The Gaze and Its Implications on the Animals

The gaze, as defined by Sturken and Cartwright is "the relationship of looking in which the subject is caught up in dynamics of desire through trajectories of looking and being looked at" (2009, 442). The gaze can be witnessed as tourists and shoppers within West Edmonton Mall stop and stare to scrutinize the animal exhibits. Depicted and arranged as a family friendly environment, the mall is strategically built to direct their gaze upon the animals. Effectively, by doing so, West Edmonton Mall encourages people to disregard the negative atmosphere in which wildlife is being kept, and instead focus their attention on watching fauna perform. Rather than asking themselves questions regarding the commodification of animals or the ethical obligations that humans have towards their nonhuman counterparts, shoppers blissfully pay money to watch sea lions forcefully perform tricks for food. The gaze is so severely ingrained and normalized by this capitalistic hegemonic that one can reduce these animals to machines, ultimately reducing them to soulless subjects which routinely and mundanely perform for entertainment. Rene Descartes theorized that this theoretical break and dualism (seeing the body and soul as two different and separate entities) was internalized within man, and was implicit in the human relation to animals. "In dividing absolutely body from soul, [Rene Descartes] bequeathed the [animal] body to the laws of physics and mechanics, and, since animals were soulless, the animal was reduced to the model of a machine" (Berger 2009, 21). Nevertheless, even though the spectators reduces the animal to mindless and mechanized, it seems to still summon a feeling of tenderness and enjoy a kind of innocence in the viewer's eye. As John Berger states:

What man has to do in order to transcend the animal, to transcend the mechanical within himself, and what his unique spirituality leads to, is often anguish. And so, by comparison and despite the model of the machine, the animal seems to enjoy a kind of innocence. The animal has been emptied of experience and secrets, and this new invented 'innocence' begins to provoke in man a kind of nostalgia. For the first time, animals are placed in a receding past. (21-22)

This reduction of the animal, then, plays into what images and memories we associated with this captive wildlife. West Edmonton Mall uses this to their advantage by advertising material on their website promoting visits to the 'Sea Lion's Rock' and interactive camps, calling them "experience[s] of a lifetime" (West Edmonton Mall, 2010). By effectively manipulating the gaze and using it as a type of marketing tactic, mall executives are essentially teaching children that having dominion over animals, forcing them to live and behave in unnatural habitats, as well as performing in grotesque and atypical manners to obtain food, is completely healthy and acceptable. Altogether, the gaze is ubiquitous and permeates all facets of animal interaction, whether 'educational', as a spectator, or as a simple passerby. Ultimately, "tourists and [the animals] face each other, look at each other, hear each other, smell each other, or touch each other in these ‘close encounters of empire’, and are all part of the power relations by which forms of gender and [species] inequality are brought into being along with national boundaries of belonging and exclusion" (Sheller, 2004, 1). In other words, the way people (tourists and Edmonton locals alike) subject the mall's captive animals to their gaze is a direct reflection of self-interest, and the desire of every person for his own individual happiness. The focus placed on materialism within the confines of the mall turns the tourist gaze into a materialistic one, commodifying wildlife, transforming wildlife into products to be consumed, both visually and monetarily.

References

Arnold, Mark and Kristy E. Reynolds. 2003. Hedonic shopping motivations. Journal of Retailing. 79 (2003): 77-95.

Berger, John. Why Look at Animals? (Penguin Great Ideas). London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2009.

Cartwright, Lisa, and Marita Sturken. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. 2 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.

Castricano, Jodey. "Monsters: The Case of Marineland." In Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World (CS). Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008. 195-223.

The Edmonton Journal, "Alberta's greatest animal stories," October 5, 2008. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/sundayreader/story.html?id=04826ace-c5ab-4472-9e28-3ab8f8eb8835 (accessed April 9, 2010).

Hannigan, John. 1998. Fantacity city: pleasure and profit in the postmodern metropolis. New York NY: Routledge.

"Marine Life Education." West Edmonton Mall. http://www.wem.ca/#/play/home/Marine-Life-Education (accessed April 9, 2010).

Marvin, Garry, and Robert Mullan. Zoo Culture. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Sheller, Mimi. "Returning the Tourist Gaze: Caribbean Gender and Racial Encounters." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (2004): 1-22.

"West Edmonton Mall: Triple Five." Triple FiveWorldwide. http://www.triplefive.com/en/pages/wem (accessed April 10, 2010).