Tuesday, December 7, 2010

ZOO SHAME

Over on the University of Minnesota Press blog, a brief Q&A with Lisa Uddin, who writes about zoo shame, i.e. "why people feel bad at and about the zoo":
These decades [the 1960s and 70s] of intense revitalization transformed many U.S. zooscapes from the so-called “Naked Cage” template of animal display – widely condemned – to early incarnations of the naturalistic, immersive enclosures that typify zoo design today. Zoos also began revitalizing their animal collections in this period, breeding select species whose populations in and outside of captivity were dwindling. This spatial and biological overhaul often gets discussed as an institutional turn to wildlife conservation. What is missing from these accounts is analysis of how the turn was also fully contemporary with the smoldering racial tensions that defined the urban experience in the long postwar period, and, more specifically, the shame that made cities unbearable for so many Americans... I am considering how zoo renewal variously reflected feelings about race and urban space, how it amplified those feelings, and how it offered channels for relief. The shame of American zoos, I argue, is part of the shame of American cities. 
The last time I was at a zoo was in the summer of 2008, when I went to see some bands play at the Oregon Zoo (friend of a friend playing, got in free, otherwise it would pain me to pass dollars through a zoo's ticket window.) The Cowboy Junkies were playing when we arrived and I wasn't ready yet to succumb to a blanket on the grass, the soporific was already heavy in the July afternoon air, so I wandered the perimeter and came upon the elephants.

The elephants were walking back and forth in the same easy meter as the Cowboy Junkies. I thought of a beautiful essay a friend of mine wrote about watching these same elephants sway in time to the music. "They were dancing!" she said, and that fit so well with what her essay was about, a moment of relief and beauty and redemption after an ugly, rattling event. But what I learned later, by accident, was that elephants sway when they're distressed.

1 comment:

Help an Elephant said...

Yes, elephants sway because of distress. But zookeepers will never tell you that. They'll often say the elephant does it in anticipation of getting fed. Yeah, that means the elephant is being allowed to go too long between feedings. They don't sway in the wild when they're hungry. They go find some food.

While enclosures have certainly been improved since the days of the "Naked Cage", the elephants still usually have a barren piece of land. Any trees and greenery in the area is likely fenced off from their access. How can elephants not be bored and stressed under such austere conditions?

Thank you for quoting Lisa Uddin on zoo shame. She makes a connection I hadn't considered, but that seems quite appropriate. The way we treat captive animals does seem to reflect the way we treat our fellow citizens.