What is Ecoporn?

Prior to reading Bart H Welling's "Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman," my definition of pornography was akin to wiki's definition of "the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual gratification." The reason Welling chose to coin the word “Ecopornography,” was to link attributes associated with the word ‘pornography.’ Rather than being strictly of sexual subject matter, ecoporn, like pornography, depicts scenes that are often ideal – better than real life – and in the act concealing the reality of the situation. Rather than pursuing sexual gratification, the pursuit is in viewing majestic, beautiful, feminized depictions of unspoiled panoramas.

Additionally, I would guess that Welling chose pornography as a comparison because of the negative and controversial nature of pornography. Porn is often looked down upon in society; its content is often forced underground out of the public eye; Its actors are ‘dirty,’ and can’t fit back into society, blocked from ‘clean’ jobs like teaching (but not politics.) Ecoporn is similar in argument that it is ‘bad,’ to the degree that it causes more harm than good. It is argued that policy is altered due to the use of ecopornographic images distorting the public eye of the truth behind the scenes. Such as with the argument Welling puts forth about Great White Sharks being manipulated into expending a great deal of energy hunting decoy seals for the purpose of capturing images.

Campbell & Ong: Illusion, Fiction, and Agency

I believe that Campbell’s assertion in Agency: Promiscuous and Protean that agency is limited to the surrounding culture of the time, and Ong’s thesis that The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction can be connected. In this post, I will attempt to write through these potential connections in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. 

Campbell writes that agency is limited to the surrounding culture, that of the audience (Campbell 5). I think that, if the author is somehow an agent of the surrounding culture, or even an alternative one, he must be aware of the reality of his audience. If that’s the case, doesn’t an author have a stronger connection to his actual audience than Ong believes, being also apart of the culture and time-period in which he writes? The competent author/rhetor understands his surroundings and somehow responds to them in his writing/speech, being aware that the very people that inhabit his surroundings will read/listen to it. 

Ecoporn

What if i told you the depictions of nature represented in the media share similarities to pornography? What if i told you that what seems to be real to the human eyes are continuously being tailored and altered to be more pleasing when in reality it is destructing? In Bart Wellings article Ecoporn his main argument was that porn and nature basically go hand in hand. Now i know what you may be thinking, like how is that even possible, but the format and explanation done in this made things a lot clearer fr me. When i first saw the title i immediately thought of the ecosystem and porn. But i thought that was stupid of me to think that a theorist would really bring porn and the ecosystem into the picture to really prove a point. But after reading just a few, i realized that porn and the ecosystem was very much so in what i was reading, and was used very strategically to prove a very great point of view. You may think that ecoporn is about animals partaking in pornography but your actually wrong. Welling does a very interesting job explaining ecoporn. This is how i understood ecoporn.

Campbell vs Heilbrun

As discussed in class, these two scholars may see eye to eye on some points, but have very different views on what agency is as a whole. When analyzing the two articles, I found myself wondering how two women could hold such different ideals. As for Campbell, she focuses on the author-function or agency in the bigger picture, taking into account everything that has ever, does ever, and will ever effect a text, a medium with multilayers. Heilbrun views the agency of a text based on what it the most authentic influence.

So what do each bring to the argument about what exactly is agency and what they support when put under the lens of feminism?

Ecoporn, how to identify it and the effect it has on the public's illusion of nature

When I first started reading Ecoporn by Bart H. Welling it took me some time to get into the flow of his writing style. The first part of Welling's essay that really resonated with me was when I read Welling's argument that ecoporn was constructing an illusion of what nature really was. This idea really startled me because I couldn't imagine that what I had seen in nature pictures taken by NatGeo weren't real. And by not real I don't mean that they don't exist at all, but that they don't exist in normal conditions.

For example, take the images I have included below.

