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Hatari Means Danger: Filmic

Representations of Animal Welfare and
Environmentalism at the Zoo
Robin L. Murray & Joseph K. Heumann
Published online: 24 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Robin L. Murray & Joseph K. Heumann (2014) Hatari Means Danger: Filmic
Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo, Quarterly Review of Film and
Video, 31:7, 621-634, DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2012.710517

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 Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 31: 621–634, 2014
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1050-9208 print / 1543-5326 online
DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2012.710517

Hatari Means Danger: Filmic Representations

of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo

ROBIN L. MURRAY and JOSEPH K. HEUMANN

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A few months after officials at the Nuremberg Zoo allowed a polar bear to eat her cubs,
Lucy Siegle explores the ethics of zoos in the May 3, 2008 issue of Observer Magazine.
Although experts have shown that polar bears are unsuitable for captivity, the Nuremberg
Zoo included them in their attractions because, according to Siegle, they are a popular
“charismatic species. . ., which pull in the crowds,” a result that provides increased ticket
sales, “the primary source of funding” for zoos. Yet Siegle also asserts that the best zoos
would deny including unsuitable species because they please audiences, “shifting emphasis
away from animals as entertaining curios (a Victorian idea) and on to the ‘modern’ zoo’s
noble aspirations: species conservation and education.” This shifting focus of zoos, however,
does not negate the need for a large number of zoo visitors to finance zoo upkeep and
programming. In fact, because educational programs and animal welfare strategies require
increased funds, the shift may increase the necessity for increased gate fee results. This
dilemma raises a perhaps unresolvable question: Can these two competing and conflicting
motivations for zoos (profit and conservation) be reconciled in favor of the ethical treatment
of zoo animals?
In her piece, Siegle outlines multiple benefits of modern zoos: a more natural “captive
experience,” smaller environmental footprints, and species conservation that, according to
David Whitley’s exploration of Disney animation, might “encourage [] the next generation
of children to protect the natural world” (quoted in Siegle). In spite of the positive bent
of her exploration, however, Siegle does not argue that zoos can resolve their conflicting
interests with animal welfare goals in place. Instead, she leaves readers with more questions
to ponder and an answer that demonstrates her own ambivalence toward zoos: “Does the
choice come down to gawking at a live polar bear in a German town, or a fictional mouse
in large yellow shoes? I’m sticking with my Planet Earth box set.”
This same ambivalence pervades multiple films with zoos at their center. Some may
focus on the customer for the animals being captured, as in Howard Hawks’ Hatari (1962).
Others may examine zoos as a backdrop for comic or dramatic action, as in Cameron
Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo (2011) and Frank Coraci’s Zookeeper (2011). Still others

Robin L. Murray is Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University where she teaches film
and literature courses and coordinates the Film studies minor. Joseph K. Heumann is Professor
Emeritus of Communication Studies from Eastern Illinois University. Murray and Heumann co-
authored Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge (SUNY Press, 2009), That’s All, Folks?:
Ecocritical Readings of American Animated Features (University of Nebraska Press, 2011) and
Gunfight at the Eco-Corral: Western Cinema and the Environment (University of Oklahoma Press,
2012). They are currently working on a manuscript exploring everyday eco-disasters in documentary
and fictional films.

621
 622 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

showcase zoo settings as documentary subjects, as in Frederick Wiseman’s Zoo (1993)

