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Professor Claire Parkinson is Professor of Culture, Communication and Screen Studies, Associate Head of English and Creative Arts, and co-director of the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS) at Edge Hill University.

Dr Lara Herring is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford, UK.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book, Animal Activism On and Off Screen! Tell us a bit about how this project came together?Ìý

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C&L: Thank you. We’ve known each other for many years and had previously worked together on a couple of funded research projects. This book brought together different research areas that we had been exploring individually and together, in screen studies, vegan celebrity, and animal rights. There was one catalysing event that really sparked the idea for this project. We were both fascinated by the public and critical reception of Joaquin Phoenix’s speech at the Oscars in 2020, and his activism during the awards season that had preceded it. Phoenix won the Best Actor Award for his performance in the film Joker (2019) and used the awards ceremony as a platform to talk about animal rights. Over the last 10 years, there has also been a notable increase in the number of films and television programs that featured veganism. It was clear that there has been a real shift in how animal activism was being done and depicted. This was where the seeds of the idea for this book really began. The aim of the project was to bring together research and commentary on animal activism in film and television, with celebrity studies, an area in which there has been relatively little work done on animal rights and vegan activism. We also wanted to include voices from the activist and filmmaking community alongside those of academics and we were fortunate to be able to do exactly this.Ìý

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen is a collection of contributions that examine the relationship between animal advocacy and the film and television industries. Contributors include scholars, activists and film industry professionals. How important is it to include a broad range of voices when exploring this topic?Ìý

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C&L: Yes, from the outset we knew we wanted to have this range of voices in the book. It was always important to us that this book should represent not only scholarly views but that it should give space to those from the filmmaking and activist communities. This sounds as if we have categorised contributors as either scholar, activist or filmmaker and it couldn’t be further from the truth. We think it’s important to point out that many of those contributing to the book are hyphenates: filmmaker-activists; scholar-activists; activist-scholar-filmmakers. For those involved in critical animal studies, for example, their scholarship and activism are intrinsically bound together. The same is true for many of the contributors to this book and indeed, the identity of filmmaker and activist is one of the questions we explore with Liz Marshall, who is well-know to so many as the director of The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013) and Meat the Future (2020). We were incredibly fortunate to be put in touch with Liz through a mutual friend and we were delighted when she agreed to be interviewed for the book. Through Liz we were able to contact Lorena Elke Dobbie, an activist and documentary film researcher who contributed an incredible chapter to the volume that also grapples with these different facets of identity. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have worked with such an amazing and talented group of people who have all been committed to the idea of this book from the start.Ìý

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The book is broken up into three parts that investigate: representations of activism on screen; activist texts and their reception; and celebrity vegans and animal advocates. Was this a conscious decision or an organic one?Ìý

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C&L:ÌýFrom the beginning, we knew we wanted to explore three facets of activism and the screen industries, and we wanted to make links between activism in the onscreen and offscreen spheres. At the start though, we had only the idea of the three key themes and there was no intention to split the final book up into different parts. As time went on and we began to identify and secure contributors it became clear that the book was naturally evolving in such a way that we found ourselves with chapters falling quite neatly into one section or another. We thought it would be a good idea to make the on and off-screen elements of the book clearer by using the three discrete parts and we think this works well, helping to navigate the reader through the key guiding themes.Ìý

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen includes a number of case studies – from documentaries like Blackfish (2013) to feature films like Okja (2017). What potential do you see for activism in both fiction and non-fiction films to make meaningful change? Do you believe one genre is more effective than the other?Ìý

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C&L:ÌýWhen people think of animal activism films, they tend to think of non-fiction. So perhaps what comes to mind is undercover filmmaking which takes place in industries where animals are exploited, such as farms, slaughterhouses and laboratories, or documentaries such as Cowspiracy (2014) or Earthlings (2005) which have been able to reach larger audiences due to increased internet access and distribution platforms such as Netflix. As many of our contributors discuss, there is no doubt that non-fiction film and television has reached large audiences and, in many cases, played a part in making meaningful change. Debra Merskin and Carrie Freeman’s chapter on the ‘Blackfish effect’ is a great example of this and the authors look at what lessons can be learnt from the success of that film. We were also interested in looking at fiction genres and so there are chapters that focus on TV crime series and films such as Okja (2017) and Cloud Atlas (2012). As the book demonstrates, it’s not possible to identify one genre as being more effective than another; there is more than genre at stake. We have to take into account audience reach, marketing, promotion, timing, how the film is used, in addition to questions about narrative and aesthetic choices and what resonates with audiences. What the chapters in this book have done, is to distil all these components through case studies and analyses and offer suggestions for future activist communication strategies.ÌýÌý

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Do you believe celebrities have a responsibility to lend their voices and platforms to the causes they believe in?Ìý

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C&L:There’s a long history of celebrity activism and we have certainly seen a rise in the number of celebrities who are aligning themselves with different causes and issues over the last twenty-five years. As the contributors to our book demonstrate, when it comes to the value of celebrity activism in the animal rights sphere there are many factors to take into account. Elizabeth Cherry’s research looks at the merit of celebrity association but also highlights some of the concerns about celebrity activism from the point of view of grassroots activists, particularly the impact of celebrity bad behaviour on the movement. Toby Miller argues that celebrity-fronted PETA campaigns are undermined by contradictory messaging. Eva Giraud draws on the concept of media ecologies to reveal the connected expressions of vegan politics associated with one celebrity activist, James Cromwell, and discusses how radical narratives may emerge from commercial media activity. What the chapters in the celebrity section of the book clearly demonstrates is the complexity of celebrity activism and the various ways in which it can both benefit and hinder the animal rights movement.Ìý

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What key insights or messages do you hope readers willÌýtake away from your book? For those who are interested to read more about animal and film history, what other publications might you suggest?Ìý

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C&L:ÌýWe hope that readers will take away some insights that can inform tactics, approaches or strategies that can benefit animal advocacy, whether that’s in the form of academic work, creative production, or grassroots campaigns. If people are interested in reading more about animals and the media, we recommend they look at Critical Animal and Media Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy (2015) edited by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole and Carrie P. Freeman; Seeing Species: Re-presentations of AnimalsÌý
in Media & Popular Culture (2018) by Debra Merskin; Animals on Television: The CulturalÌýMaking of the Non-Human (2017) by Brett Mills; and, Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mediated Encounters (2020) by Claire Parkinson.Ìý

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Animal Activism On and Off Screen is available now. Order your copy here.Ìý