Ecoporn. Eco-what?
When I printed out this reading by Bart
H. Welling, I must say, I was almost embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone seeing
that I was printing out something that said porn on it. Pornography today has
such a negative connotation and specific stigma surrounding it in today’s
world, so I was completely baffled by “eco” and “porn” being squished together
to create some sort of definition that initially, I had no clue about. After
reading Welling’s piece though, I realized that it was much less about actual
pornography – makes sense, right – and more about the “dialectical relationship
between ecopornographic representations and human attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviors vis-à-vis the non-human world” (Welling 54). But I thought to myself,
what on earth does the exploitation of nature and women and the importance that
Welling feels in addressing these issues have to do with past readings, such as
Seyla Benhabib’s “From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the Nineties”?
Enter eco-feminism. But first, let me
unpack ecoporn.
Welling wants to witness change in the male vs. female dichotomies, just like he wants to see it with man vs. nature. He looks at the exploitation of nature like pornography. Just how a director manipulates a porn star to shoot the video how he wants it to be shot for the audience, the same is done with nature. Welling is sick of this; he wants the raw, untouched versions of nature – aka not the kind of stuff that we see on the Discovery channel – and backs up his claim by analyzing the “graphic representations of nonhuman subjects like the Florida panther” (Welling 54). He says that ecoporn is like real pornography “because it masks sordid agendas with illusions of beauty and perfection” (55), and he’s right. Growing up in Florida and being a pretty big nature buff myself, it literally never crossed my mind that the various shows I was watching on the Discovery channel were manipulated. After reading Welling’s argument, I came to realize that they we as viewers only see the nature that they want us to see. We see the massive, adrenaline-ripping shot of a great white shark piercing through the deep blue waters, but we don’t see the camera dangling from the air, we don’t think of the tuna that they are taunting the sharks with to get the shot that they want – we think this is “natural”.
I found this video to better emphasize
what I was picturing in the aforementioned:
Granted, this “this type of pornography
is more subtle than standard human porn, but it is just as widespread – and in
some ways just as pernicious” (Welling 56). Because, we see this relationship
between ecoporn and real porn and these “landforms and nonhuman animals come to
stand in for women in the public eye, and, on the other hand, the processes by
which women are naturalized and animalized” (56) keep growing. Just like real
porn distorts human’s relationships and their views of love, our views have
been warped of nature, and even the littlest things like cooking shows, for
example. They give you this view that making chicken cacciatore is going to be
a piece of cake, and you watch them throw all the ingredients together and
boom! It’s done. In actuality, all of the onions and garlic and all other
ingredients were previously chopped and placed strategically in cute little
clear bowls, ready to toss together. This relates to Welling’s point of visual
power, which “translates in ecoporn as a sense of private ownership: the
illusion, for instance, that one is the only human gazing at, visually
possessing, the gorgeous sunset-washed ocean off of Waikiki, where the beach
behind the photographer is most likely very crowded” (57). It’s really all too
true.
So really, how does this relate to the
feminism paradigm? Well, I believe that just how Welling sees the exploitation
of nature in relation to actual pornography, women are being exploited today
solely based on the fact that they are a woman. Since the Equal Pay Act was
signed in 1963, the wage gap has been closing, but very slowly, each year. In
163, women made 59 cents to every dollar earned by men. In 2010, women earned
77 cents to every man’s dollar. While it’s great that the wage gap has been
closing, when will the time come that women are paid equally? What makes a
man’s brain so different from a woman’s brain for someone to decide – now that
I think about it, it was probably a man who decided this – that we, as women,
were going to work just as hard and get paid less. I don’t get it. Then you
take a look at people like Emma Watson, a United Nations Ambassador who had a
brilliant speech that went viral across the globe, highlighting the HeforShe
campaign, a gender equality movement to make it not just women’s issue, but men
as well. Or you can look at Michelle Obama, who recently went on record saying
that she thinks she should get a salary. In fact, her husband even said, “the
First Lady doesn’t get paid and she works pretty hard”.
-Morgan Crawford
Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI also had this feeling of confusion and embarrassment once beginning this assignment. I think was helped me though, and it sounds like you similary, is that Welling addresses all of our problems and points of confusion very early on. You are able to get a better sense of what "ecoporn" actually is, rather than take the word apart and try to find a concrete meaning.
I also agree with your experiences with watching Discovery Channel. Sure, there is a lot of traveling and takes that these videographers and photographers must undergo in order to produce these "beautiful" images, but never thought as this experience as being manipulated and inaccurate. In fact, when people would ever pose the question of "If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?" I would always respond, "a photographer for National Geographic", however, after reading Welling, I think I'll need to come up with a new dream job.
This idea of private ownership in ecoporn is also very relevant to the exploitation of the female gender. Women are idealized, sexualized and painted to a very specific gender "norm", as I had mentioned in my own blog post this all raises concerns of false human (female) agency. Though it took me a little to connect these two readings, I actually enjoyed relating this feministic paradigm we have been tackling in class to a new and unexpected concept.