The Animal Turn

S8E4: Popular Media and Pests with Lu Liu, Debra Merskin, and Emily Major

• Claudia Hirtenfelder • Season 8 • Episode 4

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In this episode we animals, power, and popular media. Emily Major, Debra Merskin, and Lu Liu help to think through how animals are manufactured as “pests” and “icons” in media and how those labels shape empathy, policy, and everyday cruelty towards animals. 

Date Recorded: 15 January 2025 

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Speaker:

This is another iROAR podcast.

Emily Major:

For understanding what makes a pest a pest or what makes someone unwanted, I came up with this graph that kind of compared and kind of in the center of the graph, the revered animal would be. So in the case of New Zealand, it would be the Kiwi. And there's three main, three main values or attributes that the Kiwi has. And the first one is nativity. So further in the center, you have nativity, you have perceived worthiness and controllability. So those three things I think are what really provide safety for certain species of animals from humans is being controllable, native, and worthy. And the further away you get from that, you become marginalized.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Welcome back to the Animal Turn, everyone. This is season eight, where we're talking all about media and power, and actually have a bit of a focus with regards to media and race. In today's episode, though, we're focusing on popular media. And while we started the episode with a very general kind of thought of talking about popular media or popular culture, we ended up focusing a lot of our conversation on the intersection of popular media and pests. So the ways in which pests are represented and the ways in which media is used to kind of facilitate a pest status. If you enjoy this episode, I really encourage you to go back to an earlier episode in which I interviewed Lauren Van Patter about invasive species and pests and the ways in which it's centered on an ecological understanding of some sort of idealized past that doesn't exist. That's a really good episode, and I enjoy Lauren so much. So just a little shout out to that episode if you enjoy this one. So today, uh like we've done throughout the season, I've got several guests who are coming onto the show, some of whom are media scholars, some of whom are animal study scholars, and it brings an eclectic set of views into the conversation. I have three guests today. Emily Major is an academic activist who recently graduated with her PhD in human animal studies from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her research focuses on how framing non-human animals may prevent the healthy development of empathy through a desensitization and normalization of cruelty to animals, with, as you'll see in this conversation, a particular focus on possums. She is a long-term committee member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association, a research fellow with Pan Works, and a dedicated board member of the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society. Deborah Merskin is a professor emirate from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. Her research and teaching focuses on marginalized groups representation in media and popular culture. In particular, her work looks at the impact of media portrayals on the lives of animals and other humans. She is the author of four books, multiple book chapters, and numerous journal articles. Together with Carrie Freeman, she co-created the Media Style Guide, which you can find at animalsandmedia.org. Liu Liu is an associate professor of Chinese. Her research explores the intersections of environmental history, animal history, and science and technology studies in modern China. She is completing a book manuscript titled Trans Species Revolution, Pests and Unwanted Nature in Modern China, which examines the critical role of pests as material and symbolic agents in shaping political struggles, enlightenment movements, socialist construction, and ecological engineering in Chinese history. Her publications also engage with medical humanities, media studies, space history, and Chinese science fiction. We talk about everything from polar bears to sparrows to possums in this episode. It was a very open uh conversation, and I think we went in a range of different avenues that I didn't quite expect at the beginning of the episode, but that I'm happy we touched on. And once again, as a kind of foundational episode to season eight, I think this really helps to set the scene because a lot of the media that we will speak about throughout this season is in many ways a form of popular media, whether that's film, news, gaming, or podcast. So I hope you enjoy this episode and you learn something new. Just a reminder to please leave a review if you listen to the podcast and you enjoy it. Giving us a thumbs up or a five-star or whatever click thing you mobby you need to do really goes a long way in terms of helping others to find the show. Um I also want to just take a spot of time here to say thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Um, an anonymous uh lover of the show uh gave me, bought me a whole bunch of coffees on Buy Me a Coffee, uh, which is a platform I set up years ago. And I think over the years I've had two or three people buy me a coffee there, which is really nice. It's just a kind of open way for people to support me and to support the show. Uh, and I actively try to not like uh push these financial mechanisms onto you as listeners. Uh, but someone went there and bought me a big bunch of coffees, which I'm very, very grateful for. Um, really and truly thank you so much uh for doing that and uh for supporting the show, for supporting me and helping me to also, you know, help others. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you all of you for listening. Uh just a reminder that this season is part of a broader project, which included a symposium and special issue on the topic of media race and animals, which is headed by Natalie Kazal, Tobias Lena, and Ellen Gosevsky, who I spoke to in the first episode. Uh, this season was jointly sponsored by the Pollination Project, the School of Modern Language, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech University. And of course, our long-term sponsor, Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics. The work at Georgia Tech and the work at Queens University is really interesting. So if you're interested in media studies, go check out some of the people at Georgia Tech. And if you're interested in animal studies, go check out some of the folks at Apple. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Thank you to the sponsors. I hope you enjoy. And uh hello, welcome to the Animal Turn uh Deborah, Emily, and Lou. It's lovely to have you on the show today. Excited to be talking to you today about popular media. And I've spoken a little bit about it on the show before, but of course, popular media is massive. Uh, so I'm pretty keen to get a sense of what you guys think about popular media uh and how it relates to kind of thinking through and about animals and why it's important. Should we even be concerned with um with animals and media and popular media? Uh but let's learn a little bit about you first. So, uh Deborah, why don't we start with you? Could you tell me a little bit about you and uh how you got interested in learning or thinking about animals and media?

Debra Merskin:

Sure, thank you, and thank you so much, Claudia, for having this panel. I am recently retired. I'll put air quotes around retired, um, still very active, but as a faculty member at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, where I have taught and researched and been since 1993, long time. And while I've always personally been committed and been active in terms of animals other than humans and uh a vegan most of my life in terms of an ethical vegan, so understanding the food waste process and how that impacts them. My work, probably for the first 20 years of my career, 15 years of my 30-year career, was focused on marginalized human populations and the stereotypes that media perpetuate. My area is media studies, and so that's what I have looked at. My first book is about stereotypes of human beings. Then I have a second book on sexual stereotypes, and um and then I did additional um PhD work in ecological psychology, which focuses on not only as individuals, how the climate crisis, the species uh eradication, and so forth affects us as individuals psychologically, but as cultures and communities. So my work looks at how media portrayals impact the lives of animals, how learning about animals as children impacts whether or not empathy is developed or not. Many of those early lessons come from, in fact, one maybe the one that quotes I'll share is related to that later on, is to um how that early learning from having stuffed toys to watching cartoons to not maybe seeing a huge difference between ourselves as little beings and other animals as little beings, as remarkably different until we're told we're supposed to. And that's super important for the development of empathetic human beings.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So I'm guessing media plays a really important role there, right? In terms of Yeah, because we're we're children, I mean, we often think about children, some of their first interactions with animals being if they've got pets in their home or there are streets, uh street animals who they might interact with. And then of course, zoos and aquariums, which parents often take their children to. But I would assume that probably the most connection many urban kids would have with animals is via media or stuffed toys of sorts. Is that fair?

Debra Merskin:

Absolutely. There's an excellent book um called Communicating Nature that I used when I taught courses on communicating about nature. And then I also created a course on animals in the media that I taught for a number of years. But the in the book Communicating Nature, she identifies sort of four ways that we come to understand nature or animals and direct experience is one, right? Being um around animals in the world, having experience with them, indirect, which could be zoos and aquaria and so forth. And then um, or three ways actually, symbolic interaction, which is those mediated ways of knowing through um purely representational or as I call it, representations. I intentionally put that hyphen in there so that we understand that what we're seeing when we see a film or an ad or uh some other form of communication, we aren't seeing, and this draws on semiotic theory, the actual animal. It's a representation of them created in a particular way to have a particular effect.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Yeah, that's such an important point. Like we often tend to think about media, and maybe this is less and less the case, but as kind of a reflection of reality. And of course, with the on AI becoming more and more pronounced now, people are becoming increasingly aware that media is not necessarily a clear representation of reality, but it's never really been. Even if you think about a photograph, it's never been.

