Animal Bodies, Human Voices, and the Big Entanglement

Abstract

How can stories about animals be told in a way other than by treating them as human protagonists? How can animals be treated as characters with their own agency? These are the questions that have been raised ever since Harriet Ritvo announced the animal turn in 2007, in which she called for a new perspective on the past and present of human/non-human relations. At first sight Disney’s animal documentaries, produced and distributed by the Disneynature studio, seem to give us quite the opposite of animal agency, for these films represent animals anthropomorphically, as individuals that live in human-like family structures and go through fable-like conflicts. At the same time video producers, directors and camera operators make a point of saying that Disney is all about commitment to the planet and raising children’s awareness of the environment: Disney actually wants to send home the message, ‘we’re not separate from nature, we’re part of it.’ This chapter focuses on the ambiguous nature of Disneynature documentaries, which create ‘assemblage’-like spaces where on the one hand animals develop their own agency at their own pace, and on the other are treated to classic anthropocentric storytelling. Disney attempts the impossible: to create a world where animals and humans merge on a material and narrative level—as a kind of new, potentially utopian team of species capable of saving the planet.