PEARL OF THUNDER

I have chosen two key texts which will be my spring board to properly help me research and produce a question, enquiry or argument that will be the at the forefront to my proposal presentation and essay. 

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The first key text is:

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John Berger - Why Look At Animals? 

I chose this key text because i read it during my main project on rats and i feel that it is also appropriate to be my first chosen key text within this essay. The text itself was quite difficult to read due to how abstract the style of writing is but it is very interesting to read about a subject that is very broad and can be seen in many lights. 

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My summary and understanding of the piece of writing is that it is a based on the evolution of our relationship between animals,  how they used to be seen as gods and today, been decreased to nothing but captive entertainment for us. 

 

Below i have listed some key points that i got from the writing when reading: 

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• Animals were first seen as gods/deities and were at the forefront of human language

• Used and were seen as metaphors for language and storytelling

• Muses for first human art 

• were used as the zodiac signs

• animalsprovide and offer comfort, unconditional affects even though they cant speak, we understand each other.  

• we used animals to help us survive and respected them

• Industrial revoulation & urbanisation spread and took away the use of animals from streets, farms and factories.

• Extinction of animals sparked to create artificial spaces known as zoos. 

• rise of pet animals began as a extension of human fashion and vanity. 

• pets made animals stupid and rely on us.

• Grew popularity of rare species in zoos.

• anthropomorphic animals (toys/films/disney/media)

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Some main key quotes to support these ideas: 

"The practice of keeping animals regardless of their usefulness, the keeping, exactly, of pets (in the 16th century the word usually referred to a lamb raised by hand) is a modern innovation, and, on the social scale on which it exists today, is unique. It is part of that universal but personal withdrawal into the private small family unit, decorated or furnished with mementoes from the outside world, which is such a distinguishing feature of consumer societies."

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"The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man."

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"Children in the industrialized world are surrounded by animal imagery: toys, cartoons, pictures, decorations of every sort. No other source of imagery can begin to compete with that of animals. The apparently spontaneous interest that children have in animals might lead one to suppose that this has always been the case. Certainly some of the earliest toys (when toys were unknown to the vast majority of the population) were animal. Equally, children’s games, all over the world, include real or pretended animals. Yet it was not until the 19th century that reproductions of animals became a regular part of the decor of middle class childhoods — and then, in this century, with the advent of vast display and selling systems like Disney’s — of all childhoods."

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"A zoo is a place where as many species and varieties of animal as possible are collected in order that they can be seen, observed and studied. In prinicple, each cage is a frame around the animal inside it. Visitors visit the zoo to look at animals. They proceed from cage to cage, not unlike visiters in an art gallery who stop in front of one painting and then move onto he next or the one after next. Yet in the zoo the view is always wrong. Like an image out of focus. One is so accustomed to this that one scarcely notices any more: or rather, the apology habitually anticipates the disappointment, However if you look at these animals, even if the animal is up against the bars, less than a foot from you, you are looking at something that has been rendered absolutely marginal" 

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Website Summary of Why Look At Animals: 

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/01/why-look-at-animals-john-berger-about-looking/

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From this piece of writing that i have chosen, i will look at particular themes within this writing and research subjects that relate to what i want to be at the forefront of my essay and proposal. I am not so sure how this piece of text could relate to my interest in wolves to be able to continue into a 5,000 word final essay so i may have to broaden the theme into animals as a whole. This will be all dependant on how my research on particular themes within this writing fit and weave together well. 

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Below are themes i will research that will be relevant to the writing: 

• Anthropomorphic Animals

• Objectification of animals

• Objectification of zoos 

• animal welfare relating to objectification 

• stuffed animals/toys

• animals in the media

• misrepresentation of animals

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John Berger: Ways Of Seeing

My second piece of writing is based on another of John Bergers work called 'Ways of Seeing'. This was 1 out of 5 pieces of writing i could have chosen for the brief that goes into my report essay. 

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This piece of writing is focused on the way that we see things effected by perception, knowledge and beliefs. For example, 1500 - 1900 visual art has been replaced by the modern photograph, changing its meaning. Woman and a man cultural presence has changed.

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"One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”" 

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"“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.” 

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I believe that this piece of writing relates to my first chosen text because it states a argument and question about different opinions and perceptions of the objectification of animals and how our relationship with them has changed over time towards today. 

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