Debra Merskin:

It's all involved in a photograph. We know that. And there's a lot of studies with that of saying, okay, you've got what's within the frame, but what's going on all outside of that frame, right? Um, who's making the decisions of what to photograph, when to photograph, how to do that. And then um, as digital manipulation of photography came along, brought a greater understanding of what you know that is, and that you can literally do head transplants for humans, that you're seeing that of putting different head on a different body and the ways of manipulating that through um computer-generated imagery and now to AI. And I think that's making it ever more clear that that what we see is is not reality per se, but someone's version of what they wish us to perceive as reality.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Really, really um really interesting. And I'm hoping up uh throughout this conversation today, we'll maybe pick up on some of the themes you've raised, like manipulation and empathy. And I know uh Emily, you've you've done some work with thinking through empathy and representation uh with your work in New Zealand. Why don't you tell us a little bit about uh what you're working on and what your interests are in in media and animals?

Emily Major:

Yeah, well, thank you. And to mirror what um Deborah said, thank you for hosting us here. Um I so I'm Emily Major. Um I recently completed my PhD in human animal studies um here at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. And I moved here specifically to research on something related to speciesism. I was very interested in that. Um I've always been more sensitive than most. Um, I wouldn't call it sensitive, but I've always been a very emotional person when it comes to how pest animals are treated specifically. And when I first came here, um I was trying to think of how to focus my research a bit more. And my supervisor, um, Dr. Annie Potts suggested possums. And when I first came here, I had the possums I know are the Virginia opossum. And so they look completely different to the possums here in New Zealand. So a lot of my work has been kind of laser focused on possums, the brushtail possums specifically, in New Zealand and how this Australian marsepial is treated within the archipelago of New Zealand. And my background is kind of in critical animal studies mainly, um, though I'm rather interdisciplinary. Um my background is also in human geography and um looking at more recently sociological and um vegan sociology in relation to how possums as pasture treated and what does that mean? And it's not even just about possums, but I think because I know so much about them now, it's kind of the emphasis. So I completed my research kind of looking at the mainstream and the alternative perspectives to possums in New Zealand. And it's a very specific example of how cruelty can be created in a culture and where many people don't recognize it as cruelty. Um, to me it is. And I'm very interested in how that's portrayed, particularly in media. So it wasn't something that I originally came to to look and investigate how a culture can create cruelty. Um, but the more research I did, there are certain ways that it can definitely be done. And even the response I've had to my research is really interesting and telling because it emphasizes how, at least for possums, they don't matter and how that happens in society and how the media uses imagery and language to try to denigrate animals and to marginalize them in ways that are not only symbolic, but literal. There's literal ways that they use imagery, and it's incredibly concerning because what does that mean for the nation's development of empathy? So it's a very complex topic, but it's very interesting to me. Um sad as well.

Debra Merskin:

Because I do want to jump in and say I appreciate what you're saying there. I hope it's okay to jump in and see on this bit there. But um, for the last five years, I have volunteered and I'm now on the board of um Central Oregon Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Group and whether or not possums can be helped if they're injured and the perceptions of native, non-native languaging, you know, um trying to get communications out to understand all the good they do, that they're not a rabies vector species. In fact, you know, all these other things, but prohibitions in the US at the state levels, right? Of um, it's super interesting about um whether or not uh rescue rehab organizations can help an injured possum or not, despite all the good that they do in their public image. Yeah. So I, you know, I've taken those hotline calls before. And uh yeah.

Emily Major:

Um I was just thinking about that here, actually, because there are so many instances where people find an injured animal or an orphaned baby and they don't know what to do. And if it's a non-native species in New Zealand, if you're a bird, you might be okay. But if you're any other species, um, I think you'd struggle. And what I mean by that, it's more wildlife specifically. So even cats, if you're a wild cat, um, a feral cat, you're at risk. Um, possums are at risk. And a lot of the time, the if you have an injured animal or an orphaned animal, you can't get help. The vets, their response is to euthanize. And so it's very life or death um when we have these discussions, specifically in New Zealand. I'm sure it's like that in other places, but it's very much like we can't help. The extent of our help is to kill and to euthanize because that's the government level control.

Debra Merskin:

I did just want to drop in there, in the bit there about um um euthanizing or doing that. Most of these organizations, it's pretty true worldwide, are not funded by state or federal organizations. So they it's not that they want to euthanize, it's that they will lose their permits if they help, right? Or do anything other than if it's the being is so injured. So I just want to kind of make clear it's not a lack of empathy or willingness to care on the part of the rescue organizations or the veterinarians, but they can in fact lose licensing if they do act on the behalf of the animals. So I think that's just an important thing.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Thank you so much. I I come we'll come back to speaking more about possums and the connection between um, I think, symbolism and materiality, because I really do think that this is kind of critical to what we're talking about when, you know, thinking about how stereotypes can actually manifest in real-world, uh, real-world interactions is very important. And in policy and in practice, you know, even just thinking about the extent to which uh different animals, but also different populations of people are worthy or significance of consideration in policy. Now, Lou, I know that you also have done really remarkable and interesting work with thinking through this idea of pest status, but perhaps differently to how Deb and Emily have focused on it. So before we kind of get into the thick of the conversation today, uh could you tell us a little bit about your research uh and and the ways in which you've focused on media?

Lu Liu:

Yeah, sure. Um, and um I would just like to echo Deb and Emily in thanking Claudia for putting together this very wonderful panel of um that conversation. Um I'm I'm Liu and an assistant professor of Chinese from the Georgia Tech. And uh I graduated recently from UDEP Madison with a degree in East Asian studies. So specifically, I'm not a media studies person, but media definitely play a very important role in my work, which examines uh pests as a material and also symbolic agent in shaping the processes of modern China. And I propose that as a worthy topic because uh there is this uh methodological anthropocentrism, let's put it in this way. I think in um Chinese studies that different groups of human beings um and social groups that are studied in terms of how they shape uh modernization, nation building, and how they were shaped, mobilized and coordinated. However, what about nature? Especially what about nature that is considered uh expand expendable or disguillable, right? And um it's important also because the violence imposed upon those unwanted natures is also translatable to violence um towards human beings. So I think the um human, I I I don't really like to put the binary, but human and non-human and sufferings, experiences, they they really we we cannot understand one without critically uh examining the other. Um so another reason why media is so important is I examine how knowledge about pests was created and transmitted. So in examining this knowledge in transit, it is important to not just uh look at history of science or national policy, but also how these ideas were broadcast across a variety of platforms and media. Specifically, I think that relates to pop media. So, how is there any unexpectedness in the conveying of um pest knowledge? And what happens when people are trying to consume that knowledge about pests? Are there anything that that is so slip slip slippery that you know cannot be contained by this whole discourse of pest in uh modernity or in socialism?

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Really um fascinating. And I and I I think the concept of pest itself, I'd like it if we could maybe spend a bit of time thinking through pest because I think it's it's a a concept that helps us to think across that human-animal divide that that is often kind of shored up because I think pest status has often been used to dehumanize others, right? It's an easy way of putting um uh whoever is constituted as the other in this case is being less than human. So pest seems to operationalize beyond a kind of um species barrier in this way. It's a it's a someone used the word denigrating uh earlier. And I think that pest really does this, uh whether it's specific ecosystems or specific animals or specific populations of people, when you're labeled a pest, you become something uh, like you said, killable or something controllable or disciplinable. So I uh when you said uh nature um can't is reflected as pest or becomes a pest, what were you meaning when you said that um nature being kind of displayed or represented as a pest?

Lu Liu:

That's a I think that's a core question for my research. Um, because I my one of my arguments is that um pest as quote unquote unwanted nature, uh it represents a whole way of thinking in modern China. Um that that there's always something that is um undesirable, but you know, um have always existed that that is considered natural. So one trait of being modern is to get rid of those things that have always accompanied human beings, human history, but now they are considered undesirable. So I think that kind of attitude is uh sort of a projection of anthropocentric towards nature, but it's also um talks about you know how the the the dialectics of of nature and society, yeah, how humans are uh trying to humanize nature while they're also sort of in Marxist sense naturalized in the in the process.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Fascinating. Um does anyone, uh Emily or Deb, do you have any thoughts on kind of thinking through uh kind of pests in media, the power of pests in media, the pest discourse? Or any examples. Of course, the possums here are a really great example. I was a big fan of parks and recreation, and I know possums throughout parks and recreation just come up time and again as the go-to pest to um laugh at and to not really take seriously. So it's not just that pests are something to kill, but they're also somehow laughable, not only killable.

