Category: BCM310

Posted in BCM310

The dark side of animal reality shows

Posted on by Laxmi

I have always loved animals, but I never really thought about why I was so invested in these animals. Was it because of their cuteness or what was it? I found that answer during one of my lectures, where we discussed that it may be because they’re often represented like humans or with human-like qualities, known as anthropomorphism.  We usually use this term to describe give “human characteristics to animals, inanimate objects or natural phenomena” (Nauert, 2015).

A study by Desmond Morris a zoologist, included 80,000 British schoolchildren, asking them what their favourite animals are and why. According to the results, he found out that anthropomorphism has a heavy impact on our mind. We humans mostly tend to like animals that can stand on 2 legs, could be trained or perform ticks; usually, dogs, chimpanzees, pandas etc. among all these animals one interesting bird was very much favoured. A bird that can actually walk on its 2 legs and even walk human beings. Any guesses…? Well, it’s a penguin, a bird that has human-like qualities. We can see the proof of their (penguins) intelligence in the documentary “March of the Penguins” (2005). 

But how about the way these animals are treated for human en

tertainment. Are their life purpose is just to entertain humans by producing cruel animal shows? Is their life not equal to human life? Do they not deserve the same freedom as we humans do? 

Pankun petting his friend James.
{Pan and James} Source: Pankun and James facebook page

Be it an animal reality shows, documentaries they all have ignored the animal nature and trained the animals to act more like humans to attract more people. I remember watching this very popular Japanese animal reality show called “The Adventure of Pan and James”. The show featured (Pan) a genius chimpanzee, mostly dressed in overalls and (James) a loyal English bulldog. 

One of the episodes of “The Adventure of Pan and James” where Pan and James are shown to be involved in human-like activity

The show shows the duo involved in various human-like situations like buying groceries, catching insects, planting…etc. and are encouraged to use their chemistry to figure out a solution usually mimicking a human-like behaviour. During tasks like these, the animals were seen with proper clothes, shoes holding a pen and sometimes even a phone. All these details show that animal reality shows are trying to use anthropomorphism to turn these animals into surrogates to entertain its audiences. 

Miya and Dongdong are made to sit through a class with a group of children in the show
Pan and JAMES are made to sit through a class with a group of children in the show

The show was an instant hit with million views but with that came in some controversies about animal rights as some people found out that the animals were treated very poorly and were trained for long hours to entertain the people. There were numerous ethical debates about using these animals for entertainment and overlooking their natural habit and their mental health. 

As much as I enjoyed watching this duo showcasing some amazing human-like behaviours with their intelligence, I have to admit that forcing these animals to go out of their comfort zone and act like some other species was a complete inhuman act. It makes me sad to realize that while I was watching their happy face and thinking they loved whatever they were doing they were suffering and probably wanted to run away from all this unwanted fame; a curse in disguise.

Now, whenever I see an animal in captive acting cute and doing tricks it breaks my heart because I know these animals mostly are also being mistreated or abused. I feel so disgusted when I see some humans being treating animals like as if they don’t have a life and act like they have the right to do anything to these animals just because they can’t talk.

We humans should realize that we are not god and no one has the right to end another living being’s life. Some animals are known to be the best companion to mankind so we should avoid training methods such as heavy use of force to create fear in these animals because fear is neither morally nor ethically right training method. So, let’s learn to make these animals the intimate parts of our life; the need to nurture and protect, the need for companionship and love. 

Paradoxically, our love and care for animals free us to be human.

And that’s a precious gift.

References:

Posted in BCM310

Regarding the suffering of others

Posted on by Laxmi

In today’s world, we are surrounded by media and no matter how hard we try to ignore it it’s always gonna be following us. Yes, media is a good thing because it provides us with all information and lets us know what’s going on in the world in a matter of time but with everything that’s going in the world how does media manage to stimulate viewers to keep hooked in their content? That is what we’re gonna talk about today.

In order to make their content reach out to more viewers, the media has found a new tactic which is to screen emotionally charged contents e.g. the suffering of people be it due to hunger, racism, poverty and so on. All these topics sure do hit the viewers hard as “we remember emotionally charged events better than boring ones” (About Memory n.d.) meaning the stronger the emotions aroused, the greater the effect on the memory. Hence, the screening of suffering is one of the easiest and the fastest way for the media to grab the viewers’ attention.

For example, the following example managed raise public awareness towards one of the notorious social issues we have witnessed for a long time which is a suffering of black people.

The officers choking George Flyod as he begged to breathe

On May 25th 2020, George Floyd, a 46 years old African-American man was murdered by Minneapolis police officers in broad daylight as the officers, Derek Chauvin and Tou Thai held their knee on his neck for seven minutes as he struggled to breathe. George Floyd was an innocent, unarmed black man who begged and pleaded for his life as the officers choked him to death in broad daylight. The video went viral all over the internet and in a matter of time, it became a global issue. Everyone around the world was furious and enraged with how the police had dealt with the situation and what made the matter even worse was that the officers involved in the murder were not arrested and they were treating it lightly.