and Nicholas Philibert’s Nenette (2010). Although African safari films like Hatari seem
to promote trapping wild animals for human amusement in zoos or some other enclosure,
and fictional zoo-centered films such as We Bought a Zoo and Zookeeper emphasize the
benefits to humans provided by animals and a zoo setting, they also highlight, at least
peripherally, the educational roles zoos have always held. Documentaries such as Zoo and
Nenette, however, provide a more complex view of zoo life, revealing the detriments to
animal welfare caused by captivity, as well as the complicated relationship humans have
with entrapped wild creatures. With their direct cinema approaches, Zoo and Nenette show
viewers some of the dangers animals face when held captive in a zoo setting, even when
ethical standards are in place. In spite of their differing stances, however, all these films
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beg the question: Does Hatari mean danger for humans or for the animals they capture and
enclose for their own enjoyment?
Zoo movies reflect a long history of trapping and enclosing exotic animals for education
and entertainment. Although the word “zoo” is a relatively recent construction, collections
of exotic animals kept in captivity have existed for at least 4000 years. These collections,
known as menageries, existed in ancient Aztec and Incan civilizations and in ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Greece, and China (Hosey, Melfi, and Pankhurst 18), as seen in epics such as
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963). Records show a diversity of species in captivity
from 2500 BC in Egypt to 322 BCC in Greece, but the Romans captured wild animals
“not so much for education and contemplation, but rather for slaughter in the gladiatorial
arena” (19), a tradition seen on screen in films such as William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959)
and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). During the Middle Ages, a few menageries continued
to entertain wealthy courtiers. The Tower of London Menagerie, which opened in 1245,
stayed open until 1832 (20). Outside the royal courts, exotic animals were made accessible
through traveling circuses and exhibitions (20).
With the widespread colonization of Africa and Asia in the 18th and 19th Centuries by
European nations came “a wider public interest in natural history” (20). As Hosey, Melfi,
and Pankhurst explain, “By the nineteenth century, the ‘modern’ zoological garden had
been born, with the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and Regent’s Park Zoo in London vying
for position as world leaders” (21). These zoos were open to the public and prompted the
popularizing of the word “zoo” when a music hall artist composed and performed “Walking
in the Zoo on Sunday” for large London audiences (23). The London Zoo is considered
the most influential of these early zoos because it inaugurated the dual roles of the modern
zoos: “it was founded on scientific principles. . .[and] it was created in a large, public open
park with informal naturalistic landscaping” (25) that invited a diverse public to enjoy its
spectacles.
Other European zoos followed the Paris and London zoos’ lead, but the first American
zoological gardens opened in Philadelphia in 1874. The Cincinnati Zoo followed in 1875,
and the New York Zoological Park (Bronx Zoo) opened in 1899 (27). These early zoos in the
U.S. and Europe highlighted more naturalistic, moated enclosures like that of Hagenbeck in
Hamburg, “a permanent zoo park with concrete and cement rocks and gorges, based on real
geological formations” (26). According to Rothfels, “visitors flocked to see the artificial
mountain landscape built to house African animals and the Polar Panorama with its Arctic
animals” (quoted in Hosey, et al 26). Instead of fences and bars, animals were separated
from visitors with moats and ditches. As Hagenbeck explains, “I wished to exhibit them
not as captives, confined within narrow spaces and looked at between bars, but as free to
wander from place to place within as large limits as possible” (quoted in Hosey et al 27).
Early zoos in the United States, however, also responded to what Elizabeth Hanson calls a
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 623