Emily Major:

Yeah, um, that was exactly what I was thinking about. Um at least for me, pest with inverted quotes, because um it's a social construction to think of what a pest is, because you can apply that to anyone. For me, a pest can be made into a scapegoat, um, a scapegoat for human mis yeah, the mistakes of humans really. And it's a way for us to navigate our own guilt for the way that we treat the environment. And this is very specific to a New Zealand example, but that's it's replicated across the globe, the way that we think of we can assign a pest label to someone, some being, and we seek to have cleanliness and purity in society. And so by removing that um being or animal, then we are becoming more civilized in a in a sense, or becoming more what we think is going to be um, I mean, the idea of what we want the world to look like. Even though this idea is purely um I mean it's purely made up, it's um a vision of kind of what we think we want, but it's not realistic necessarily. But at least for me, I think scapegoating is a big part of it that we want these animals and we assign these animals, it's not just animals, it's people to scapegoating them and not really taking responsibility for how we are treating the planet and treating those within it.

Debra Merskin:

Yeah, um, touching on what it's already been said, I think it's a deeply psychological nature of our species to um look at difference in any type of way, however, it is socially constructed, and it is the social construction of reality here, to uh that's built on the basis of fear of scarcity. And in many ways, it's whoever that is, other humans or certain certain animals that are identified as other with a big capitalized O, somehow a threat to what we have. So it's an us and them type of thing. So whatever they represent, it becomes either something to despise or make dirty, or do you think about ravens, you think about crows, you think about wolves and coyotes and the ones that do crucial uh vultures that do crucial cleanup work of our messes, right? But um, where there would be so much disease if they didn't do that, but they become maligned because they represent death or they represent that. Or in the case of research I've done related to coyotes in this part of the country, even though they do a lot of pest management, they represent taking something from humans that belongs to us. And under American law, animals are property. And so they can be treated in most any way and regarded that way. And media example I use when I think about stereotyping has to do with wolves. And in the case of wolves, who are periodically brought back into popularity and then almost eradicated to extinction, brought back and forth. A recent paper I publish looks at advertising and certain presentations of wolves. And based on the way they're presented in advertising and popular media, you think that they are born with the intent to kill humans. They are amplified in their physical uh size in um films or novels, books like Twilight, where they become these dire wolves or Game of Thrones, and that they are intent on harming humans, and that's the focus of their lives, or taking property that belongs to us, such as farmed animals and preying on them, even though the depredation is very, very low from animals such as them. But it's our fear of them taking what belongs to us and amplified into this threat to us. So whether it's an ad for robot and cough syrup, where the grandparent wolves, uh grandparents are presented as wolves in terms of their threat to babies and the spreading of disease, or they're uh in one commercial, wolves are representing this uh flu influenza vaccine. The wolf walks through a clinic all the time until the perfect vaccine is presented. It scares the wolf, the wolf runs out, jumps on a bus, and leaves. These are not presenting them as the complex, multidimensional beings that they actually are, that have families, that you know, collectively raise their young and that suffer pain, that are sentient, all of that reducing them that way then makes it easier to invoke public. To kill them, to permit an Alaska aerial gunning of wolves, to go out and kill a number of them. If you can sort of say my cow was killed by a wolf, even though it's largely most of the time it's it's feral dogs. Um all of that makes it um much simpler if you've planted the idea in the collective psyche that they are a threat to us and they are uh uh a past, they are undesirable, they are invasive, they are um whatever the languaging is. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

This makes me think a little bit about the power of metaphors in popular media. So we haven't yet spoken about uh, you know, uh popular media, but from from previous conversations, and correct me if I'm I'm wrong, the popular media tends to reach a much larger audience and it tends to try to be a lot more accessible. So we so far in today's conversation, we've already mentioned things like kids' cartoons, news media, advertising. Um, so I I do have a question about how animals are used as metaphors in popular uh media, but perhaps before we move forward, just to make sure that I'm correct, is this a fair thing to say? What is what is popular media before we move on?

Debra Merskin:

Well, I can easily jump on that, although I don't want to dominate it, but I am a media study scholar, so I guess I would say, but I think um, first of all, the media is reductive in many ways in terms of thinking that, but definitely media and popular culture, because there are other portrayals, but news media, newspapers, magazines, books, all the internet sources, broadcast media, television, radio, internet again, cinema, um, jump in any bun, radio, um, and then photography, documentary photography, other forms of photography. All of those are forms of communication sent out by an intended sender with a target audience in mind. It also includes ancillary services such as public relations and advertising. And so jumping in, I that that's a lot, right? Of what constitutes what's out there. And then of people on an individual level, word of mouth will then operate as other forms of communication related to that. But a video games, another um arena. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And I'm I'm guessing it's got something to also do with the kind of extent to which it's consumed, right? Popular media seems somewhat different to kind of high or fine, fine um accessibility or at least the ability for kind of large amounts of people to access it. Um, you know, Netflix is popular media and loads of people can access it, but it's somehow still exclusive. But that's different to the Mona Lisa somehow, even though the Mona Lisa has somehow gained popular media credentials because everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like.

Debra Merskin:

So I guess it's really media would be a representation of the Mona Lisa, right? As opposed to the actual art itself in there, that would be in there. It's it's a medium in terms of it being an oil painting or whatever it is. But um, popular media, part of the definition is it's sent out to a mass audience, however, we define that mass audience, who can then decide when to receive it or decide whether to pay for it. Uh, it it's different in that way. It's sent out via a kind of technology, even if that technology might seem antiquated as being a printed page now, in light of all the electronic media, but that separates it as well as what you were saying from sort of big C culture, which would be the Mona Lisa or an opera or a ballet, but that wouldn't be mediated unless it were sent out via technology, right? To kind of clarify that. And then small C culture is sort of kind of viewed as kitsch or um everyday stuff.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Okay. Yeah. This helps me a lot. So now, okay, so appreciating that um this goes through to a wide audience and coming back to your kind of example of wolves being portrayed as these kind of pervasive threats, right? So it seems to me that possums and wolves um and the different populations are portrayed as threats and in whatever sense, it could be an economic threat, it could be a medical threat. As long as there's this idea of threat uh present, they um this can facilitate kind of material interactions on their lives. But coming back to the media representations of them, like wolves seem to be used or possums seem to be used as metaphors somehow. Uh, or is that a fair representation, Emily? Like, because yours was looking at news media, were possums used in this kind of metaphoric way that wolves are being used uh in in showing them in these adverts, or was it kind of saying possums are these literal threats? Uh, and do you think that operates differently?

Emily Major:

