities , and this is , I think , a common pattern that's still repeated today .
Tobias LinnéSo I mentioned earlier that I've been quite active in the animal rights movement here in Sweden and many times . You know , in Sweden we have a 1st of May across the world . You know International Workers' Day and we would come with our anti-speciesist , you know , posters and flags to the 1st of May marches and we would not be welcome there because you know 1st of May is the Workers' Day of May marches and we would not be welcome there because you know 1st of May is the workers' day . And as much as I can understand how you would make that argument , I still think it's counterproductive because , as we've talked about here , I think these systems of oppression are deeply interconnected and really once we start , you know , addressing one of them and saying that , you know , this is more important than another , then we are effectively , you know , siding with the oppressors . That's yeah , so that's why I chose that quote .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , the Dreaded Comparison is a great book right , and it's speaking kind of about the comparison of owning humans and owning animals and how it is because the comparison with slavery is often .
Claudia HirtenfelderIt's a dreaded comparison , but one that animal rights people often tend to go back towards . Um , and yeah , it was something I touched on in my own dissertation at some point was actually just thinking about the logics of how used bodies are thought about , right ? So if you look back to how people were once considered , some people were once considered animals and were literally counted as animals on slave ships , right ? And here comes again this kind of slippage between animal and human and racialized versus non-racialized , and unfortunately it is a dreaded comparison . But the logic of how different beings were counted on these ships meant that people's lives were completely erased , the nuance was erased because their entire life was just recorded in a ledger as a number one as alive or dead .
Claudia HirtenfelderAnd I think that kind of erasure is something , as you say , that is often done by dominant groups , where the complexity of your life is not taken into consideration . And perhaps in some ways here , speaking about film , we're talking here about complexity , just kind of the constant lack of complexity in some lives , and this is , I think , what we were talking about with you , ellen , a bit earlier with you , ellen , a bit earlier is there is a pattern to whose lives get told in complex ways , and whose lives get told in complex ways and kind of . Taking those patterns seriously is our job as researchers , as folks in animal studies .
Natalie KhazaalI mean thank you , tobias , for mentioning about May 1st and Workers' Day and how this really is an issue . But we can see something of a double crisis in the Oscars , since we are looking at Oscar-nominated movies , and similar concerns have been raised Since 2002 , when Denzel Washington had his comment that Halle Berry and his wins were window dressing . It really forced people to start looking at the racism in the Oscars . But it was maybe 15 years later , when we had a few years with only white nominees , that we had like the hashtag Oscar , so white , and people saying that the Academy has a fraudulent , a progressive image . And finally they announced that they want to double the number of diverse members who decides which movie wins . But this , something like that , has not been done .
Natalie KhazaalIn terms of animal actors , in 2024 , there was a movie called Anatomy of a Fall that won , and one of the main actors there was Messi , a border collie , and so Messi was clapping during the ceremony and then the Academy kind of like tweeted oh , the Oscar goes to the bestest boy , but there is no actual category that recognizes the performance of animal actors . The only kind of organization that tried to do that is PETA , and it has its own OpsCat awards since 2018 . And it gives awards for like best animated film , best picture , best actor , and all of that is just to kind of like honor the movies and , you know , the stars that promote kindness to animals , either by having like positive storylines , not abusing animals , and also using CGI so that animals are not being exploited and traumatized on set . So we can see something similar of that kind of conversation going on at the Oscars as well .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , I think there's a lot of important conversations happen now with regards to animals and work . I know Kendra Coulter's work on humane jobs . You know , like how do animals do work and how can we ensure that they do work well for themselves and in an equal way ? And you know there's a lot of opaqueness with regards to how animals in the media operate and there's been a history of quite a bit of abuse on film and in documentaries and all sorts of stuff . So and this has come more and more to light but perhaps not enough to actually represent and respect and understand that they are workers right , that they have particular jobs that they do and demands that are placed on them . Natalie , while we're talking to you , why don't you give us your quote ?
Natalie KhazaalI remember this quote from one of the animal rights researchers with which , with who , I have worked .
Natalie KhazaalI don't remember who it was and I don't know where she took it from , but I really like it because it applies very much to what we're doing and it is the wrong . Amazon is burning , the wrong ice is melting and it really shows how there is a you know like there is basically this intersection between racism and speciesism . The wrong Amazon is burning , not just , you know , like the Amazon forests and with all the animals non-human animals in there , but also it deprives all the tribes that live in the Amazon , so that , you know , more factory farms or more grazing lands are opened to feed people , you know , who are not from the indigenous communities and the indigenous communities being displaced . The wrong ice is is melting again . You know a US institution that persecutes and I don't want to say persecutes , but you know , is in charge of enforcing refugee and immigration policies and really devastates so many people who have come to the US to apply for refugee status or to immigrate there refugee status or to immigrate there .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , and yeah I mean really , really important , powerful . And also I think I mean what you said there about the Amazon . It makes me think about animated film . Now again , I think in some ways environmental disaster is definitely making more of an appearance in animated film , like you're getting much more sensitivity to the fact that there's degradation of our environments and of our oceans .
