Captured: The Animal within Culture

by Boyde, Melissa

• ISBN13: 9781137330499
• ISBN10: 113733049X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-29
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In 2008 a clip was posted on YouTube which became a worldwide sensation. The clip, known as the Christian the Lion reunion, showed an emotional reunion between two men and a lion. They had purchased the lion cub at Harrods in London, kept him as a pet, then rehomed him in Kenya on George Adamson's Kora Reserve. Key themes of the essays in Captured: the Animal within Culture are encapsulated in Christian's story: the implications of the physical and cultural capture of animals. As commodities trafficked for profit or spectacle, as subjects of scientific endeavour, the invisibility of animal capture and the suffering it invariably brings takes place in the context of a proliferation of representations of animals in all aspects of human culture. Leading scholars discuss films, novels, popular culture, performance and histories of animal capture and several of the essays provide compelling accounts of animal lives.

Author Biography

Melissa Boyde is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research is in the fields of animal studies and modernism. Boyde is the editor of the online publication Animal Studies Journal and is Chairperson of the Australian Animal Studies Group.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
INTRODUCTION; Melissa Boyde
1. Verticality, Vertigo and Vulnerabilities: Giraffes in J.M. Ledgard's Novel Giraffe and in the Handspring Puppet Company's Play, Tall Horse; Wendy Woodward
2. The Scramble for Elephants: Exotic Animals and the Imperial Economy; John Simons
3. Christian the Lion: An Interview with Ace Bourke; Melissa Boyde
4. 'Mrs Boss! We gotta get those fat cheeky bullocks into that big bloody metal ship!': Live Export as Romantic Backdrop in Baz Luhrmann's Australia; Melissa Boyde
5. Animal Factories: Exposing Sites of Capture; Yvette Watt
6. Albatrosses and Western Attitudes to Killing Wild Birds; Graham Barwell
7. Capturing the Songs of Humpback Whales; Denise Russell
8. The Dog and the Chameleon Poet; Anne Collett
9. What Lies Below: Cephalopods and Humans; Helen Tiffin
10. Caught: Sentimental, Decorative Kangaroo Identities in Popular Culture; Peta Tait