Both. I would say both. Um, what I ended up looking at, um, so this was originally going to be, this project was originally going to be part of my thesis, but then I got a little bit too overzealous and I had to cut and trim down. So then this got shifted to a later project. When I was first doing my research, I noticed immediately that the way that possums were portrayed in the media were not reflective of my own experiences of them or my own little vegan hub, activist hub experiences of possums. So I really thought, okay, what's going on here? And so I went to do this project and I basically scoured any sort of print online news media to really investigate what's going on with the language and the imagery. And I didn't expect it to be so overwhelming, the amount of articles that negatively portrayed possums using both metaphors and literal um representations of possums threatening the environment, their vectors of bovine TB. So that was heavily emphasized, in particular to the threat that they would cause to the local dairy and beef and even lamb industries here in New Zealand. So it's really all about money. Um, but it's also about identity because Australians, Australian brushtail possums are from Australia, and there's this um tension between Australia and New Zealand as the the little New Zealand with the big Australia. And so there is emphasis of racism and patriotism that's going on there as well. And I think that's, I don't know, maybe I should discuss this later, but the quote I wanted to use was actually from one of the specific articles that I basically ripped apart because I was looking at it thinking, how is this article allowed? And how is it that an editor allowed this to go through with the pictures that were chosen at the time it's since been edited? Is it appropriate if I bring in the quote now? Yeah, go ahead. So I found this in 2021. There was, um, so there's an under underground rescue. Well, it's not really that secret, but there's an underground rescue community in New Zealand that if a dead mother possum, for example, is found on the side of a road, because people swerve to hit them, it's intentional and it's seen as a national patriotic thing to do is if you see a possum, you hit them. But often if it's a mother, they'll have a baby and the Joey doesn't die immediately. And so people will go and check the pouches for a baby. And what often happens is that people will raise them as pets. And um, they're still quasi domesticated. They're not they're not domesticated, but they make good pets. Yeah, there's problematic term pets. But um, so people will raise them and they don't want to release them back into the wild because of the threat that they could do to the um, well, the perceived threat to the native bird population, but specifically for how they forage on foliage. So people will care for them. And so this lady um was caring for a baby Joey. And what ended up happening was the Joey escaped. And there was a series, there was a flurry of articles that came out all the same time that was talking about what was called the Black's Road Ripper. And it was, I couldn't believe it when I first saw it. Cause essentially what happened is the baby Joey escaped and saw a human, and they associated the human with food and affection and care. And so the baby Joey ran to this woman's house and all the news media immediately went in an uproar saying that there was a possum holding a woman hostage in her home, which is just absolutely insane. And so part of the media was playing into the humor of like a possum's not gonna hold you hostage. So the title here, um, it's just the title and the first sentence that comes along with it that's kind of quote I want to discuss. So this is in Radio New Zealand, which is our national government-funded media that's mainly broadcast, but they do some print media as well. So it's called Arresting Tale. Police respond after woman held hostage by possum. And the next part shows a picture of a possum and um Dunedin police have detained and released a furry pest. They've dubbed the Black's Road Ripper after it terrorized a resident. Now that I'm looking at this, they also spelled fury furry wrong. They spelled it as fury, which I think is quite interesting that there's a little bit of a spelling error in there because they um what ended up happening is they the police dubbed the possum a black throat ripper, which to me, if I'm looking into the etymology behind the word ripper, calling a baby animal a ripper, because a ripper is somebody who um mutilates victims and murders them. And so calling a baby Joey that is just the epitome of what I ended up finding during my research was that animals are literally used to, and possums specifically are used to create fear. And I just found it so funny because the fact that this is a bait, it's a baby animal, and I just couldn't believe the way that the media had portrayed that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Earlier on, you said uh that this helps to create a culture of cruelty, which I thought was an interesting framing. How do you how do how do articles like this that that folks I mean, we engage these types of articles all the time, like often these kind of humorous slants, so somehow it's either not serious and it's done in this frivolous way, or it's done in this like frenzied fear kind of mongering way. Um, could you make that connection for me between an article like this and what you were calling that kind of culture of cruelty?

Emily Major:

Yeah. So during my research, I spoke with a lot of people um officially in interviews and then unofficially, just in conversations. And the amount of people that would come up to me, even just at work or in my um just out and about, people coming up and saying, Oh, I saw this article. Did you see what happened? Did you see? Did you see? And I'm thinking, what, what's going on? So I look at it and I was looking through and the amount of articles that came up about the same thing, and it ended up being the baby Joey was SCOBY lunchbox, because I guess she was found and put in someone's lunchbox and to take home to be a pet. And so it ended up, the story ended up turning into this, oh, look, it's a baby Joey, it's not her fault. But initially, the imagery that was paired with those articles was very specific. So um I wish I could show you a picture here, but it's a snarling possum that is out in the day, which is very abnormal. Um, it looks like they are growling with their teeth bared. Now, this is incredibly not normal. Um, if anything, they're probably in a trap because all you can see is the head. They're probably in a trap, petrified out of their mind. But that is the very specific image that was used about seven to eight times in all of the articles that was constant that the same image was used. And so pairing that with Black Throat Ripper, it creates this kind of connection between if you're reading something you're not thinking critically about it, oh, a ripper, that's what possums look like. When anybody that has spent time around possums and knows them as individual beings knows that that's not representative of what they're actually like. And if people are consuming this regularly and not thinking critically and they don't have that exposure to possums to know what they're actually like, they're not gonna know. And they're just gonna say, oh gosh, that's petrifying. I don't want to be anywhere near that. So this creation of cruelty is sustained but done over time. And it's not only literal, but it's um, yeah, it's very in your face, unfortunately.

Lu Liu:

Um something I observed from both Steph and Emily's words is that um there seems always to be this um imposition of intentionality upon what is considered pest or or vermin, while in fact uh they are just doing what biological instincts uh propel them to do. One very interesting small story allegory in Chinese is that uh a man saved uh uh a snake who's almost died out of a winter, and when the snake uh wokes up, he would like to eat the man. So there in the moralization of the story, the the snake has been compared to a variety of enemies and in evil persons. However, uh that if you think about biologically, it is a very natural thing to for a snake to bite without any intention just for survival. So um I think that says a lot about the making of vermin or pests as a social political category. It is only when humans are with this uh obsession with boundary, like boundary of home, boundary of uh city, that we started to identify what can be counted as pests. And uh one of the pests I study is sparrows. Of course, it's no longer pests in China, but back in the 1950s they were, because they quote unquote steal um human brains. But actually, that speaks to how food scarcity actually created this anxiety instead of you know how much the sparrows actually can consume. And in fact, sparrows have consumed human crops at least in China for thousands of years. It doesn't mean the peasant didn't treat them as new sums. There are many ways, you know, recorded in agricultural books uh in terms of you know how you chase those uh birds away. But in uh modern China, when pests become uh when uh sparrows become a pest, it is rather not drawing them away, but to extinguish them uh completely to sort of uh without leaving any literary or uh empathetic or um geographical space for pests.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That got like that kind of extermination logic seems to be throughout, uh you know, and there's a there's a temporal tension here. You know, Deborah, you mentioned that kind of flux of wolf populations going through this Ebonflow of being popular and then vilified. And of course they're in a moment of vilification right now. Their populations have bounded because of conservation efforts, and now they're facing they are facing threats from humans in in Europe and in North America. And now also what you mentioned here with sparrows. There are political, cultural, ecological changes that kind of shape humans. I love that you said anxiety there, because that this does, it kind of stinks of anxiety, this creating of pests or villains. And media seems to be really good at playing with those boundaries, but also facilitating that kind of anxiety. Um, so I I've really loved this conversation about pest status and its connection between um popular culture, but what about other kinds of stereotypes that you think uh or perhaps even interconnections? When you think about pests, how have you seen um uh overflow between different uh quote unquote oppressed groups or marginalized groups being used in popular media? Is this is this a common thing to kind of use animals and a marginalized group together in a specific story? Or is that, am I making connections there that don't really exist?

Debra Merskin:

I would say um first is to look back, and I can only speak about US media, but certainly there were examples of this all over the world, particularly uh during times of war, but World War I, World War II, and other times, propaganda routinely presented uh um human individuals as pest animals, particularly rats. And um there's lots of there are archives of showing that it was done to some extent in Nazi Germany, but more so by American media, which public relations and American media taught all other, really taught all other forms of of oppression other parts of the world how to do it, right? It it came out of a lot of the studies of public relations and so forth of doing that, but it was routine, especially with exclusion acts in the United States, to exclude particular Asian populations. So the threat being to use a rat as a stand-in for humans. And one of my um kind of things that I write about is the fact that um, and actually Natalie's book that Natalie, who's organized the panel that we've been a part of, uh, was about us looking at immigration and look at other types of issues associated with that and making those connections. And for me, if the worst thing you can be referred to as a human being is as an animal, where does that leave animals? Right? It's it's if if that's the lowest of the low, if the horrible conditions are something we simply accept that animals live with and in, uh is that uncomfortable but very real territory of the treatment of other animals and the parallels. Uh and so for me, I wrote about um representations of Jews and language references in there as vermin, as as um lesser than subhuman. And it is that threat because we see that amplified. I was thinking when you're talking about possums or you're talking about other animals that come in and do cleanup work, is rats in New York City, right? There's a lot of of that going in. And it's not so much about what are we as a species leaving behind, and they're thriving because of raccoons, squirrels, um, any of these um beings. It's because, you know, we leave a lot of garbage around and trash, but the association with undesirable for whatever socially constructed reason it is that certain groups of human beings fulfill that, the comparison becomes almost automatic in language to being less than human. And that divide is constantly being moved, right? To keep that separation clear between us and them. So it's a long answer, but I think in that way, looking back to early forms of propaganda are super important.

Emily Major:

But I was just thinking that actually when you were talking about rats, Deborah. Um, it's one of those things where people will say that, oh, the you're a rat or infer that somebody behaves like a rat. And in my head, I'm thinking, but rats are amazing. Like, so it's just an awareness, not an awareness, but lack of awareness, I suppose, of how multi-dimensional they are. Um, not just rats, but these animals that we label as pests, they're actually have full lives. Um, and we don't really see that. We just kind of, you know, we put a label on it, and then that can justify our cruel treatment of them.