Claudia HirtenfelderI know that with we're talking about Finding Nemo earlier , that as the films progressed you actually saw changes in color of the scenery . You saw the ocean become duller , a little bit less vibrant . There was more conversation about anthropogenic influence on the ocean . So it's interesting that there is this kind of like overarching , subtle kind of acceptance that humans are impacting the environment , but not so much in the way of I mean , you've got movies like Chicken Run and obviously the fantastic Mr Fox and all of these that comment on animal agriculture in really interesting ways , but perhaps not as much kind of emphasis on connecting those two , but perhaps not as much kind of emphasis on connecting those two , on connecting the environmental disasters with these kinds of modes of production and consumption , it must be said , that are fueling this Really important .
Tobias LinnéYeah , no , I just want to say that what you said , claudia , like , I think the environmental perspective is very strong in much of our sample . I mean , take a movie like Moana , for example , which also has this , you know undertone of that . But , as always , the problem when we talk environment is that animals are , you know on another level there , you know they are , you know as species representative . They're not individuals . And I mean , when we are talking in our test about an animal standpoint , that is , a standpoint of animal as individuals , not as you know , a species to be saved like polar bears needs to be saved , or you know , or certain species of fish . So what we're reaching for is this the individual animal standpoint and animals as a subject of beings in their own right , you know , as individuals . So I think , even though I think many times you will find an environmental , you know undertone and you know care for the environment , but that does very little for the treatment of individual animals , I feel .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , and I mean I think even at the broad level the connections are not always as clear , Like you'll have people that are talking again about protecting and helping environments while eating a hamburger . So there sometimes seems to be a bit of disconnect between the causes of the problem that they're navigating and discussing in the film .
Ellen W. GorsevskiA great finding that we found was that amongst a lot of these films with environmental themes or utterly lacking in environmental themes , is this notion that we can always go somewhere else to put the animals or to put the people who are different . There's always elsewhere this magical elsewhere . And in the real world there is no elsewhere . Like polar bear , breast milk has plastics in it . You know , we are human bodies , we have plastics in our bloodstream , just from environmental disasters . And going back to Natalie's point about the quote , you know the ice and the fire .
Ellen W. GorsevskiOne of our films animated films that was Oscar noted was the Ice Merchants .
Ellen W. GorsevskiSo it's literally a metaphor . It's this cute little , adorable story about this family that lives perilously hanging on the edge of a cliff and they're chipping away and selling ice down below in this sort of magical , nostalgic past world and in the kind of the joke spoiler alert at the end of the film they fall because the ice is all melted and you would think , okay , this is an opportunity for the film to say something about the violence of climate change , not just on people but also on marginalized species , other species of non-human animals , and instead it becomes the celebration of commodification because the joke is every time they , in this sanitized forest that does not have any other living beings other than the trees , there are no creatures like a normal forest would have . So yeah , we found that there's always this magical notion that we're teaching children and we're normalizing in society , that there's always somewhere else where we can solve the problem . It's like no , there is nowhere else , and it's really troubling that these films are normalizing that .
Claudia HirtenfelderYeah , I guess , again , with children's films , if you don't have a happy ending you end up in a you're not going to do very well in the box office , right ? So again , connecting these things , two films that I think , as you were talking , that come to mind where I think , wow , they did do a good job of thinking about the environment was I really loved the Lorax . Even though these were fantastic animals , I think the Lorax did a good job of kind of showing the connections between ecology and animal lives . And also Wall-E . While Wall-E didn't have animals I think in it at all correct me , like Wall-E was about a robot in a dystopian kind of reality , but I think Wall-E just did a remarkable job of showing the kind of perils of consumption in a way that was really remarkable , Like it stuck with me forever in a way that was really remarkable , like it stuck with me forever .
Natalie KhazaalI just wanted to also add in a more sort of like bigger picture that when we were looking at our whole sample you know we looked at initially 90 movies and from these 90 movies our actual shorter sample is just over 50 movies but in all of these movies we found that there is a consistent improvement on how racialized humans were represented . There were four out of every five movies represented
Current Research Projects and Conclusion
Natalie Khazaalthe story's culture of the main characters , culture of the main characters , and we have a lot of more racialized main characters with whom the audiences are invited to identify . However , the same kind of progress is lacking when it comes to non-human animals . In three of four movies we see cruelty to animals .
