Animal Advocacy Documentaries in the Twenty-first Century

Animal Advocacy Documentaries in the Twenty-first Century is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the study of this subgenre.

The book explores how the plasticity of nonfiction film engages with nonhuman otherness and with the rhetorical discourses of advocates and activists, while simultaneously reaffirming its claims to truth. It examines how documentary mechanisms associated with form and content are deployed by filmmakers to represent nonhuman animals as subjects deserving of moral consideration, effectively seeking an ethical response from viewers. Rhetorical devices at the service of the documentary genre and animal ethics discourses come together in the formulation of narratives and aesthetics that reflect filmmakers’ awareness of the intertextual forces embodied by nonhuman animals in moving images.

Contributing to the fields of (Critical) Animal, Film, and Media Studies by defining and historicizing these films, the book situates their identity in the context of Western mythographies, politics of sight, the systemic practices of the animal-industrial complex, and contemporary self-reflexivity. It will appeal to academics, students, advocates, activists and people with an interest in nonfiction film, offering them an understanding of the historical and aesthetic place of animal advocacy documentaries, as well as a critical assessment of their limits and problematic interstices.