Lu Liu:

Um, for me, a lot of the uh characteristics that make pests pests are something that humans are yearning, at least in a capitalist world. They are hyperproductive, they defy boundaries, they go everywhere, and they are highly um consumative, right? They consume a lot of things. So if we consider those with you know, this capitalized globalized world, we find striking but uncanny similarities. So the resilience of pests, I would say, is also probably reflects this unconscious, you know, yearning for human survival, but in a very unsustainable way.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

We were speaking about extermination campaigns earlier, and people will try to exterminate, but extermination campaigns, they don't work. They don't work. There's always efforts to kill, there's always language to have these kinds of um completely eradicate and kill, but they've never worked. And yet somehow they come up the time and again in policy. And the reason they don't work is testament to the resilience of many of these animals. Um, you know, you mentioned New York rats at the moment. Of course, the war on rats continues in that city once again, and it shores up every couple of uh years, there'll be this huge campaign to somehow like focus energy against a specific kind of species or interaction with that species. But what I do find interesting is how some animals seem to crop up as pests in various media across the world, right? So now we we have an opportunity here to almost compare popular media in the US and popular media in China and New Zealand and very different parts of the world, right? Yet somehow the same types of animals are cropping up as pests or gaining pest status um in these different countries. What do you think explains that?

Debra Merskin:

I think it's the same type of basic fundamental human psychological makeup is to create categories of us and them, depending on what resource it is or uncomfortable work. I love what you said there, Lou, about that, about being industrious and about doing these other types of things. Um, but at the same time, um, it's just that constant creating categories of difference. So coyotes, for example, don't exist everywhere in the world, but there are parallel examples, I'm sure, of creating uh those threats.

Emily Major:

I was actually thinking about this very question. Um, I have a paper that's in copy editing, hasn't been released yet, but I've kind of theorized at least. Um I'm sorry to keep bringing possums into it, that's a lot of what I know. Um so for understanding what makes a pest a pest or what makes someone unwanted, I came up with this graph that kind of compared and kind of in the center of the graph, the revered animal would be. So in the case of New Zealand, it would be the Kiwi. And there's three main um three main values or attributes that the Kiwi has. And the first one is nativity. So further in the center, you have nativity, you have perceived worthiness and controllability. So those three things I think are what really provide safety for certain species of animals from humans, is being controllable, native, and worthy. And the further away you get from that, you become marginalized. So if you're saying cattle in New Zealand, um, you're easily controllable because you can use fences and you can use breeding and deterrence measures to control them, they're worthy for what their bodies represent as resources. And then um, but they're not native, so they're not as high as the Kiwi. So for me at least, um, those three attributes being controllable, native, and perceived worthiness are three things that kind of elevate. And if you're not that, if you're uncontrollable and you're not native and you're perceived to be not worthy, that's kind of the worst you could be. And so then you're kind of just pushed to the margins.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's really helpful. And this kind of brings us to another aspect of popular media. So we've focused so far on the kind of negative, I think, representations of popular media of animals, particularly looking at pests here and and kind of how this can have real world implications for the animals involved in terms of policy, but also in terms of how they're governed and treated. But thinking about the kiwi or animals that are often represented as um like heroic or as revered, this is also a common meme in in media, right? The same animals kind of show up time and again. Now, do you think these animals are better off than the pests? Because they're, you know, do you think the whales that constantly show up as being whales or polar base constantly being represented as the image of climate change? Do you think those animals that are kind of stereotyped in this positive way, that capture people's imaginations in the most positive way, are better off? And take that in whatever shape or form you you understand it.

Debra Merskin:

I would say paralleling stereotype theory, that yes, most of them tend to be um negative in that, you know, reducing an entire population to a set of generalized um aspects to it tends to be that way. But there's also in um critical race theory and stereotypes, there's the model minority stereotype that portrays uh Asian Americans as all being good at math, all being, you know, all of these types of things, but it's still putting a set of characteristics on a group of people as if it applies to everyone in that group. So it sets up expectations. Or you mention, and so I see that transferring the example I have among animals is you mentioned polar bears. And based on media portrayals, uh, you tend to have, and they're they're white. So they're white, and they're, you know, white is always um valued more than black or dark colors. So there was a um a Nissan Leaf commercial, for example, for a little car that showed the polar bear making their way from the Arctic all the way through these different landscapes and by these um oil facilities and down the streets and ended up in the neighborhood and in the driveway of a man who had just purchased a Nissan leaf. And the guy turns around and the polar bears there getting ready to give him a big hug. Well, fine, but the impact is that can communicate to people that polar bears are approachable, that they are um, you know, just want to give you a big hug. And that's not gonna work out for us and definitely not for the animals. So it's talking about earlier, you know, Emily mentioned a habituated possum or habituation in any any of the others, or falsely positive stereotypes, I think can also work against the animals. Uh, bears in Yellowstone who uh go up and are used to getting food, which would be a normal behavioral activity of them, but they're generally they're rarely relocated and typically killed if they do that. So I would say that um there's those are examples of how stereotype theory, falsely positive ones, translates to animal populations.

Emily Major:

Yeah, I think for your initial question, like how better off are the species that are then revered or cared for, well, not really cared for, isn't the right term, species that are iconic in certain cultures. Um, for kiwi specifically, it's not actually about the the individual animal, it's about the species, and it's about species preservation, and it's about what that species means to a particular culture. So for New Zealand, kiwi are revered, but it's not about the actual animal and their experiences and emotions, it's about preserving the identity of the kiwi and preserving that rarity. And this feticization of species as well is something that I've been recognizing a lot. The other day in the media, there was a report of a kiwi that got its leg caught in a trap. Um, there's traps everywhere across New Zealand. And the media uproar of wanting to protect the kiwi and then discuss the ethics of using traps in the first place is was really interesting because I was thinking, well, we use these traps all the time, and nobody has a problem if a possum is stuck there for 12 hours suffering. And but as soon as it becomes a kiwi, it's a problem. So I think they're just treated in different ways, but certainly the feticization and the creating these iconic species doesn't actually mean or this status doesn't actually mean that they're going to be cared for in meaningful ways. They're just going to be preserved. And preservation, what does that mean? Does the individual animal care about that?

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

So it's almost it's all it's it's also kind of a preservation of an idea. So not even just the species, but preservation. Of an idea. And I mean, interestingly, I think these kinds of charismatic species could potentially facilitate conversations around things like traps, right? They they can garner some visibility to problems that unfortunately the pest species might not, they might not facilitate the kind of empathy you were um we were talking about previously. But you know, these charismatic ones might be able to facilitate it. But does it then just create another another kind of um division?

Lu Liu:

I I I will say the uh conservationist uh mindset really it's just another way of drawing boundary and uh reserve that patch of land for some kind of charismatic animals, while all the rest should be shared by human beings. And thinking about charismatic species such as panda um creates this very cute, you know, um non-harmful uh image of uh uh of China, but it's also highly vulnerable to uh political appropriation um at specific uh historical time. And I think that acute culture also, for instance, it uh raises people's expectation about cat being you know, round face and large eyes. So uh it does it create a standard for good cat being uh cat that everybody should buy those uh you know pure bred cat and uh because they uh align more always the tastes of how people appreciate that species. Uh and so uh what about street cats?

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Yeah. Yeah, there's a psychological dimension also to kind of seeing the same image again and again, right? We we do find what what we see time and again more attractive. So if we're kind of exposed to the same looking cat again and again and again, we're more likely to want to purchase uh, you know, a cat that looks like that or that fits those aesthetic ideals. Um and you know, coming back to panda in China, of course, this is one of the species that people really strongly create with a with China and as a specific, and that's also by design. Um, and this conversation so far seems to me that we're talking here about the tension of media often portraying animals simply. There's a simple story about animals, uh, there is a lack of complexity, and just in general, whether it's in an adverts or a muse story, they're kind of just treated as objects, simple objects, right? Um but I do think that there are instances increasingly of complexity coming forward, and one of them was a recent expose of just the panda rearing and breeding facilities in China and just how much in the way of economics and politics are involved. Uh, panda has just come here to the Schonbrun Zoo, one of the oldest zoos in the world in Vienna. And uh, this is not, this is a this is a political thing. Pandas are not, uh, they are exchanged, they're on loan, they're never their the breeding is very controlled. Uh, it speaks to some of those sterile uh aspects you were talking about earlier. And um, and very few pandas have actually been released back into the wild. There's been very little in the way of creating habitats that will help facilitate wild pandas continuing. So, what's actually at play here? What are the politics at play, and how is that different to the kind of zoo brochures showing happy pandas and their babies? It's it's interesting what what the discourse is potentially potentially hiding.