People out on the street demanding justice for George Flyod

The video footage of George begging to let him breathe and the officer just not bothered and continuing to choke him with his knee enraged a lot of people around the world because it showed how sometimes people in power can just misuse their authority and just do whatever they like. At that time they felt a lot of emotions: sad, anger, helplessness, disgusted, empathy and everything to see how a police officer who’s supposed to protect the people is actually the one that’s creating problems. It’s hard when people try so hard to put faith in the system trying to seek justice by lawful means and they can’t get it. This is when people decide to take in their own hand and come out on the street to protest and to seek justice.

Demanding the unloved officers to put behind the jail

As we can see from this very example, with the help of media spreading the news a lot of people from around the world who doesn’t even have anything to do with George were heavily invested in this issue. It is because people felt his pain, his struggle as he begged to breathe it affected our emotions made us feel angry towards those officers and empathetic towards George.

But the real question is how long will this emotion last?

Let’s be real this is not the first time that an incident like this has happened. We have seen tons of other cases in which a lot Black African- American men are being targeted and murdered despite them being unarmed. What do the government and people do after? They go out on the street for a couple of days and demand justice and after some days it gets silenced, it dies out just like the person. It’s sad but it’s also the truth that we as human beings are forgetful. As the issue gets older and more common, the emotional impact will be lesser and eventually, people will look at those suffering and just turn a blind eye.

R.I.P George Flyod


Asa a human being we are very sympathetic towards any kind of crises or issues but at the same time we are also very hesitant to take action and that should be changed. As UNICEF says “everybody should be treated equally and with dignity no matter what their circumstances; which means nobody should be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way” despite their age, sex, race because at the at of the day we’re all human and we all bleed red.

References: 

Posted in BCM310

Selfie culture; A digital narcissism

Posted on by Laxmi
Picture by: Grace Russo Bullaro

Do you recall those good old times when owning a camera was a luxury so instead people would go to a photo studio/ booth to take a picture with your loved ones, the times where people didn’t have to worry about how many likes they get on their selfie on their social media or didn’t care about how people would comment on their appearances? But now with the advanced technology people have moved from a basic black and white screen communicating purpose mobile phone to a high quality LED screen, internet surfing camera phone. A digital narcissism where some people use selfies as a medium to record the memories for themselves, while others may use it to feed their ego by getting “likes” and “comments” on their selfies/ posts on their social media. 

Well, I’m sure we all are pretty well aware of what a selfie is and how it works but what is the actual meaning to it? According to a research done by THERESA M. SENFT (2015), a selfie is a photographic object that “initiates the transmission of human feeling in the form of a relationship (between photographer and photographed, between image and filtering software, between the viewer and viewed, between individuals circulating images, between users and social software architectures, etc.).” 

In words of Chamorro-Premuzic (2014), this selfie culture is “a world of endless ostentation opportunities and unlimited bragging possibilities.” Even when people say they’re only taking selfies to capture the precious moments, we can’t completely deny the fact that at times if not some people mostly use selfies as a medium to show off and feed their narcissism ego. If not then there isn’t a need to take selfies with your food, items, or your branded goodie stuff and edit it and put it up on your social media. 

But most people do that because they wanna let others know that they have been to that specific place, ate at that restaurant or owe that branded stuff. In general, letting everyone know that they are in the “trend”. People are so sucked in this toxic trend that some of them are more concerned about their followers “likes”, “comments”  and approval than actually enjoying and living in the moment. It seems like those “likes” and “comments” satisfy their self- esteem providing that fake celebrity-like lifestyle illusion. Thus, this toxic trend makes you believe that the more “likes” and “comment” you get on your selfies/ posts, the more attention you get, the more famous you are.

According to the article from Forbes, “American Psychiatric Association (APA) had officially classified taking ‘Selfies’ as a mental disorder. APA also claimed to name the disorder ‘Selfitis.’ The cultural phenomenon of the ‘Selfie’ exposes a very basic human desire—to feel noticed, appreciated and recognized.”

According to Cooley’s concept of the looking glass self, “the view we have of ourselves comes from contemplating our personal qualities and the impressions of how others perceive us so how we see ourselves does not come from who we are but rather from how we believe others see us. (Cooley, 1902)” hence, we tend to believe the “likes” and “comments” we get from our followers even though we know that beauty is much more than skin deep. 

“Status seeking is a primary motivator for human action.” Marwick (2013) ts common for people wanting to be liked and admired and they try to achieve this by uploading a selfie edited or unedited for people to “like and “comment” and get that confirmation to boost their self-esteem. With the advanced, we can now control and manipulate the contents of our selfies and posts. 

However, it doesn’t mean you’ll always get positive comments because sometimes people may dislike and leave some negative “comments” on your selfie and they may truly hurt your feelings. Some people merely judge a person based on their selfie and honestly speaking that sounds ridiculous and laughable to me. So make sure that you don’t lose your real identity while you’re obsessed with taking selfies because you can only fake it for a few moments. 

All in all, this digital narcissism era gives meaning to taking selfies as people try to show their best/ goof life by taking selfies to fulfil their self- esteem. But hopefully, people realize that we shouldn’t be a selfie freak because our life has more meaning to it than just taking selfies. How about actually going out and talking and interacting with real people instead of your virtual friends and followers. 

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