Last Christmas I watched 101 Dalmatians, the 1996 adaptation of the original Disney animation, starring Glenn Close and 250 real Dalmatian dogs. I love watching this version with JD, because he goes nuts watching the Dalmatians barking at each other and genuinely seems to be engaged with the action (it’s pretty rare for JD to engage with anything that isn’t food or a squirrel). But this was the first time that the ethics of the film crossed my mind. In one scene, Pongo drags Roger and his bike through the street – his leash attached to the handle-bars – and in another a new-born puppy is realistically ‘revived’ from death. Towards the end we see puppies sucking a cow’s udders, not to mention all the action stunts the pups seemingly participate in, from sliding down drainpipes to falling into pails of water.
So I looked up the film [1] on the American Humane Association (AHA) ‘No Animals Were Harmed’ scheme [2] for reassurance. I was pleasantly surprised. The bike scene, for instance, was shot in several cuts using different dogs, with a minimum of 10 feet between the animals and any moving vehicle. The puppy in the ‘resurrection’ scene was actually three days old and only the actor and the owner handled him. For all stunts, food reward training was used along with verbal, hand or buzzer commands. When the puppies slide through the drain pipe, puppets and CGI were used, and the cow was fake with custard cream in its plastic udders. Most puppies used in the film came from private homes as entire litters, or they were taken from animal shelters and later adopted out to American homes. No puppies were bred for the film and the production company didn’t actually buy any dogs, rather hired them so that they had homes to go to after filming. If only one puppy was used out of the litter, they were all kept together and their owner was on site to care for them. Training took place in the owners’ home when the puppies were over six weeks old. John Freed, a representative from the AHA, said: ‘These are the best trainers in the world and this was by far the cleanest, healthiest and happiest set I’ve ever been on.’ [3]
Of course, not all animal movie stars are so lucky. In her recent blog, my fellow MSc student Evanna highlights the immediate and long-term welfare consequences for many animals used onscreen, even in films where a high AHA rating would assure us otherwise. She talks about the tiger in Life of Pi almost drowning on set and the deaths of 27 animals during the filming of The Hobbit in 2011, both AHA certified films. The fact that the AHA is financed by the film industry itself clearly creates a conflict of interest. Evanna also mentions the cruel training methods often used to control animals onset and the disposal of animal actors after their short careers are over, often to roadside zoos if they’re not killed outright. Moreover, even when the sorts of problems Evanna describes are absent, welfare issues can still reverberate far beyond the walls of the set and not just for the animal actors themselves. Even if we believe that 101 Dalmatians featured real animals responsibly, the film ‘Disneyfies’ [4] the Dalmatians as sweet, loving animals, ideal for family pets. In reality, this breed tends to snap, sometimes bite, and do not particularly like children [5]. The misrepresentation in the film led to consumer demand for ‘cute’ Dalmatian puppies and corresponding overbreeding [6]. In 1997, animal shelters around the US reported sharp increases in the number of unwanted Dalmatian dogs.
Evanna advocates CGI as a solution to welfare problems experienced by animal actors, but the consequential issues above would likely have still occurred with an animated remake of the film. Actually, substituting real animals onscreen with cartoon or CGI versions can be just as damaging for the real-life creatures they represent. The sort of Disneyfication that we see in The Lion King [7], where the animals are assigned human characteristics and given distorted childlike features, misrepresents their wild counterparts. Furthermore, the constant appearance in popular media of cartoon lions, giraffes and other so-called charismatic species may be damaging conservation efforts. In France around 800,000 ‘Sophie the giraffe’ baby toys were sold in 2010, more than eight times the numbers of real-life giraffes living in Africa [8]. The frequent presence of these beloved animals onscreen and in merchandise seems to be deluding the public that they’re no longer in need of conservation. Yet wild tigers occupy less than seven percent of their historic range [9] with at least three subspecies consigned to history books, while lions in West Africa are on the brink of extinction [10].
Nonetheless, there are instances where animals can be featured on screen to inspire positive welfare change. Disneyfication was used in Dream, a short animated film [11] that conveys an emotive message about saving endangered species. The film Okja [12] features a giant animated ‘super pig’ to raise awareness about factory farming. Real animals can be filmed with similar objectives. One example is the graphic depiction of animal abuse in the documentary Earthlings [13] which many people cite as their cue to go vegan, another the recent series Blue Planet II [14] which prompted widescale public rejection of wildlife-damaging single-use plastics. Yet in such documentaries, the film-maker’s responsibilities towards their animal ‘stars’ are complicated. Producers might decide not to intervene to help an animal and instead document their suffering, sacrificing individual welfare outcomes in order that more animals will benefit later.
Scene from Dream (2016)
If the aim is to create positive change for animals off set, it is possible to responsibly feature real or CGI animals onscreen. Unfortunately, entertainment rather than awareness is too often the aim, with little regard for the long-term consequences.
References
[1] AHA (2017). 101 Dalmatians. No Animals Were Harmed. Available at: http://www.humanehollywood.org/index.php/movie-archive/item/101-dalmatians [Accessed 2 Feb 2019]
[2] AHA (2015). “No Animals Were Harmed” A certification programme of American Humane Association. Guidelines for the safe use of animals in filmed media. Available at: http://www.americanhumane.org/app/uploads/2016/08/Guidelines2015-WEB-Revised-110315-1.pdf [Accessed 2 Feb 2019]
[3] Film Scouts® (2008). 101 Dalmatians: The Animals. Film Scouts. Available at: http://filmscouts.com/scripts/matinee.cfm?Film=101-dal&File=animals [Accessed 2 Feb 2019]
[4] Bekoff, M. (2009). Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, Second Edition. Greenwood Publishing Group. 1: 173-4.
[5] Navarro, M. (1997). After Movies, Unwanted Dalmatians. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/14/us/after-movies-unwanted-dalmatians.html [Accessed 2 Feb 2019]
[6] BBC (2000). Disney accused over Dalmatians. BBC News. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/900993.stm [Accessed 2 Feb 2019]
[7] The Lion King (1994). Directed by Roger Allers and Robert Minkoff [Film]. USA: Walt Disney Pictures.
[8] Courchamp, F. et al (2018) The paradoxical extinction of the most charismatic animals. PLOS Biology 16 (4).
[9] Wilting, A. et al. (2015). Planning tiger recovery: Understanding intraspecific variation for effective conservation. Science Advances, 1.
[10] Henschel, P. et al. (2014). The lion in West Africa is critically endangered. PLoS One, 9(1), e83500.
[11] Dream (2016). Directed by Zombie House for the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival. São Paulo: Zombie Studio [Short film]. Available at: https://www.demilked.com/dream-short-film-zombie-studio/
[12] Okja (2017). Directed by Joon-ho Bong [Film]. New York: Kate Street Picture Company.
[13] Earthlings (2005). Directed by Shaun Monson [Documentary]. Los Angeles: Nation Earth.
[14] Blue Planet II (2017-18) Series 1: 1-7. BBC1. [Documentary mini-series]. Bristol: BBC Natural History Unit (NHU).