“middle landscape” of landscapes combining urban and wilderness values with “a curious
and often uneasy blend of scientific research, education, and entertainment to negotiate
their desire to create an authentic experience of nature for a popular audience” (9).
Zoos in films before 1970, however, typically illustrate what Hosey et al calls “The
Disinfectant Era” that began in the 1920s and 30s and persisted into the 1970s. Instead
of the open enclosures of early zoological gardens, these “modern” zoo enclosures “were
designed primarily for ease of cleaning rather than with regard to the needs of the animals
housed within them” (29). This design disregards the welfare of the animals on display,
according to Hancocks, who asserts, “the use of tiled walls, concrete floors, plate-glass
viewing windows, and steel doors in many of these minimalist enclosures leads to an
environment that is not only sterile, but which is likely to be noisy in a way that promotes
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increased stress, with the sound of steel doors reverberating at a painful level in the hard
acoustics of the cages” (quoted in Hosey et al 29). Depictions of the London Zoo in Stuart
Walker’s Werewolf of London (1935), the Bronx Zoo in Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People
(1942), and the New Orleans Zoo in Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People (1982), as they
were recreated in the films’ respective studios, illustrate this sterile enclosure of the period.
As Hosey et al declare, however, “public reaction against some of the worst enclosures
of the Disinfectant Era may well have speeded up the advent of the modern zoo, with
its naturalistic settings and a new emphasis on seeing animals within the context of their
ecosystem” (32), in “bioexhibit[s that] portray life in all its interconnectedness” (38).
David Eady’s independent British family film, Zoo Baby (1960) highlights this transi-
tion from The Disinfectant Era to the advent of ecosystems, bioparks, and wildlife parks.
In Zoo Baby, a young son of African explorers, Pip (Gerard Lohan), is sent to London to
live with his aunt, Mrs. Ramsey (Angela Baddeley) and go to school. Because the authori-
ties confiscate his hamster at the airport for quarantine, Pip misses animal companionship
and begins to explore the nearby zoo with the Ramsey maid, Mary (Doreen Keogh). He
declares, “We had a lovely garden in Nairobi,” providing viewers with an explanation for
his zoo wanderings and choice to adopt a coati-mundi that escapes when a photographer
convinces the zookeeper to allow him to photograph the raccoon-like omnivore outside its
cage without the wires and bars. Pip visits the zoo alone instead of going to school, notices
the coati-mundi is out of its cage but finds him running from the photographer, hides him
in his coat, and sneaks him out of the zoo.
Although the bulk of this short film concentrates on Pip’s attempts to make money to
purchase mealy worms for the coati-mundi now housed in the attic, it also illustrates the
enclosures of the Disinfectant Era. More importantly for this transition piece, it shows the
effects of a move from Colonial to post-Colonial Africa on zoos and zoo capture. Scotland
Yard investigates the loss of the coati-mundi because it was a gift from an African nation
and its loss might disrupt England’s relationship with them. Although the zoo enclosures
demonstrate a less than humane environment for zoo animals, Pip’s parting words in the film
may predict the coming changes in zoo habitat. When his aunt offers to procure him another
pet coati-mundi, Pip exclaims, “No thanks, Aunt Julia. Animals are much too difficult to
keep in London.” Those words seem to anticipate the contemporary zoo of ecosystems and
animal welfare demonstrated in current cinema.
Other films set or filmed before the modern era of zoo ecosystems emphasize ani-
mal capture rather than captive breeding, yet they too illustrate the dual roles of zoos as
money-making entertainment centers and scientific research and education institutions.
Over the decades there have been a number of big budget Hollywood films about the white
man’s adventures in Africa from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Many involve the “great
white hunter” and include the fashion dummy retro look of John Ford’s Mogambo (1953),
 624 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa (1985), Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter/Black Heart (1990),
and Stephen Hopkins’ The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). Hatari (1962) is in a similar
world, but focuses on animal catchers, groups of men and women who capture wild animals
for zoos and circuses all over the globe. It is also about the power of audience, both for
the film and for the zoo and circus entertainment promoted by its narrative. When placed
alongside films that document animal capture, such as Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B.
Schoedsack’s Chang (1927), Clyde E. Elliott’s Bring ‘em Back Alive (1932) and Martin E.
Johnson and Osa Johnson’s Congorilla (1932), Hatari begins to reveal the consequences
of turning safari adventure into a moneymaking enterprise, consequences that question the
possibility of an ethical approach to zoo culture.
Hatari focuses on the typical close-knit insular “Hawksian” world of skilled profes-
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sionals, people who risk life and limb for money, adventure and the freedom it provides.
But, as Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy explains, “With its mix of people and animals
against grand landscapes, it would even have the feel of a Western, albeit a modern and quite
exotic one” (572). Hawks himself described it as “a hunting season from beginning to end.
It’s what happens when a bunch of fellows get together to hunt” (quoted in McCarthy 572).
In Hatari, however, there is a powerful economic component to the pursuit of capturing all
manner of wild animals for the businesses that demand them, so if you want to join this
group you have to have a skill set they need or you are rejected without a moment’s notice.
In Hatari hesitation means injury or death.
When the film opens with an exciting and dangerous chase after a rhino, and ends with
the rhino escaping after it gores Indian (Bruce Cabot) because his jeep’s driver was not
anticipating the rhino’s attack, we immediately see how close the hunters have to come to
their quarry to capture them and how furiously the large animals react in their own defense.
Indian nearly dies but is rescued by Chips, a stranger (Gerard Blain), who wants to join the
group. But first Chips must donate his rare AB negative blood and then prove he can replace
Indian who is the group’s top rifle shot. Only after he passes both tests is he immediately
folded into the group and participates in all further actions as if he had been with these
people for years.
The group’s leader Sean Mercer (John Wayne) continually scans a large board filled
with neatly laid out rows of all the animals requested for delivery in this particular year. As
the rainy season approaches the pressure to capture all the promised animals increases. The
danger and adventures behind capturing these animals is the primary concern of the film.
Hawks was determined to minimize the use of stunt doubles and once Wayne was willing
to put himself in considerable danger to enhance the excitement of the actual captures all
the other actors fell into line and joined in the action. Audiences were then engaged in
over an hour of screen time devoted to the attempts to chase, rope and subdue wildebeests,
antelope, giraffes, cape buffalo and rhinos from open-doored jeeps and open bed trucks.
Unlike many of the other Hollywood African epics already mentioned, Hatari is
unconcerned with killing, though in one sequence a crocodile is supposedly shot to save
Kurt (Hardy Kruger) from attack while he is in a river trying to winch a jeep stuck in the
water. Hatari seems to say that real adventure means no guns. You want a buffalo? Go out
and capture it with your bare hands. Instead, when a young elephant calf has been orphaned
and is about to be shot by the game warden, it is rescued by the group’s newest member
Dallas (Elsa Martinelli) an Italian magazine photojournalist, who demands to be given the
opportunity to keep the calf alive. The group tries to dissuade her, but when she demands
loyalty they immediately drop everything, pool their meager money to purchase a herd of
goats from local farmers, learn to milk them, while she finally develops a formula that saves
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 625

