Ecopornography through a feminist lens

"Ecopornography is like 'real' pornography...because it masks sordid agendas with illusions of beauty and perfection." (page 55)

While Welling does not seem to view ecoporn in a sexual sense, he feels it should be considered porn and categorized alongside human pornography because it is viewed in the same manner. Ecoporn equates nature and animals to a powerless figure to be controlled by the viewer much the same way a female in pornography is viewed. Welling notes three specific reasons why ecoporn IS porn. For one, it equates nature to a domesticable, exploitable commodity the same way human porn does to woman. Secondly, pornography is capable of empowering and degrading; it degrades women to nonhuman standards and elevates nature to human standrads with men still being the all-powerful "male surveyor" (here he compares zoos to peepshows to show their striking similarities). And lastly, ecoporn acts in many similar ways to human porn such as animal snuff films, big cats in traditionally sexy poses, and flesh colored landscapes that mimic the female body.

"Anatomizing ecoporn as porn can help us interrogate the androcentric, ethnocentric, and anrthopocentric assumptions that ̶  despite appearances to the contrary ̶  animate ecoporn, perpetuating nature/culture dichotomies that sabotage environmentalism's attempts to inspire wider publics." (page 55)

Welling views ecopornography through the feminist lens many people tend to view heterosexual human pornography with. The usual androcentric power dynamic expressed in human pornography can be easily ascribed to ecopornography. The masculine gaze looks upon the feminized depiction of nature (i.e. a womb-like canyon or a docile animal) and sees it as something to be conquered or otherwise violated and subdued. Scenes from nature take on a pleasure-giving role in the relationship between the natural image and the viewer. The viewer has the power and nature becomes the victim of the anthrocentic, masculine gaze. Welling applies the patriarchal logic linked to the exploitation of women in the porn industry to ecoporn. Nature is exploited when it is photographed and documented to look pristine, pure, and virginal. While the sexist implications of ecopornography are more subtle than the sexist implications of human pornography, Welling claims they are just as pernicious. He points out the PETA "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign which is notoriously sexist and detrimental to women. He puts a new spin on it though, delving into the example of one ad featuring a naked woman whose body is painted to make her look like a snake that reads, "Exotic skins belong in the jungle, not in your closet." Through a feminist lens, people would see the ad as extremely sexist and totally pornographic, but those people are missing the alternate issue that while the image is dehumanizing women, it is simultaneously sexualizing snakes. Snakes are reduced to "exotic skins" and the object of heterosexual male desire. While women are naturalized and animalized, nature is womanized. PETA ads are a good example of Welling's theory at work because they have a history of blurring the lines between ecoporn and human porn.

"In the end, despite the large sums ecoporn helps raise in the name of animals and the environment, its rhetorical focus is less on nonhuman subjects ̶  which suffer from our rage to look at them in ways that ecopornography not only does not show but must keep hidden in order to survive ̶  than it is on man's pleasure, man's power, man's control." (page 66)

Environmentalist groups often use ecopornography as a tool to raise money to somehow help wildlife, but Welling sees this as counterproductive since these "pristine images of nature" do very little to actually educate the public and in fact more often contribute to the destruction of nature. He provides examples such as the colonization and eventual destruction of land Europeans thought was beautiful and the increase in shark killings after many movies and TV shows about sharks came out. In some less drastic examples, the subjects of ecoporn become victims of voyeurism instead of being helped. Florida panthers were effectively fetishized and now can be found in zoos and have their images on license plates all over Florida despite the fact that cars pose the biggest threat to the species' survival.

- Kayla Goldstein