Natalie KhazaalIn four out of five movies ignore or misrepresent threats to their lives and habitats and nine out of nine and a half out of 10 movies in those movies non-human characters are reduced to symbols . They lack moral consideration , and so we see that there is definitely some you know movement , some progress being done actively in terms of righting racialized , racial wrongs . We see a little bit of movement here in the you know area of animal , non-human animals , but absolutely it's lacking behind . Probably the one movie that was , you know , really stood out in our sample was the short movie Kid Bull , which everybody can find on YouTube . If you just write Kid Bull , it's a word that combines kitten and pitbull and you see this couple of a kitten and a pitbull becoming , you know , really supporting each other in their struggle . It's a wonderful short , you know , eight or 10 minute movie that is strikingly different from all other representations in our sample .
Claudia HirtenfelderGreat , I'll definitely go check that out . All right , we have one more quote and then we're going to wrap up . Ellen , why don't you tell us your ?
Ellen W. Gorsevskiquote yeah , so dealing with sort of the very large taboo and the tendency of historically marginalized communities , whether it's the Jewish community or the African-American community or the immigrant community , to sort of leap on the problematic of comparing human suffering and forgetting that humans are animals too . We are animals , we are mammals , and so there's sort of this propensity . And then also undergirding that propensity is the notion that there's this and I think Tobias alluded to this camps or how dare you . And so there's sort of this politics of outrage and shock , when in reality I found this wonderful scholar and he kind of picks up where I think Alice Walker's story why Am I Blue ? And she brings the reader along in this journey so that you start to see the comparisons in a way that's very beautiful and sympathetic and empathetic , rather than kind of what we're used to is a lot of sort of shock politics or politics that force people unnecessarily to not ally with one another and help one another ally with one another and help one another . And so Luis Cordero Rodriguez .
Ellen W. GorsevskiHe's a philosopher in the Department of Philosophy and here's his quote anti-racist advocacy would strengthen its position if it endorsed species justice . There are connections between struggles In addressing animal injustice , racial injustice is also being addressed . I conclude and this is him saying this that given racial and species injustices are mutually constituted and entangled , there are good reasons to address these together , and by progressing and achieving animal justice one can also attain progress in racial justice . So again , it's inviting us to transcend the historical divide and conquer strategies of colonialism and other kinds of racial justice and species justice movements and see them really together . So that's my inspiring quote and just really helps see that there are brilliant scholars that are working on this problematic , and so that's been so exciting and heartening too .
Claudia HirtenfelderAnd I think that's a great place to finish this , this to say I mean , it is important , there is work being done and it is uncomfortable and difficult to do , um , but that doesn't mean it's not necessary and it shouldn't be . It shouldn't be attacked , or no , not attacked , that's the wrong word .
Natalie KhazaalAnd broached done whatever , you know what I mean that's a .
Claudia HirtenfelderThat's a great place to leave it . As a very quick roundup , why don't you tell us what each of you are currently working on , and then we'll say a cherry oak . So , tobias , let's start with you . What are you currently working on ?
Tobias LinnéSo I'm currently well , I'm running my network that's called Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network . So we are a couple of researchers here at Lund University in Sweden who are , you know , doing teaching and research together on critical animal studies . My current interest in animals lies very much with rats currently , so my latest project that I'm working with is well , it's still in my head , but it revolves around co-living with rats in cities . Because , as you know , rats are these liminal animals that you know are neither wild or domesticated , but you know they like to be where humans are and today we treat them very cruelly . And today we treat them very cruelly and I think for me this is a very important question because , also , projected , in the future , there will be more and more rats living with humans .
Tobias LinnéAs you know , the world is becoming more and more urbanized . So my goal with this project is to try to offer a solution that would make people accept having these animals around us , just like you know that we have grown to accept like pigeons , for example , or corvids , as you know , co-inhabitants of our cities . I want to work finding ways that could mean that rats would be accepted in a similar way . So that's my current project .
Claudia HirtenfelderWell , that's fantastic . I'm very excited about that . As you know , I like to talk about animals in cities , so I think looking at rats here is very , very exciting .
Tobias LinnéI want to talk to you about it , claudia too , so we should talk more sometime . I'm very open to having these conversations . You're the expert here . I don't know . I wouldn't go that far .
Claudia HirtenfelderI'm way too excited to say yes to everything all at once . But cities and rats , yes , it's very exciting . We'll talk more . Tobias . Natalie , how about you ? I know you're about to run off in four minutes because you're about to go to a film festival .
Natalie KhazaalYes , I actually am writing a book which is called , tentatively , atheist Mimicry the battle over self-protection and legitimacy in the Arabic speaking world , and it's going to actually discuss the two cornerstones of the new atheist movement in the Arabic speaking communities communities , on one hand , atheists appeal to protection , not to be harmed by the community , and , on the other , appeals to legitimacy , that they're not second-class citizens but they're just equal citizens like everybody else . And how they use communication strategies and media in order to make their case and what you know what that actually means . How they hide , in certain cases , their real names to make their case . In other cases , they hide their real bodies to make the case . In other cases , they hide their real intentions . You know how they kind of get legitimacy from first abroad and then bring legitimacy home . Or how they get legitimacy from intersecting with other rights movements , like gay rights movements or women rights movements etc . Stuff like that .