and nourishes the elephant. By film’s end Dallas has saved three young orphaned elephants
and they follow her around like ducks that have imprinted on her as their mother. These
elephants provide much of the comedy for the film’s ending making sure Dallas and Sean
become a couple both professionally and romantically.
It is this amiable comic quality that separates Hatari from most adventure epics. The
captures are always serious affairs, jeeps overturn, and people are injured, but amid the
serious tone is the moral universe of Hawks where people are only judged by their abilities
and nothing more, and most of the time their actions are comic and ludicrous in turns. Men
and women are reduced to foolish animals when their sexual drives overcome their good
sense. The only way to control those impulses is through serious work. This small group
functions as a smooth unit willing to face death in order to fulfill its contracts. Back at their
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home base they relax with card games, drink, banter and mild sexual jealousies, which are
always settled in the friendliest of fashions. It is an idealized white world that never has to
challenge the results of the work that they do and rarely acknowledges the African nation
and its people.
But it is this work that fills the zoos and circuses of the world with animals that were
once free and living without disturbance in their own space. Hatari takes great pains to
represent the mythic and enormous beauty of Tanganyika (now Tanzania), its Great Plains,
rivers and forests all full of life. The intrusion of the capture group is contrasted with
the power and grace of the free roaming animals. Now that these animals have become
commodified for their value to be displayed in artificial environments, their capture is
portrayed as being merciful. At least they won’t be shot by some rich industrialist on safari
or killed by an indigenous cattle herder, the film suggests. But since Hatari’s crew never
questions their work, we never question our own needs for such entertainment. Without us
as an audience, animal captures would never exist.
Documentaries addressing zoo safaris embody that same attitude toward capturing
animals for entertainment and profit. William C. Ament’s Jungle Cavalcade (1941) a
compilation of scenes from Bring ‘Em Back Alive (1932), Wild Cargo (1934), and Fang
and Claw (1935), presents multiple exhibitions that intermingle action sequences with
captivity narratives. These episodes are meant to entertain viewers with their suspenseful
action. But again and again, the star, Frank Buck explains that he must fill orders from
American zoos. In these sequences, too, Buck is characterized as both hero and savior,
heroically conquering the jungle and its predators, while saving local indigenous animal
and human populations from the horrors of “fang and claw.”
During Buck’s first adventure, for example, he and a partner encounter a tiger and
monkeys on their route and watch a battle between leopard and tiger that ends in a draw. A
python attacks the leopard, and we see it strangle the leopard within minutes, amplifying
the action but offering an opportunity for the pair to capture the python for one of their
zoo orders. In another scene, the pair attempts to capture monkeys in a tree, and when they
fail, bring back the crew with nets. While Jack shoots at branches, the crew holds the nets
and catches the falling monkeys. In another sequence, one of the crew captures a bear cub
while Buck and a crewmember capture a monkey. The monkey and bear cub are tied near
one another back at the compound, but Buck explains that he has provided them with a
safer life away from the jungle danger.
In another scene, a tiger interferes with rubber plantation workers, so Buck again is
constructed as a savior as he and his crew build a tiger trap. They catch the tiger with some
effort, freeing the plantation of its problems while accruing another item for Jack’s list of
zoo orders. They have multiple orders for monkeys, however, and construct a huge trap to
capture dozens of them for zoos. The monkeys are lured to food on the ground, and then
 626 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

