The Narrative Research Group's symposium 'Non-human Narratives'

27 April 2011

'Non-human Narratives.'

Consuming the Climate

• Consuming the Climate: Re-thinking Meat and Dairy Consumption in the Politics of Climate Change - Julie Doyle, University of Brighton
• According to the UN, the global livestock sector 'is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases', with the global production of meat and dairy set to rise significantly 'over the coming decades'. Yet, governments and NGOs have paid very little attention to the contribution of meat and dairy production/consumption to climate change. This paper examines a number of recent civil society campaigns which begin to address this issue, including Paul MCartney's, Meat Free Monday (UK), Peta2's, 'Meat's Not Green' (US) and Friends of the Earth UK's, 'The Food Chain Campaign'. It explores how through differing (and contested) appeals to discourses of morality, ethics, identity, vegetarianism/veganism, environmentalism and commodification, these campaigns seek to reveal the carbon commodity chains involved in the production and consumption of meat and dairy. Focusing upon the sites of production and/or consumption, the campaigns vary in their critique of the commodification of animals and nature, and the economic/governmental structures which guide our food choices

The Machine Starts

• The Machine Starts: Computers as Collaborators in Writing - Joe Flintham, Bournemouth University
• The penetration of digital technologies into the process of creating and disseminating narratives is no longer a new phenomenon, but perhaps what does still seem strange and far-fetched is the suggestion that machines are collaborators and authors in their own right. This paper examines an example of a computer-mediated narrative and suggests that not only does the machine exert its own agency in the process of writing, but this process has a long provenance from the ancient world, through the 20th century avant garde, and into contemporary technological futurism.

Costume as Character Arc

• Costume as Character Arc - Craig Batty, Bournemouth University
• This paper will explore the role that costume and dressing-up play as 'storyteller' in the creation of fictional narratives, sketching the ways in which the body and its use (worn clothes, carried accessories, applied make-up) function to display visually an internalised emotional character transformation. Using Nia Vardalos' Connie and Carla (2004) as a case study, and aligning this to studies of mythical storytelling (Aristotle, Campbell et al.), the paper will argue that costume and the body on screen act as a narrative within a narrative, where the 'physical plot' of dressing-up is used to unearth the real heart of the story: the emotional transformation of the character's inner self.'

Knit One, Bite One

• Knit One, Bite One: Feminine handicrafts and vampire fan art - Brigid Cherry, St Mary's University College
• Our first thoughts of vampires may not turn to knitting needles, yarns and patterns. Nevertheless, in the thriving world of feminine handicrafts, vampires have come, in recent years, to occupy a well-loved and extremely commercial niche. The vampire fan knitter lusts after a skein of Stupid Shiny Volvo Owner yarn (with silver thread to replicate that elusive vampire sparkle), is turned by membership of a Vamp Sock Club, becomes a maker in a knit-a-long of the My Vampire Boyfriend pattern, and is welcomed in to the Team Twilight family in the knitting Olympics.
• This paper proposes that we place feminine handicrafts alongside fan fic and other fan arts as a significant form of fan production, and explores the ways in which such activities inform (and question) existing theories of fan culture. Taking as its starting point a content analysis of Ravelry (the online community for knitting and crochet), the paper will provide a profile of fan handicrafts. It will then consider how we might theorise such feminine fan practices based on approaches to feminist arts and fan creativity, appropriation of the text, and commodification. Finally, the paper will consider the experiences of fan handicrafters, drawing on interviews with vampire fan knitters.

Stories, Minds, and Media

• Stories, Minds, and Media: Nonhuman Experiences in Graphic Narratives - David Herman, Ohio State University
• Situated at the intersection of narratology, cognitive science, and critical animal studies, this paper explores the range of ways graphic narratives depict the experiences of nonhuman animals, using Nick Abadzis's Laika (2007), installments of Animal Man comics (1965-), Grant Morrison's and Frank Quitely's We3 (2005), and other narratives as case studies. Drawing on the study of storytelling practices across media as well as research on the nexus of narrative and mind, I position my test cases along a continuum that stretches from animal allegory and anthropomorphic projection, at one end, to texts that, like Abadzis's, use words and images in a bid to capture the distinctive texture and ecology of nonhuman experiences, at the other end.
• In outlining this continuum, and connecting it with recent work in narrative theory as well as cognitive science, I also seek to come to terms with how medium-specific properties of graphic narratives impinge on techniques for representing the minds of characters--in this case, the minds of nonhuman agents in storyworlds. But beyond this, I show how scholarship on narrative can be informed by as well as contribute to the emergent, interdisciplinary field of critical animal studies. By investigating how stories in general and graphic narratives in particular can be used to model nonhuman experiences, theorists of narrative can help interrogate assumptions about the primacy of the human--and help rethink the institutions and practices based on such assumptions.
• In the case studies I examine narrative affords a bridge between the human and the nonhuman; the stories provide this link not merely by allegorizing human concerns via nonhuman animals or engaging in anthropomorphic projections but also by figuring the lived, phenomenal worlds--what the German-Estonian philosopher-biologist Jakob von Uexküll termed the Umwelten--of creatures whose organismic structure differs from our own. Hence research on the forms and functions of narrative across media can provide scaffolding for the modes of ideology critique associated with critical animal studies. By modeling the richness and complexity of "what it is like" for nonhuman others, stories can underscore what is at stake in the trivialization--or outright destruction--of their experiences.