Barton on Disability

Barton’s “Textual Practices of Erasure” calls out the authenticity of human diversity. In particular, she handles the overall perception of disability and how more often it is of segregation and bigotry. Barton supports her argument with advertising and how stereotypical it can be presented. These presentations are a part of what she calls “discourses of disability” (169). In the past, campaigns against certain illnesses have been guilty of appealing to the nation’s emotions of pity or fear; thus the charity is generated/operated as a business. Pretty much perverting the function of charity’s rhetoric, extorting the American public and presenting what’s normal. In addition, Barton mainly blames The United Way for the way disabled people are observed. I totally agree with Barton and I believe that charity has appealed to the human pathos rather than logic. She shows certain ads and how morbid and straightforward the text is. One that stood out to me the most was the ad that read “the toughest handicap for a retarded child is that he becomes a retarded adult” (179). There’s no discretion on what’s being presented and who it may offend. Though it may have garnered a ton of proceeds for the cause, what is the true cause? Work Cited Barton, Ellen L. “Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way.” Embodied Rherorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Ed. James c. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Sothern Illinois UP, 2001. 169-199.

Pea Soup

After reading both articles this week, I felt like I had a better understanding of the way people see and interpret women socially. But, at the same time, certain parts of the articles left me questioning things.

"Safety and closure, which have always been held out to women as the ideals of female destiny, are not places of adventure, or experience, or life. Safety and closure (and enclosure) are, rather the mirror of the Lady of Shallot. They forbid life to be experienced directly" (Heilbrun 20)

When I saw this quote I thought of history. Before the Industrial Revolution and before technology in general women lived a life full of bare tools and activities. By that I mean rocks, bones, farming, hunting, etc. I'm curious as to when the whole idea of "safety and closure...as the ideals of female destiny" (Heilbrun 20) were decided. Because in no way shape or form could any man or woman survive in an environment as plain and simple yet dangerous and unknown as there was back then. Even with the industrial revolution, women had to take charge and start living a life of adventure so to speak since they had to throw themselves into a life that was completely unfamiliar to them. Many times I feel like I automatically relate the idea of an independent woman to someone who started from the bottom. Someone that was not riding on the back of their father's bank account for their entire lives.

Textual Practices Representing Disability

Ellen Barton writes of changing times for the disabled. Their lives are always discussed in terms of improvement, because of the ways that people with disabilities have been integrated into different parts of society, like schools. (Barton 169) Historically, there are ideas and opinions about disabled people that have been rooted in American minds culturally speaking.  Charity organizations became a prominent discourse of disability. The way that charity organizations represented disability in America created a context for the audience of this rhetorical situation. Charity became something people weren't necessarily involved in but rather helped in the way of a business transaction.

Welling: EcoPornography

I must admit that I at first thought that this idea or concept of Eco pornography seemed to be unorthodox. As I continued to read his arguments, I began to come to the realization that there are similarities in the way companies pose or arrange animals to look like human bodies or vice versa in order to appeal to a specific audience. “In accordance with agency there is a section that describes the invention by authors who are points of articulation” I related this to Welling because like the example used in the article about PETA, the originator or authors have to invent or create the connections between animal and humans in efforts to make connections to the audience.

With PETA the repetitious connection between animals and human in artistic ways of influence such as form, shape, figure and structural feature allows for this artistic connection to become appealing and acceptable, which also deals with agency. Welling also talks about the connection and views of animals by humans, which can in some aspects make the connection seem false or faulty but it does achieve the goal of connecting or appealing with the audience. For the PETA campaign this seems to be a contradiction because PETA wants a person to become one with the earth and nature, but animals are the controllers of the land and sea in some aspects. (68). PETA makes it seem as if anyone that eats meat is some sort of murderer, and not connected to the earth. PETA wants to continue to separate or dissolve the connections between animal and humans, but reconnect the connection between humans and earth, but animals live here as well. We can’t just disregard animals and connect to earth.

Sojourners Reinterpreted Speech

     The fact that Sojourner Truth's famous historical speech was never actually recorded has caused some serious deliberation and controversy in the past. It's incredibly sad that such a monumental speech was not even written down on paper in its entirety. Truth's exact words are unknown and only live through what other people have come up with based off loose evidence (Marcus Robinson article in the Anti-Slavery Bugle). We didn't get to spend much time on the differences between Frances Dana Gage and Karlyn Cambell versions of the speech which seems to be quite important when it comes to the topic of agent/cy.
     These two woman have created examples of the speech in which they have come up with their own take on the situation. First, we must take into account that Sojourner was a emancipated slave who for sure had a totally different lifestyle than these two women. Frances Gage was a white abolitionist who organized the convention in which Truth spoke, and presented a completed text of the speech 12 years after the fact.