a huge net is dropped over them. Elephants too are on the order. A baby elephant seems
directly in line with a tiger, so Jack and his loyal partner shoot down the tiger and capture
the baby, again mixing benevolence with profit. Four young men carry the baby elephant
back to camp where the monkey plays. Monkeys are also taught to bring down coconuts, so
their milk can be used to feed the infant elephant through the makeshift bottle Jack created.
Another scene shows us a leopard in a tree. Again Jack shoots down branches to knock it
down, and it is captured. Other animals, including a tiny deer are trapped in small cages,
but Jack must protect them from tigers and pythons. In one scene, Jack is actually attacked
by a giant python. They also capture exotic birds with snares and makeshift cages.
A tiger and alligator battle it out in another adventure, and both survive, but again a
python intervenes, attacking the alligator and strangling it. Playful monkeys entertain us
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while Jack and his crew build another trap for them using food in coconut shells. But a
python also attacks a tiger, which refuses to run away and is ultimately strangled by its
giant constricting body. All of these action sequences mesmerize the viewer, heightening
tension and highlighting the wild jungle that kills all but the fittest. In this context, captured
animals are constructed as victims of the jungle who are offered a better life in zoos. When
the bear cub escapes, for example, it quickly returns to avoid the dangers lurking in the
jungle.
Ultimately Jack and his men fill all of their orders, catching a rhinoceros and a herd
of elephants, which stampede into an enclosure that is, ironically, built by other trained
elephants. These scenes of captivity are contrasted with the playful scenes of monkeys and
the bear cub back at the camp. In a comic scene before leaving the jungle, Jack and two men
chase a stork, but Jack’s beneficence is reinforced when he recaptures an escaping python
before it devours the bear cub and monkeys. Their journey out of the jungle is much less
arduous. Traveling first by wagon and then by truck, they cart animals to a cargo ship ready
to sail to (presumably) American zoos. The dangerous jungle has been conquered, and
some of its animals have been saved, the film implies, to entertain us and fill zoo coffers.
In David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest: Paraguay (1955), host Attenborough also mixes
entertainment and profit as he introduces the expedition in search of rare species of mammals
in Paraguay as if planning a vacation. Interspersed between “talking head” explanations of
his travels, however, in which Attenborough and his crew show audiences the perils and
pleasures of a hunting trip to replenish zoo stock and educate them about the exotic lands
they visit. The trip begins with a boat journey across the Brazilian border to Paraguay. The
first of the wonders introduced here are the multitudes of butterflies of various species.
This first encounter with nature suggests Attenborough is enjoying a 1950s eco-tourism
trip, but once he and his crew cross the into Paraguay, it becomes clearer that this is a
financially beneficial hunt for resources. Although Attenborough seeks zoo animals, he and
his crew also showcase various hardwoods as other sources of revenue. The film takes the
time to show us natives cutting hardwood trees with their axes before Attenborough begins
listening for nests of exotic birds. He tells us he must wait and listen to better capture his
prey. Here animals and hardwood are connected as revenue building resources.
Throughout the first part of this episode of Zoo Quest, Attenborough captures animals
and then reveals little-known facts about them, educating audiences about the prey he will
then ship to zoos around the world. He captures capybaras, which he tells us are rare
because they have been widely hunted by the local population for their hides and meat.
He also captures a variety of birds, including rheas, ostrich-like birds, which eat thistles.
He also bags an armadillo after tracking droppings to its hole. These hunting scenes
provide a bifurcated vision of ecology in which rare species are valorized yet captured for
entertainment and profit in zoos.
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 627

