ZooScope

  • The Wild. Dir. Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams. Buena Vista Pictures. 2006.

    ZooScope ZOOM: The Wild  Above: ‘This isn’t Happiness’ – 07/04/2014 front cover illustration of The New Yorker by Peter DeSeve shows a vegetarian lion eating salad whilst looking distractedly at a zebra. Living in a world of cultural ethics clearly has its difficulties for a wild predator. Image from https://uk.pinterest.com/kmeyer/peter-deseve/ ‘The core paradigm of many narratives engaging…

  • The Neverending Story. Dir. Wolfgang Petersen. Neue Constantin Film, Warner Bros. Pictures. 1984.

    ZooScope ZOOM: The Neverending Story ‘The animal is distinct, and can never be confused with man. Thus, a power is ascribed to the animal, comparable with human power but never coinciding with it. The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas, are specifically addressed to man,’[1] John Berger theorises on our understanding of…

  • Paddington. Dir. Paul King. StudioCanal. 2014.

    The 2014 film ‘Paddington’ appears to champion inclusivity and acceptance of migrants over merely wanting to observe or distance ourselves from animals and people that are different from us, just as Millicent does with her taxidermy. In essence, Paddington is a migrant, ‘an outsider trying to find a new home’ [1] in England after the…

  • Shrek. Dir. Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson. Dreamworks. 2001.

    Directed by Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson Produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Aron Warner, and John H. Williams Production Companies were Dreamworks, Dreamworks Animation, and Pacific Data Images _____________________________________________________ While the 2001 film Shrek has a large cast of animal characters, both mythical and realistic, it is the part of Donkey that is of real interest here. There have been a…

  • Jurassic Park . Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Studios. 1993.

    Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster adaptation of Jurassic Park is most well-known for its strikingly realistic puppet and CGI representations of the most fascinating of the prehistoric animals: the dinosaurs. Though the dinosaurs are impressive, it is the other, less unusual animals which appear in the film who are often overlooked, which provide an interesting point of analysis. 

  • Animal Farm. Dir. John Halas, Joy Batchelor. Pathe, Universal, RKO . 1954.

    Halas and Batchelor’s 1954 Animal Farm holds a firm place in cinematic history as Britain’s second animated feature.  The film is based on the 1945 novella by George Orwell and is often read as an allegory for communism and Stalinism. The unrest of the animals and desire for revolution also has echoes of Marxist ideas about the…

  • Racing Stripes. Dir. Frederik Du Chau. Warner Bros. 2005.

    Racing stripes (Frederik Du Chau 2005) is an American sports comedy which centres on the glamourous and wealthy sport of horseracing in Kentucky. However the film does this through a comedic twist. The film has a bildungsroman performance narrative and follows the journey of a young girl and her unconventional mount Stripes, a zebra. After a…

  • Over the Hedge. Dir. Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick. DreamWorks. 2006.

    After Verne, an anxious turtle, breaks through the boundary of the manicured hedge he enters a pristine garden on the periphery of a middle class suburbia. A far cry from the overgrown animal-populated wood, the suburban garden represents a natural environment controlled by humans, a place where that which is considered wild or ‘other’ is…

  • A Matter of Loaf and Death. Dir. Nick Park. BBC. 2008.

    Beloved characters Wallace and his side-kick canine Gromit return for another film, and this time they are running Top Bun, a brand new bakery. Business is booming for the duo, but a serial killer is on the loose, killing all the bakers in town. While Gromit begins to fear for the pair’s safety, Wallace is…

  • A Bug’s Life. Dir. Dave Foley. Walt Disney Pictures. 1999.

    The notion of capitalism is undeniably present in A Bug’s Life [1] and is a vehicle that allows the ants and grasshoppers to be considered anthropomorphic beings. Hence the parallel to the class system that exists in human society: ants being the underclass and grasshoppers being the bourgeoisie, exploiting the ants for theirlabour. Thus, A…

Got any book recommendations?

Get In Touch