Emily Major:

I was thinking just about how much work, how much cognitive work has to go into making us hate cute animals. Um if you look at possums, brush shell possums specifically, they're adorable. I mean, I find them just absolutely adorable. And that doesn't, that's not the reason why I want to advocate for them, but it is a draw. And when I first moved here, I was thinking, oh my gosh, they're adorable. How, how can children be drowning? Because there was um in 2017, there was um an event where there's a school fundraising event where children were witnessed drowning Joey's in buckets of water while everybody watched and nobody intervened. And the fact that that children did that with no nobody told them to do that, they did that on their own is terrifying to me. But then to think about how does how does that happen? So, like we look at this, what I would call a cute animal. Not that another animal like a rat deserves to be drowned in a bucket of water, they don't. But it's how do we get to that point where you can create hatred and kind of combat the cuteness? Because it's really hard to look at a possum and go, oh, but that to me is why we use those images, especially in in media, why we use images of them snarling um to really and there's also there was also an issue um with a lot of the news media in New Zealand using the wrong species of possum as their like the stock image they would use. They would use the completely wrong species that doesn't exist in New Zealand. And I just kept seeing it, thinking, my gosh, this is like a government, huge, huge paper in New Zealand. And they don't even look to see it's not even the same species. And the fact it happened so regularly, I was like, what are we doing? And I even emailed them a few times to be like, that's not the same species. And they did it actually with there's a Radio New Zealand article where they I had an interview with um one of the hosts, and the image they used was of a short-eared brush tell or short-eared possum in Australia. And I emailed them being like, that's not the same species as what we have in New Zealand. Like, can you fix it? They didn't.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

But this speaks to exactly what we were saying, this kind of tendency of not really taking them seriously. It's a fluff piece or it's a whatever, but it's not, it's not serious. And I think this matter of cuteness is actually really, really important for a variety of popular media forms, right? So something we haven't spoken about yet is social media. And uh, I know that Jess, uh Jess Hooper and Carol Klein have done a lot of really great work with thinking about animals and um tourism, and in particular drawing attention to this selfie, the selfie tendency of seeing an animal and wanting to take a selfie with them. So, Deb, you mentioned polar bears earlier. Loads of people. There was an incident in South Africa not too long ago, a couple of years ago, gosh, everything feels like not too long ago, of someone in a in a lion park thinking, okay, well, this is a tourist facility, so these lions are obviously tame, and opening up their door, climbing out their car to take a photo with the pride of lions. And as you say, this really can end up with very, very bad consequences for you and for the animals. Um, because yeah, and this this kind of like selfie, because we think about popular media as someone in you know, a media house or something producing a film or whatever, but individuals are producing their own media now and they're going into landscapes, taking selfies and images of animals all the time, and sometimes even fostering or creating um inauth inauthentic is not the right word. They're literally manufacturing instances of animals being hurt so that they can save the animal so that they can get media attention, which is just so this speaks to, I think, that culture of cruelty you're talking about is even animals we find cute. We'll find ways to hurt them if it means we can get some money.

Emily Major:

Sorry, I'll say one thing and then I'm done. I just I get really excited when we're talking about this stuff. Um well, it's not exciting what I was about to say, but um a few years ago when I was doing research on social media and looking at how um there was a farm, um, it was like a farm Facebook account, and somebody uploaded a a video of him electrocuting a possum. And it was mortifying. So I immediately was calling um MPI, which is the Ministry of Primary Industries, which is very interesting that you have to call primary industries to report animal cruelty for um possums. But um I immediately called them and the lack of help I got with that experience, like I was literally witnessing a video of an animal being actively tortured, and it was so difficult to actually get anywhere. And the fact that like everybody will have our phones, we can take videos and upload them, and the fact that social media specifically allows people a different kind of way to share their own perspectives and viewpoints. We also see it with people on Twitter, X, whatever it's called now, um, with people posting dead possums on their picture, like uh they'll post a post and say, Oh, look who I caught today. And somebody responded, Well, I'm a serial killer of possums. And I'm thinking, how are we a culture that people can openly say, I am a serial killer of possums?

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Well, I mean, then you speak about the banality of people putting up fishing, fishing Yes, like uh leisure, leisure activities, right? So deer too. Um and and people really get upset with trophy hunting, but I think the more banal the celebration of harm, the kind of for me at least, the more scary it becomes because somehow it's just completely accepted and minimalized. There's there's nothing wrong with it.

Debra Merskin:

Yeah. I mean, we don't even want to talk about crush videos and things like that, but that's that's kind of what that, like you said, that that bragging about it. And the, you know, the truth is like with the children, when you were saying that about that is one of the constants they that's recognized among um serial killers and truly evil individuals is a history and childhood of animal harm and torture. And um, so permitting that can do deep damage to these children in terms of their future, the permissibility of that. But I think this also operates on a more kind of banal level that people think that um it's funny or whatever in social media to do things such as um hang tags, like there's all this like shaming your dog for uh you know, putting a sign around their head and a sign of I ate mommy's underwear or whatever these things are. And a friend of mine in theater pointed out is like, wait a minute, they had to kind of reenact scolding that dog or whatever that situation is in order to get that look. Because, you know, they weren't filming it when, you know, Woofy was actually eating the underwear or at the vet to get it removed from the stomach or whatever the thing was. They needed to restage that to put that around my dog's an idiot, and he did this to get that look of embarrassment or humiliation or whatever we want to say on the dog's face in order to post that on media. And um, to me, that's that's a form of psychological cruelty to kind of do that and want to continue to like, oh, isn't this funny? And there's whole loops of these things of um, you know, they call them like dumb. I don't, there's names for when they create these there, these series of things of stupid things my dog did, and they put the sign around their neck and and reshame them from whatever it was. And and during that experience, the dog probably was just having a regular day, but all of a sudden is being scolded again. And it's about us, it's not about them, and laughing at them for these things. And that's a very mild, but maybe deeply psychological troubling thing we want to do, which is to make we do that with our own species, right? You know, the scarlet letter for a misbehavior or whatever it might be. Um, deeply troublesome. And like you say, social media has made that more urgent, more widespread. And while you citizen journalism can be super important in covering events that really need us to bear witness, I think the downside is that idea of the entertainment aspect of it at any expense.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

It's another form of consumption, right? Like we often neglect this idea of how we consume animals or marginalized others for um for a variety of reasons, but often uncritically. Um but then so we've we've painted a pretty bleak picture here of popular media and its kind of connection with uh with animals, not only for pests, but also for those that are represented in a positive light, for those who are in people's homes, for those who are in zoos. It just seems like media and animals are not a good mix. What are the benefits of thinking about is is there a power, potentially positive power to the relationship between media and animals? I mean, I can think of one example where I think this is happening, but I'd I'd be curious to hear your your thoughts. Lou, do you have any thoughts?

Lu Liu:

Um This is not my opinion. I'm actually quoting uh Kira Kippi, um who talks about electric animals. So he's saying, while you know, animals are disappearing in nature and in real life, they uh they they abound in media, especially in cinema. So cinema sort of placed this platform of technologically reviving animals. So I I guess one is not that it's not a positive way, but I one possibility for media is to really allow us to see, you know, the the spectros of animals, to see them as symptoms. And so what what kind of uh how does that tell us about the way interspecies relationships have been shaped?