The finale to this episode reinforces this ambiguous worldview. While a mariachi
band plays a song that, according to Attenborough, sounds like the Guyra Cayana, a
rare bird that is “almost” the national bird of Paraguay, credits reveal that this show was
possible because of the World Land Trust. The entertainment of the musicians may be
opposed to the conservation message of the World Land Trust, but in the context of Zoo
Quest, entertainment and environmentalism can mix. This message may fail to resonate for
contemporary viewers, however, and, perhaps, for contemporary zookeepers who embrace
conservation above profit.
Although films documenting worldwide quests for zoo animals highlight the need to
fulfill orders to create a profit, contemporary films reflect the current emphasis on zoos as
biodiversity-conservation nonprofits whose aim for ticket sales is maintenance of the zoo,
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its animals, personnel and its education programs. The focus on entertainment continues,
however, as a way to facilitate higher attendance. Research from BioScience magazine and
Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine from the late 1980s forward illustrates this shift to
conservation rather than entertainment for profit. But they also highlight the tension between
animal welfare, which concentrates on individual animals and species, and conservation,
which emphasizes biodiversity and the more holistic organismic approaches to ecology.
This tension is illustrated well in two recent fictional zoo films: Zookeeper and We
Bought a Zoo. Although both films demonstrate the benefit a zoo may hold for its owners
or zookeepers, they approach animal rights and animal welfare issues in different ways.
Whereas Zookeeper recalls earlier appeals to individual animals, as do the 1950s’ Jungle
Cavalcade and Zoo Quest and the 1960s’ Hatari, We Bought a Zoo responds to the current
conservation ethic embraced by most zoos, as well as the tensions between animal welfare
and conservation inherent in the zoo ideal, while it draws on the conceit of talking animals
found in the Dr. Doolittle films. Although John Perry of the U.S. National Zoological Park
declared in 1966 that the first aim of the zoo was “to keep animals healthy and to prolong
their lives” (590), debates between conservation and animal welfare were underway in
the zoo environment as early as 1989 when veterinarians and zoologist Glenn H. Olsen
explored the repercussions of the U.S. Animal Welfare Act for zoos.
According to Olsen, the 1985 amendments to the Animal Welfare Act require “insti-
tutions to address the psychological well-being of nonhuman primates and dogs” (135).
Although this amendment centers specifically on these two species, Olsen asserts that “The
correct step is for each zoo to treat all animal exhibition and research as if were under the
purview of the animal regulations” (135–136). Olsen advocates for high standards in zoo
and wildlife research despite oversights in regulations but argues, “There should be little
need for change in the care and treatment of our animals if we have been performing our
jobs in a humane manner” (137). Improvements Olsen proposes include “transfer [ring]
knowledge about normal animal behavior and requirements to the zoo or captive wildlife
setting to improve animal husbandry and, as far as is practical, to avoid a sterile laboratory
setting” and “devising safe capture methods, including immobilization drugs and their re-
versal agents” (137). For Olsen, the Animal Welfare Act should be viewed “as a minimal
care standard we are trying to exceed” (137).
Olsen’s arguments resonate well with animal welfare and conservation concerns, high-
lighting the need for a more humane approach to animal conservation in zoos. Because
it takes a more general approach to zoo management, however, Olsen’s piece excludes
animal-rights driven issues related to particular species that may or may not respond well
to captivity. Writing in 1992, zoologist Jeffrey P. Cohn, however, examines in detail some
of the decisions zoos must make in relation to ethics, politics, profit and animal-rights
concerns, which may be in conflict with conservation goals. We touched on the polar
 628 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