Claudia HirtenfelderOh , really interesting , Gosh . When are you expecting that to be done ? You ?
Natalie Khazaalknow , like I'm just starting to , I've done some of the research but I'm just starting the writing process . Maybe this summer I will be starting writing and when you write you absolutely see the need to do more and more research . Two to three years , I hope that it will be out .
Claudia HirtenfelderAwesome . Well , good luck . And Ellen , how about you ?
Ellen W. GorsevskiYeah . So a couple of years ago I started a book project which I paused for you know different reasons , like focusing on the wonderful collaboration with Tobias and Natalie and under Natalie's amazing leadership . But I need to kind of get back to my own work , and so it's a project I'm still fielding possible titles about , but it's about rhetorical portrayals of non-human animals and the incredible people who are able to transcend that and communicate with them and communicate their value with them and communicate their value . So , for example , at the horse barn where I get to go spend time with horses each week , sharon Kale , the owner proprietor , she's vegetarian and she sensitized me to being aware of how in the horse industry so many horses get killed or trucked off , either you know north or south , to slaughterhouses where it's legal to kill horses for you know , just meat and animal products . And so she has a blind horse and in my whole life of spending time with horses I never had seen that before . And so I hope in my book to highlight kind of the beautiful insights of people like her or Stacey Westphal , but then also to critique media and public events and the rhetoric surrounding them , like the US annual turkey pardon at Thanksgiving , which has always just been like a great to me , like it's my pearl to talk about this because it's just been grating at me .
Ellen W. GorsevskiYou know how these two chosen turkeys from a mass agro business get cleaned up . They get to spend one night in a hotel and be pardoned to some sort of happy farm . Is the ? You know the way of getting people to not look at and not actually look at where the rest of the turkeys that are bred are suffering because they're too big for their meat , so they have all kinds of claw problems , there's too much weight , and you know they're pumped full of . You know medicines and hormones and you know they live , you know , like in a lot of industrial agriculture and really pretty horrific conditions . So kind of critiquing how again there's ridicule and satire of this and the president comes out and participates in this . You know , really just bizarre thing that's happened since around Harry Truman's president , us presidency . So that's one of the chapters . So that's what I'm looking at and you can find me here at Bowling Green State University in the School of Media and Communication Just plugging away teaching environmental communication this semester and communication activism and engagement LNG at bgsuedu .
Claudia HirtenfelderWonderful . Thanks so much , Ellen . Yeah , really interesting stuff there . I think the gamification of animals is pervasive and a problem , whether they're being used to predict scores of sporting events or being used as a kind of in these pardons . It's something strange is going on there , so I'm looking forward to kind of seeing your work on that in future . Well , thank you so much , the three of you for the project , for the symposium , for the special issue and , of course , for joining me on the show today . It's been a delight talking to the three of you .
Ellen W. GorsevskiThank you for having us . That was great .
Claudia HirtenfelderThank you to Natalie , tobias and Ellen for making this project possible and for joining me on the show today . Thank you also to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bed music . Thank you to the sponsors of the season the Pollination Project , the School of Modern Language , the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts , as well as the School of Literature , media and Communication at Georgia Tech , not to mention Animals in Philosophy , politics , law and Ethics Apple . This episode was hosted , edited and produced by myself . This is the Animal Turn with me , claudia Hertenfelder for more great iRule podcasts , visit iRulePodcom .
Tobias Linnéthat's i-r-o-a-r-p-o-dcom .
People on this episode
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
The Animal Highlight
Claudia Hirtenfelder
Knowing Animals
Josh Milburn
Species Unite
Species Unite
The Deal with Animals with Marika S. Bell
Marika S. Bell
The Other Animals
Laurent Levy
Beyond Species
Beyond Species
The Anthrozoology Podcast
Anthrozoology Podcast
Freedom of Species
The Freedom of Species Team
Our Hen House: Vegan & Animal Rights Movement | Stories from the Frontlines of Animal Liberation
Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan
Storytelling Animals
Dayton Martindale
Species
mackenmurphy.org
Animal Law Matters
K & R Animal Law
The Humanimal Connection
Humanimal Trust
The Animal That Changed You
Katya Lidsky
Think Like a Vegan
Emilia Leese
The Shifting Lens: Viewing the Animal Experience
Tiamat Warda Rebecca Madrid
The Salmon People
Canada's National Observer
Comme un poisson dans l'eau
Victor Duran-Le Peuch