Animals in Narrative Film and Television

This book explores fictional representations of animals in animated and live-action film and television and examines the way these representations intersect with culture, race, gender, class, disability, and health issues. Contributors analyze the narrative functions of familiar animals as well as fantastic and hybrid creatures.

This book explores fictional representations and narrative functions of animal characters in animated and live-action film and television, examining the ways in which these representations intersect with a variety of social issues. Contributors cover a range of animal characters, from heroes to villains, across a variety of screen genres and formats, including anime, comedy, romance, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Aesthetic features of these works, along with the increased latitude that fictionalized narratives and alternative worlds provide, allow existing social issues to be brought to the forefront in order to effect change in our societies. By incorporating animal figures into media, these screen narratives have gained the ability to critique actions carried out by human beings and explore dimensions of both the human/animal connection and the intersectionality of race, culture, class, gender, and ability, ultimately teaching viewers how to become more human in our interactions with the world around us. Scholars of film studies, media studies, and animal studies will find this book of particular interest.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Karin Beeler and Stan Beeler

Part I. Animal Characters: Racial, Ethnic, and Social Contexts

Chapter 1: “Beneath the Surface Lies the Future”: Narrative, Characterization, and the Natural World with seaQuest DSV’s Darwin

Alissa Burger

Chapter 2: Ducks, Ducks and More Ducks: Comedy and Social Class in Animated TV

David Hipple

Chapter 3:“Don’t Just Fly, Soar”: Reading Disability in Disney’s Animation Dumbo (1941) and Live-Action Remake Dumbo (2019)

Jessica Gibson

Chapter 4: Making the Invisible Visible: Displaced and Marginalized Animal Characters in Samuel Fuller’s White Dog and Kornél Mundruczó’s White God

Heather Rolufs and Karin Beeler

Part II. Animals and Narrative Functions: Monsters/Victims/Heroes

Chapter 5: Worse than their Bite: Dogs and Horror

Catherine Pugh

Chapter 6: The Bad Habits of Rabbits: An Ecocritical Examination of Rabbits as Antagonists in Film

MK Pinder

Chapter 7 : Of Animals and Aliens: Identifying with the Non-Human Other in Guardians of the Galaxy

Jessica Bay and Jonathan Osborn

Part III. Animal / Human Hybrids and Other Creatures

Chapter 8: Hormone Monsters and Animal Antagonists: Animating Teen Horrors and Promoting Eudaimonia in Big Mouth (Netflix, 2017-)

Georgia Aitaki

Chapter 9: The Transcendence of the Borders: The Animal Hero in Hosoda Mamoru’s The Boy and the Beast

Katsuya Izumi

Chapter 10: The Esperpento of Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts

Sumor Ziva Sheppard

Chapter 11: (Un)learning with ‘Monsters’: Animals, Patriarchal Oppression, and Ethics of Care in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water

Monica Sousa

About the Contributors