bear dilemma in our introduction. Cohn explores issues surrounding white tigers and other
hybrid species, demonstrating well the conflicts that still exist between animal rights and
conservation advocates. Cohn illustrates this ethics clash with a scenario ending with a
question: “Naturally occurring, although rare in the wild, white tigers represent an anomaly
in the animal kingdom. . . .To get more white tigers, zoo managers in India and the United
States in the 1950s mated fathers and daughters, granddaughters, and even, on occasion,
great granddaughters. Should zoos continue this practice?” (654).
Cohn lays out clearly the ideology behind the conflict, explaining that conservation and
animal rights or welfare ideals differ in relation to treatment of surplus animals and focus
on individual animals and/or species. According to Cohn, “zoos often have to decide how
many and which subspecies of an endangered species to keep and breed in captivity” (654).
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This is especially problematic with tigers “because there are five surviving subspecies, four
in US zoos, and each individual is expensive to maintain” (654). Whereas animal rights
advocates would argue for maintaining all species and subspecies of tigers, conservation
biologists assert that only “175 individuals of each tiger subspecies are needed to ensure
their survival and genetic diversity in captivity” (654). Cohn also examines conflicting
views of hybrids, such as orangutans, as well as the politics of breeding species such as the
northern white rhino. Although some conservationists argue there are “too few northern
white rhinos for captive breeding, especially given the need to preserve black, Sumatran, and
Javan rhinos. . .. The northern rhino has become a flagship species for other conservation
efforts in Zaire” (655–656). According to Robert Reece, AAZPA’s species coordinator
for rhinos, the preservation of the northern white rhino “gives Zaire a reason to preserve
Garama and other national parks for wildlife” (quoted in Cohn 656).
This connection with Zaire parallels the move toward eco-tourism made by two of
the Earth’s oldest cattle cultures, the Masai in Kenya and Himbi in Namibia documented
in David E. Simpson’s Milking the Rhino (2009). To support their villages while main-
taining their culture, several tribes seek to conserve endangered species to attract tourists
to comfortable lodges where primarily Western tourists can enjoy an African ecosystem.
Despite drought conditions that threaten their cattle, many of these lodges serve as practical
community-based conservation projects, which balance the needs of wildlife and people.
The film highlights some of the complications of this community-based approach to con-
servation, but it also lauds these locally driven projects, bio-parks like those advocated
as early as 1992 by tropical biologist and zoo director Michael H. Robinson to promote
biodiversity (345).
Although some animal rights advocates “even ask whether people have any right to,
in their words, imprison other living beings in zoos” (Cohn 654), most take a more limited
position and oppose conservation approaches to surplus zoo animals as individual species.
Zoo managers, with their emphasis on conservation, “have to be concerned with species
and population rather than individuals . . . If animal rights groups have their way, we will
lose species” (Cohn 659). Ultimately, however, even conservation-driven zoo managers are
faced with the dilemma of needing exotic individual animals such as the white tiger to attract
the crowds necessary to maintain the zoo’s conservation and education programs. Palmer
Krantz, executive director of the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina explains it
this way: “It is our job to get people to at least think a bit about conservation while they
are having a fun family outing” (quoted in Cohn 659). As Cohn explains, however, “Doing
that job today requires making some difficult decisions” (659).
In 2001, Elia T. Ben-Ari explores the conflict between animal welfare and conservation
ideals, but instead of suggesting a resolution is impossible to negotiate between them,
Ben-Ari offers multiple ways zoos can benefit from animal welfare arguments, just as
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 629

Olsen does in 1989. According to Ben-Ari, “Providing captive animals such as the Hawaiian
honeycreepers with opportunities to display a range of species-appropriate behaviors and
to make behavioral choices that give them some control over their lives is among the goals
of an animal husbandry approach known variously as behavioral enrichment, behavioral
engineering, animal enrichment, and environmental enrichment” (172). Cathy Carlstead
sums up well how this animal welfare approach can not only coexist with but benefit a
conservation ethic: “We want the highest standards of animal welfare in zoos because these
are animals that are representatives of their wild counterparts. . .. They are supposed inspire
people to protect the habitat of wild animals” (quoted in Ben-Ari 177).
These conflicts are addressed to a lesser or greater extent in Zookeeper and We Bought
a Zoo. Although Zookeeper leans toward individual animal rights arguments in its fantastic
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premise that animals, especially primates, can talk to and advise their zookeeper Griffin
Keyes (Kevin James), We Bought a Zoo takes a more balanced approach, highlighting
both animal welfare and conservation approaches (at least on the periphery) in its family
melodrama narrative. Zookeeper not only anthropomorphizes animals for human benefit,
drawing on animal rights principles. It also asserts, as do earlier animal capture films that
wild animals benefit from their zoo enclosure, as long as zookeepers treat them humanely. In
Zookeeper, zoo animals break their vow of silence because Griffin, their favorite zookeeper,
may leave his post as lead zookeeper to win back his lost love Stephanie (Leslie Bibb). To
keep him from leaving the zoo for a position as a car salesman, the zoo animals decide to
provide Griffin with the advice he needs to regain Stephanie’s love without losing his zoo-
keeping skills. Ultimately, Griffin follows the animals’ advice and successfully rekindles
his romance with Stephanie.
But Griffin also learns lessons about friendship and identity from the zoo animals and
his experience as a zookeeper that highlight the individualist leanings of animal rights and
welfare arguments. When Stephanie convinces Griffin to leave the zoo, and Kate (Rosario
Dawson), the zoo’s veterinarian takes a job in Nairobi, Griffin discovers his connections
with Kate the zoo, and its animals overwhelm his affections for Stephanie. Griffin’s self-
revelation seems to come as a result of Stephanie’s acceptance of him: “Griffin Constantine
Keyes . . . Mm! The changes I’ve seen in you these past few weeks have been nothing short
of remarkable. And I’ve been doing a little soul searching, and I did a mistake five years
ago on that beach, and I wanna correct it,” she says, as she pulls out an engagement ring.
Because Stephanie bases her renewal of Griffin’s proposal to her from five years ago on
how well he changes, however, Griffin refuses, declaring, “Come on, you had to see this
coming. When we first started dating, you assumed I was gonna turn into the type of guy
that you always dreamed about. But you know what? I don’t like that guy.”
Griffin has certainly benefited from his connection with the zoo and its animals,
accruing a personal profit, perhaps, from his friendship with zoo animals. But these zoo
animals’ similarity to humans (one of the main tenets of the Animal Rights movement) is
also emphasized by the film. According to Peter Singer, for example, “Animal Liberation
is Human Liberation too” (vii), and “human equality . . . requires us to extend equal
consideration to animals too” (1) and preserve their rights as we might other human rights,
as in the Civil Rights or Women’s Rights movements. Creatures capable of feeling pleasure
and pain, in Singer’s vision, have the same rights as humans because their “sentience” gives
them inherent value. From Peter Singer’s groundbreaking 1975 work Animal Liberation,
to Norm Phelps’ 2007 overview The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras
to PETA, animal advocates base their arguments on the close connection between humans
and nonhuman animals.
 630 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