Debra Merskin:

I would say that I think um I mean, no surprise, I I believe zoos are incredibly harmful. And there's a belief that you can only become empathetic or understand the animals. And as a child, I I th and my parents thought they were doing the right thing by going there, but it's not the right thing for animals. But we know that it's the media that we have, documentaries, even if some of the information is less than accurate, it does prompt caring. And I think there's a lot of forms of media out there that actually are really um prompt children to want to know more. They want to, like, I know a little boy who's crazy about octopus. And it was because he had seen them in animated forms, you know, in documentaries, and consumes everything he can about them. And which also makes me feel really good that maybe he won't consume them literally later in life, but is that all of these different ways of bearing witness to their lives, to the complexity of it through media can also cultivate caring.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

For for me, I really think we animals media is or we animals now is a really, really excellent example of a media house and obviously sentient media that are doing some of that complex work. So actually just showing that this is serious subject matter, whether it's photographically or whether it's whether it's in a news story, to actually say this is serious and it's worth the complexity. And I think that that's really what's what's needed. Um and and there's increasingly, I think, animation films that are doing the same. I think animation has been interesting in that it's often brought up kind of ecological crises and trouble, troubling relationships with animals, but at the same time also bringing up consumptive patterns, um, you know, going to zoos to see Nemo while then going to a restaurant to eat fish immediately afterwards. So there isn't really this kind of fostering of um of uh creating those connections between how your material world and your mediated world are connected. Maybe I'm being unfair, but um I do think it's I think it's it's interesting and it's promising how many, for me, children's films are actually showing and raising these questions about ecological devastation and and the relationship with with uh with between humans and animals. And what I would really like to see more of as a personal whatever is documentaries that are moving away from that like fear, anxiety-inducing narrative. I don't know what happened. When I was a kid, documentaries were documentaries that would like tell you interesting stuff, but then National Geographic and Discovery Channel, just like everything is a crisis and everything is about to happen. And oh my God, this ship is gonna crash and don't, don't, don't. And I think that this is fostering that kind of fear-mongering with regards to animals and um and also the anxiety a lot of people are having with regards to our ecological relationship right now, instead of like introducing complexity, that for me is my real hope and desire is just to see more complexity, right?

Emily Major:

And it's also, I think, to hear more alternative perspectives. Um, a lot of the time, those perspectives get ostracized and marginalized. So even any of us that might be vegan or any of us that have certain viewpoints towards animals that are against the norm, um, it's so important to have that be more aware. Because as soon as you kind of pierce it and introduce, you know what, there are people that don't necessarily agree with the mainstream attitude to whatever species it is, making that known and being confident in your opinion. There are other people that agree as well. And so just having that, I guess, yeah, just piercing the film of it and just allowing other people to share their experiences rather than I hate bringing it always back to Possum, but just having a place where you can advocate. And for me, I don't feel fear of advocating because people have been fired for their um like voicing their opinions. I've received death threats for um some of the stuff I do with possum. This and so, but I I mean I'm leaving New Zealand, but it's one of those things where just having that awareness and having somebody to say, you know what, I don't, I don't like it, I don't agree with it. And then there's other people that say, I don't agree either. It's like yes, and then it just you start to have those conversations.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

No, really great point. Um, okay, so we're gonna start wrapping up now. Thank you. Uh thank you. Time really just does fly uh so so quickly when when uh the conversation is this good. But not all of you have had a chance yet to read your quotes. So maybe we can just spend a bit of time. Um, so Emily, I know you gave us your quote. Uh Lou, why don't we uh talk a little bit about uh or have a listen to what your quote is?

Lu Liu:

Yeah, um this is actually um from the Taoist text, the Jong Zhu. And um it's a very short story, which I like. I always teach in my class. It talks about a dream of Dong Zhu, uh, about him being a butterfly. And then he wakes up and wonders, Am I Dhang Zhu or am I butterfly? So I'll just read the whole story to you. Uh, it's very short. Once Zhong Zhou dreamed he was butterfly, a fluttering butterfly, what fun he had doing as he pleased. He did not know he was Joe. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Joe. He did not know whether Joe had dreamed he was a butterfly or butterfly had dreamed he was Joe. So I think that um very poetic way of transformation, of identifying with the butterflies um is really precious.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

What made you think about this quote in relation to uh you know thinking about popular media and animals in power?

Lu Liu:

So I think that I think that really echoes of uh what we talk about, the us and they division. And uh I think Ursula Lugwing would agree with me in um like we we can go back to some ancient knowledge, not just in China, right? But to rethink the position of humanity and especially is there really that kind of fundamental distinction between human and non-human? This is one way to deconstruct it. I'm sure there are other ways.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And this brings us back, I think, to something you raised right at the start, the idea of how modernization is seeking to sterilize everything. It's constantly seeking to not only create that boundary between humans and animals, but to make it starker and stronger and more distinct. Um, and that just seems to me to be really the core of a lot of our our issues, that we need to kind of accept the messiness, the the some potential symbiosis that we could have with some animals, um, and also those that we don't, that we might be in conflict with, but that that messiness is actually part of life. Um but I really love that. I I wish I could fly like a butterfly. I wish I could like butterflies are insane. They can literally like their bodies become goo and then they're they're worms, and then they go into a cocoon and their bodies literally liquefy, which I didn't know. I was reading, and this is reading a fiction book where they were talking about moths, and then they said that their body, and I was like, this is bullshit. Nowhere does a body become no, it's true. Like you've got a body that liquefies and then comes out as like absolutely mind-boggling. Um, Emily, Deb, any thoughts on that that uh quote? Oh the story.

Debra Merskin:

I think it's beautiful. I just love the idea of like not insisting on boundaries and willingness to explore different consciousnesses and to have um the imagination to think in to experience and recognize that other beings have histories, they have culture, they have um, you know, experiences and um and um preferences, right? And and and that the the lines aren't so clear if you're willing to to go there. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

That's such an important point. Uh, even in terms of um Emily, you were speaking about species earlier, but this idea of culture, right? The idea that a monkey is a monkey is a monkey everywhere is completely false. So even that a chimpanzee is the same as a chimpanzee here or there, you really have to take into account the context of the the chimpanzee. A chimpanzee in West Africa may have a very different cultural and cultural repertoire to chimpanzee in East Africa, to chimpanzee who was raised and bred uh in a in a lab, right? So that kind of context specificity is really crucial. Um, thank you so much for pointing that out, Dave. Uh what's your uh what's your quote?

Debra Merskin:

Thinking about you're talking about in context, and it's not a shameless, well, maybe it is shameless plug from my book from 2018, but I wanted to show the art on the cover, if I can, a little bit. Let's see. At that's a mural and um located in an underpass in Eugene, Oregon. And I think it it shows, like right here is um a petroglyph, uh, She Who Watches, it's called, that's up in the um uh between Washington and Oregon, but it also shows the deer in a very real setting with garbage there, right? There's trash, but there's beautiful rhododendrons, and there's the moonlight, and that living in that context of, and that the situation of the mural being in a part of an overpass, underpass area, largely where there's camping from unhoused individuals there, but there also are deer and possums and raccoons and everybody passing through, as well as others, is that the lived context is of the animals is in the midst of our own kind of um creation there and our own messiness, and yet that like the deer is still very much themselves in there. So I just wanted that kind of fit in with what you were saying there, Claudia. But okay, quote, I guess what I pulled out in the beginning kind of fits maybe what we were talking a little bit, because it it's one of them that I have at the beginning of the chapter on children and animals, and it's by poet Gary Snyder. The childhood landscape is learned on foot, and a map is inscribed in the mind. Trails and pathways and groves, the mean dog, the cranky old man's house, the pasture with the bull in it, going out wider and farther. All of us carry within us a picture of the terrain that was learned roughly between the ages of six and nine.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Wow. So is this speaking to kind of preconceived ideas that we get from a very young age?

Debra Merskin:

Or the ideas, the beauty of the ideas we get at a very young age that perhaps were taught out of or encouraged to leave behind because, oh, that's just, I mean, I remember growing up and it was like, okay, yeah, you're bringing home every stray and you're doing all of this, but now it's time to get on with the serious business of life. Clearly, caring about animals in that way is not necessarily the serious part of life, right? You can enjoy that in childhood and you can have your stuffed toys, and you can have, you know, your other kind of things, but but now you need to get on with the business of life. And um that he's saying a lot of that gets formed between those early ages, that consciousness. And for me, it's like, let's not let that go, right? That's what we need to carry us forward, is that early consciousness that's developed, that being in relationship with other species, that despite many of the cultures we're in, that tells us the series now it's time to get on with what's really important, is I think we need to encourage more of really remembering who really is important and that development.

