By Nicola Gothard

Two researchers – Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart  recently produced a paper that examined how movies encourage children to conceptually distance the animals they eat from those which they form an emotional bond such as pets. This post examines some of the points made in the paper.

I have often wondered why Disney films which frequently feature stories about animals don’t encourage more empathy and respect amongst children. For example ‘Finding Nemo’ appears to convey the message that fish belong in the sea and deserve their freedom. Yet sales in tropical fish,  rocketed after the film indicating that the wider audience did not take home that message.

Cole and Stewart argue that  in most films animals only become important when they transcend their species typical behaviours and take on human qualities. The characters become exceptions to the rules that define our relationship with that species. For example, Babe finds acceptance as a sheep dog-pig not as a pig (it is acceptable to care about dogs) or Nemo is special because he speaks like a human. In Happy Feet the Penguins are saved by dancing and in Chicken Run the Chickens conquer flight to escape their fate as food animals. The animal characters in these films are essentially humans in animal bodies and I think this is what limits our capacity to learn the lesson of empathy and respect for other animals.

Both Charlotte’s Webb and Babe have been cited as being responsible for a decrease in pork sales.  However this trend was fleeting and consumer behaviour returned back to normal soon after. Perhaps this was because in the eyes of the viewer Babe was a special pig and eventually they dissociated the character from the food they eat.

Carnivourous animals often  enjoy more complex characterisations where as prey animals are represented as a homogenous faceless mass. Cole and Stewart cite the Lion King as prime example of this. Pumba and Timone are  prey species but they are given special ‘companion animal’ status by the Lion. Stewart and Cole argue that where animals are allowed to transcend their fates as food it is because they have been given special consideration by the characters that the audience identify with (most like humans). Of course in more recent films like Madagascar the prey and the predator become friends and the predator fights against his nature to stop himself preying on other animals. In the end he eats sushi because in this film at least, fish don’t matter because they haven’t been given a human-like personality and therefore their feelings don’t matter – if they have any at all!

Stewart and Cole also argue that childrens fiction  has a tradition of associating the loss of sympathy or empathy for animals with growing up. For example in the Jungle book, Mowgli is tempted away from Baloo by the lithe water carrying girl in the local village.

Whilst this review is far from exhaustive, I do think that personifying animals in childrens literature does very little to foster respect and understanding for other species and this may account for why children don’t take home the messages that the films convey to me. This begs the question: How do we produce childrens fiction that doesn’t personify animals and encourages respect and empathy for other species independently of  the human relationship with them? Answers please!

Reference: Stewart, K., Cole, M. (2009) The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood. Food, Culture and Society 12(4): 457-476;