The Erasing of Disability

      The United Way had been raising money for disabled children and adults using advertisements since the late 1940s. The poster advertisements are what Ellen L. Barton calls a "discourse of disability". The representations of the disabled in said posters has been embedded into American history and culture have created a more complex social construct then the simple definition of "a individual's physical and/or mental impairments (169). Ellen L. Barton's article "Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way" explores the use of rhetoric and textual erasure in campaign advertisement posters created by the United Way.  The textual practice of erasure is employed by the ads of the United Way. According to Barton, "charity fund-raising of this era constructed simplistic and stereotypical representations of disability by erasing the complex experience of individuals, particularly adults, with disabilities" (172). The United Way used three textual practices to accomplish this erasure. They used children rather then adults, used the extraordinary rather then the ordinary and the focus on the United Way as a business.  

Ecoporn, Not the Porn that You're Thinking of, but Just as Bad

I first read the title of this article “Ecoporn” and thought about what that could possibly mean. I thought maybe it has nothing to do with porn in itself but perhaps it is some term created by a crazy theorists to describe something in nature or having to do with the ecosystem. Once I began reading I realized that ecoporn does in fact have similarities to actual pornography. Just when I thought English Theorists could no longer throw a curve ball our way, here we are introduced to ecoporn! I am happy to say that although the term may sound absurd, I learned something new from Bart Welling as he does make several interesting and valid points. 

This is not ecoporn

(Image: http://www.worth1000.com/entries/499820/frog-legs) 

Foucault, agency and ecoporn

In Bart Welling's article on ecoporn he makes the argument that pornography and depictions of nature as represented in the media share many similarities.  For Welling ecoporn and greenwashing are the same concept. Greenwashing being, "Disinformation disseminated by an organization, etc., so as to present an environmentally responsible public image" (Welling 54).  In the same way that the pornographic industry profits off of the marginalization of women and in turn creates a mentality of abuse, ecopornographers greenwash the public by playing upon their emotions and showing them images that will placate them into a sense of ease.  According to Welling Ecoporn and "traditional" pornography share three similarities:

1. "Ecoporn perpetuates ways of seeing feminized Others that have been instrumental in facilitating countless acts of violent expropriation."
2. "Ecoporn places the viewer in the role of the "male surveyor," the all seing male subject to Nature's unseeing aestheticized female object." 
3. "Finally, Ecoporn is pornographic because, it has been moving in recent years beyond images of flesh colored landscapes.... to a truly hardcore obsession with explicit sexuality and the violent, microscopically examined" (58, 59).

Campbell's Five Points of Agency

After reading Campbell's definition of agency, I am seeking to analyze each part of her definition and try to relate the parts to relevant examples.  Campbell says agency is, "communal and participatory, hence, both constituted and constrained by externals that are material and symbolic; is 'invented' by authors who are points of articulation; emerges in artistry or craft; is effected through form; and is perverse, that is, inherently protean, ambiguous, open to reversal" (Campbell I).  My first impression of her definition is the many facets that she labels to the word "agency."  It is not a simple, definable word, which shows how its complexities and various constructs are embedded in a culture.

Bart H. Welling's Ecoporn

Bart H. Welling’s essay Ecoporn: On the Limits of Visualizing the Nonhuman describes the “dialectical relationship between ecopornographic representations and human attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors vis-à-vis the nonhuman world.” (Welling – pg. 54) This means that is important to note that Welling’s description centers around the observation and analysis of ecopornograhic representations on nonhuman subjects, later citing the Florida panther as an example. “They are vital because they have a bearing not just on how we see nature but on how we make homes for ourselves in a world full of other life-forms.” (Welling – pg. 54) Welling claims the ecopornography is part and parcel of what he describes as a pornographic continuum. Welling briefly discusses environmentalist’s use of ecopornography and the rhetoric it generates as a manner of transforming “passive consumers of resources” into “thoughtful inhabitants of ecosystems.”  Welling also touches upon the process of pornographic substitution by which landforms / landscapes / nonhuman animals come to stand for women in the public eye.