Will the Real Bonzo Please Stand Up

• Will the Real Bonzo Please Stand Up: Making and Unmaking Animal Stars in Hollywood - Claire Molloy, University of Brighton
• Despite a venture into 'quality' films, by the early 1950s Universal International (U-I) was known for its 'gimmick pictures' which were described by the popular press as 'cheap to make, easy on the eyes and the mind and, while unimpressive to critics, a great hit in small towns' (Life, 15 June 1953, p.109). Amongst these gimmick movies films such Francis (1950), the story of a talking mule, and Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), the story of a chimpanzee raised as a human boy, showed strong profits and as a result the studio invested in a number of sequels. Studios wanted to emulate the success that U-I had with Francis and Bonzo and throughout the 1950s, sought out new animal stars that would draw in audiences.
• The creation of animal stars relied on the manufacture of an illusion of individuated animals as active, autonomous members of the labour force. This paper discusses the production of Bonzo the chimpanzee as a star through an examination of the discourses that reshaped animals into culturally accessible commodities. Following from Richard Dyer's ([1979] 2007] analysis of human stars, I discuss the animal star as a representation which expressed particular qualities which were inevitably humanised by processes that sought to exploit their marketable function.
• Reading across the publicity discourses of the time I identify two key discernible strategies used in the construction of animal stars. The first of these promoted the star image through a discourse of 'talent', a particular set of attributes that separated the star from other animals and in doing so distanced them from their animality. In this sense, animal stars transcended their animal state. The second strategy utilised a discourse of 'campness' in the sense that the term is used by Susan Sontag (1982) to describe an aesthetic sensibility that delights in artifice, exaggeration, trivialisation and theatricality. This paper re-tells the onscreen and off-screen stories of Bonzo; a chimpanzee in Hollywood.

Animal Saintliness

• Animal Saintliness: Creaturely Life in the Films of Robert Bresson - Anat Pick, University of East London
• This paper examines two companion works by the filmmaker Robert Bresson, Au hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967). Bresson's theologically inflected cinema centres on the tensions between predestination and freedom, determinism and grace, and feature protagonists—sometimes humans, sometimes animals—portrayed equally as creatures caught up in the natural mechanisms of the world. Bresson addresses questions of freedom and redemption through narratives of creaturely suffering. Balthazar's protagonist is a donkey, while Mouchette is a girl. Both are subjected to events beyond their control, and, despite their different species, both can be seen as figures of creaturely endurance. Comparing the two films, I argue that in Bresson's unique cinematographic project, not only do humans and nonhumans occupy a similar narrative framework, but the animal becomes the exemplary figure of the saint.

'Complexity and Ambiguity'

• 'Complexity and Ambiguity: an examination of the monster and the monstrous with in contemporary 'neo-nasty' horror films' - Shaun Kimber, Bournemouth University
• This paper re-examines the concept of the monster and the monstrous within contemporary global horror film cultures. Taking four examples of contemporary 'extreme' or 'neo-nasty' horror cinema ('A Serbian Film' (2010) Dir. Srdjan Spasojevic, 'Martyrs' (2008) Dir. Pascal Laugier, 'Murder Set Pieces' (2004 released 2008) Dir. Nick Palumbo and 'Gurotesuku' (2009) dir. Koji Shiraishi) the paper re-visits a range of academic film literature relating to the monster and monstrous.
• Key themes and debates informing the paper include; the framing of the monster and the monstrous by shifting and articulating historical, social, cultural, technological and political contexts; the monster as complex signifier and productive meaning maker that reflects and hides our individual and collective fears and anxieties; the monster as ambiguous and contradictory site of fascination and producer of pleasures/anxieties for audiences, reviewers and regulators; the role of the monster and the monstrous in negotiating, reinforcing and challenging ideological notions of 'otherness' and difference; the function of the monster and the monstrous in blurring structures and boundaries and the monsters potentiality for revealing the chaotic nature of the world upon which order and rationality is inscribed.
• Drawing upon textual and contextual analysis, and considering reception and audiences' consumption, this paper draws attention to the intensifying transformation of the monster and the monstrous within these contemporary 'neo-nasty' horror films. The paper examines the monster as multilayered entities manifesting across numerous sites rendering their straightforward reading problematic within contemporary global film cultures as they simultaneously open up some fissures whilst stitching others together.

True crime serial killer narratives

• A critical stylistic approach to true crime serial killer narratives - Christiana Gregoriou, University of Leeds
• According to Seltzer (2007: 2), "true crime is crime fact that looks like crime fiction" or, as he puts it elsewhere, indeed bad crime fiction; true crime "knowingly takes the crime novel as its prototype and tries it out on real life" (2007: 9), turning to imitate its imitation as it were. He posits that true crime is made of clichés, and that it is more than formulaic; it is actually hyper-conventional: "a sort of writing or screening by numbers" (Seltzer, 2007: 35) he calls it.
• Through a critical linguistic approach, I investigate the nature of that hyper-conventionality by looking at two of Nigel Cawthorne's true crime books, books themselves collections of various serial killer narratives from across the globe, rather than whole books dedicated to individual cases. Nigel Cawthorne wrote over 60 books on subjects ranging from political scandals to UFO mysteries.
• I analyse his (1999) The World's Greatest Serial Killers, and his (2006) Killers: The most barbaric murderers of our time, books which indeed largely overlap in content. The fact that this true crime writer, like others, recycles material in various book forms is itself interesting, and might even help explain the masses of books such writers have so far produced. It might also even explain why indeed, "True Crime writing is the fastest growing genre since the turn of the century" (Associated Content). Most importantly though, linguistic and narrative methods of analysis here help address questions of the sort 'how true is true crime?', 'how are serial killers represented exactly?' and 'what are real killers actually like?'