An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture

by Randy Malamud

A fascinating exploration of the way in which animals are 'framed' - contextualized, decontextualized - in contemporary visual culture. Written in a highly engaging style, this book challenges the field, dealing with some highly controversial aspects of animal exploitation and boldly examines material that is seldom discussed within animal studies.

Genres: Animals

180 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2012

Reviews

[Joshua Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent much of my time reading this one trying to figure out if it was one of the worst books I've read, or one of the best?! Weird, indeed. Either the author is onto one of the most profound, all encompassing insights we have grossly overlooked, or he is over-generalizing things to such an extent that no one in the history of the planet has ever gotten something so out of proportion. He basically argues that we have 'culturally framed' animals in such a way that EVERYTHING is a distortion of what an animal really is. It was all good until he stated that his research for this book included watching 10 hours of animal porn; yep, thats right. In his defense, a whole chapter was devoted to this phenomenon, and he made some good points about our culture regarding it.
Overall though, this book challenged me to 'see' animals differently than what our culture has visually fed us. What we have done to them, and how they have been presented to us, surely is a gross caricature.