Lu Liu:

I really like the poem and also the cover. I think they point to the um, you know, aesthetic aspect of when we when we truly care about nature and animal. So it can be it is very serious when we advocate for the rights and for you know anti-anthropocentrism. But that also links to this very primal and instinctual pleasure that uh resides within us. So I really like, especially with the the waste that can, from my perspective, across the spring, they're definitely beautiful. If you don't point out, I would never know it's situated also across a uh a waste. But for me, I think that kind of uh uh coexistence of messiness and and and and beauty, and I think that that's really powerful. That is very powerful.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

I agree. Um, it's been lovely talking to the three of you today. I think it's uh sadly time to start wrapping up. Uh, before we say goodbye, perhaps each of you could tell us uh a little bit about what you're currently working on. And if folks are interested in learning more about what you work, uh where they could go to. I will put all the the links in the show notes, but maybe just a quick uh synopsis of uh what you're working on and where people can find out more. Uh Emily, I know you've got some big moves, quite literally, uh coming away. So why don't we why don't we start with you?

Emily Major:

Yeah, um so now that I've graduated, I'm in the big land of being an unemployed um ECR. So we will see how that goes. Um moving from New Zealand to Canada um in a month, and I'm going to be just focusing on publishing um and doing more research. I'm rather working class, so uh having the pleasure to go home and not work. Um living in my mom's basement sounds like not a fun time for a 35-year-old, but I get actually I'm actually really excited to just have several months to dedicate to research. Um, I'm looking at a project right now on how children's books are um represent possums and how that compares with Australian depictions of um possums in children's books. Um yeah, now I'm just gonna have the freedom to research and write, which I'm so excited about. And I do contribute to my blog, which is called Framing Speciesism. It's kind of going to be a career-wide blog. So right now it's focused on possums, but I will um be looking at other species as well. It's usually where I go when something happens and I get annoyed and then I write a post. That's usually what happens.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

And uh you started this through with the Culture and Animals Foundation grant, right? Yeah, they do really wonderful.

Emily Major:

So they gave me a grant, which was so I needed it. I mean, yeah, I I couldn't have afforded to start a blog on my own, um, paying the fees and everything. So they were really, really great. They helped me with that. Um, and so it's just kind of a place to discuss things in an accessible way. I think it's really important to make sure that academic work is translatable and understandable to the everyday public and that it's free. So I try to make sure that it's accessible to people if they're interested. Um And so I'm excited to see what's coming.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Great. It sounds wonderful. Lou, how about you?

Lu Liu:

Oh, I'm actually finishing up the work that I have been talking about today about pests in Chinese history, and hopefully it can come out very soon. But also I'm also working on the sustainability in Chinese food. I just organized a public screening of a documentary called Soilism, which talks about the plant of soil, not for human consumption, but for you know feeding the pigs and how China has become the largest producer of pork and even bought Smithfield. So I would really like to continue that conversation to sort of really, as Emily said, to weave together my research and also my teaching and also the site of public humanities. So I will give you the website for the Global Media Fest, which is part of the our department's event. But also it this is also where the Soilism event was situated.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

This is so fascinating. I mean, because I know China now has those mega, those mega pig factories now that are pretty, they're going to change the nature of, I mean, they already are changing the nature of farming. But it's it's fascinating what's happening, what you've just said now about Smithfield, kind of the the geopolitics of all of this is really, really, really interesting. Um, and unfortunately it does spell just more consumption uh in in the future, which is um and your work on history, are you finding? I imagine that working and looking at the kind of history of pest creation and pest maintenance in in Chinese history has been really important for you in also making these connections now while looking at um relationships with pigs. Could you maybe just tell me a little bit about that?

Lu Liu:

Like how how have you found looking at history shapes your contemporary understandings of of how animals are uh are represented or used or um I definitely find um possibilities of alternatives. So talking about pigs, pigs now we think about they are living in this caveful, crowded, you know, things. But um in my study, they used to be companion animals and uh people identify with them. They people talk about you know that that elicit emotions and yes, people eat pigs, uh eat pigs for a long time in Chinese history, but you know, that's not that that's in in in a very sustainable way for many householders once a year. Um, most of the time they respect you know the the living space of pigs. And also pigs, they incorporate pigs into their ecology of living and farming, uh, how manures were used as fertilizer. So I think that kind of uh living really harmoniously with what now we think as just a meat per meat producer is provides an alternative.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Am I sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the the Chinese character for for household doesn't it include the symbol of pig in it? Yeah, so putting a pig under a roof. Yeah, yeah. I I am I was fortunate enough to cycle through China for about eight months, and I I've got very into learning Chinese symbols, and I just loved that that was uh that was a really solid story of a you know, a pig under a roof was the symbol for a house or a home, which is really fascinating. Thank you so much, Lou. I'm very much looking forward uh to to seeing your book and to learning more about your work in the future. Uh and Deb, finally, how about you? Uh, what are you currently uh working on?

Debra Merskin:

Yeah, a couple strands with that. But first, Lou, I wanted to say too, is like, oh my gosh, what you're looking at there makes me think of the geopolitical implications of what's inevitable with that kind of farming, which has to do with zoonotic diseases and and politicizing, of course, um how particularly Trump and others blame China for COVID, right? And all these others. And we start looking at um intensive animal agriculture and avian influenza right now, um, particularly in the US, and how uh with the rise of that kind of farming, there's no doubt going to be a rise in disease, right? Um that um two strands here, I think, but they're both connected. And what I'm working on right now is the um rural urban divide or the urban rural divide, which has certainly presented itself in um the human political environment in the US. But when I moved uh about six years over from Eugene, Oregon, um very urban area, um, very uh different sets of ways of thinking about things to where I'm located now, which bridges very traditional um areas of conservatism and ranching and farming and so forth, um bearing witness to what's going on here, became increasingly aware of the issues. And of course, being in the wildlife hospital, the role of rural-urban divide and wildlife, um, the politics of wildlife and legislation and rules and groups of rural feeling misunderstood, misrepresented, so forth, versus um, and kind of an making an enmity of urban populations in that way and how that affects uh wildlife law and in particular, uh, and there's a conference, it's um um on environmental communication that is actually gonna be held in Tasmania. I'm not sure if I'm gonna go in person or there's a Zoom presentation option, but in in that way, so in one, I'm looking more generally at urban-rural um attitudes and wildlife policy. And the uh conference in Tasmania, I'm specifically looking at the implication of lead ammunition on raptors and eagles in particular, because lead bullets are legal just about everywhere except California, and um the neurological impacts of that on any any raptors for sure, but also animals who scavenge, it also impacts human health. And um, so why can't we make that transition? Those who hunt and use ammunition, the transition to um lead-free ammunition. And um, so those are topic areas I'm looking at right now.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Super interesting. I'm I'm really uh curious to learn more about the work you do with the rural urban divide, because I do think policy is a key area. Yes, and I mean something we haven't spoken about, which I know you're very involved in here, Deborah, is uh kind of thinking about policy and legislation with animals and and the media and kind of creating rules and ideas with regards to thinking that through, because policy really does shape what options are available or not available. And it's weirdly vulnerable and tenuous as we to bring us back to the to bring us back to the wolves again. You can go from revered to punished very quickly. Um, so I think that's that's super, super interesting uh work, and I'm looking forward to hearing more. Uh, but thank you so much, the three of you, for your uh incredible insights. Uh, I think we really did a roundabout conversation about uh popular media, but I think we really touched on some serious uh conversations and and thoughts with regards to one, how animals are represented, both negatively and positively, and some of the both symbolic but also material implications that this has for animals. Um and at the end of the day, I think we pointed out that media is actually deeply political. Media is deeply political, it's deeply powerful, and it has uh it has big implications for those involved, whether it's entailing those that make money or those that are are represented. And so thank you for the numerous examples. Uh, I'm gonna be chewing on this for days. Um, and I look forward to seeing you in uh in Atlanta. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Debra Merskin:

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta.

Claudia Hirtenfelder:

Thank you so much to Lou, Deb, and Emily for being wonderful guests. I so enjoyed speaking to you today. Thank you also to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics, Apple, for sponsoring this podcast, as well as to 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 University, all co-sponsors of this season. The bad music was composed by Gordon Clark and the logo designed by Jeremy John. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by myself.

Speaker:

This is The Animal Turn, with me, Claudia Hirtenfelder For more great iROAR podcasts, visit iroar pod dot com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.

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Claudia Hirtenfelder

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Debra Merskin

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Emily Major

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Lu Liu

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