Joe the Lion (Sylvester Stallone), Jerome the Bear (Jon Favreau), Donald the Monkey
(Adam Sandler), Bernie the Gorilla (Nick Nolte), and Janet the Lioness (Cher) all provide
very human advice in perfectly spoken English, demonstrating their sentience and clear
resemblance to humanity. But Griffin’s response when he declares his love for Kate takes that
connection further. Not only do animals resemble humans. Humans also share similarities
with zoo animals, the film asserts. Kevin explains his wild reaction to Kate by drawing on
elements of the animal world: “Well, when an eagle finds its perfect mate, they cartwheel,
right? That’s what they do. They . . . they lock their talons together, and they spin out
of control, and just before they hit the ground . . . they break apart. The only difference
between me and an eagle is . . . I will hit the ground, as you’ve just seen.” Zookeeper
takes its animal rights argument into the realm of the fantastic, but it still resonates. Even
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though its message that animals thrive in a zoo environment may contradict some animal
welfare claims, the film connects nonhuman and human animals, emphasizing the worth of
individuals over the environment as a biotic community.
We Bought a Zoo also foregrounds the advantages humans may gain from interacting
with zoo animals, but unlike Zookeeper, the film moves beyond promoting individual
animals to the detriment of a biotic community and makes a conscious effort to show
how zookeepers can help provide the most ethical and humane conditions for them both
at the beginning and end of life. Although the film primarily addresses the evolution of
a family recovering from the loss of wife and mother, perhaps because it serves as an
adaptation of Benjamin Mee’s 2008 memoir of his own experience buying and renovating
the Dartmour Zoological Park in England, We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a
Young Family, a Broken-down Zoo, and the 200 Animals that Change their Lives Forever.
The film amplifies tensions caused by new zoo ownership by infusing the narrative with
a strong family melodrama, but the zoo experiences illustrated in the film align well with
those of recounted by Mee in his memoir, even in a U.S. setting. In the film adaptation of We
Bought a Zoo, Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) must comply with current zoo regulations that
draw on animal welfare ethics. But he also must learn to move beyond individual animal
rights and prepare for “end of life,” a preparation that not only helps Mee move forward a
stagnant mourning process but also highlights the film’s more balanced approach to animal
welfare. Unlike Zookeeper, We Bought a Zoo valorizes both the welfare of individual
animals and a biotic community of interconnected species.
The family melodrama in We Bought a Zoo is both caused and partially resolved by
Mee’s wife Katherine’s (Stephanie Szostak) death. Her passing has left Mee as the primary
caretaker for two children, seven-year-old Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and fourteen year
old Dylan (Colin Ford). To renew his relationship with both children and facilitate their
recovery from this tragic loss, Mee quits his job as an adventure journalist and, with help
from Rosie, sells their home and buys a dilapidated zoo. As he tells the realtor, Mr. Stevens
(J.B. Smoove), “We just want new. We want new. . . new everything. New opportunities.
New schools. Just new.” Because the zoo is so far from town and the friends he left behind,
Dylan resents the move. Rosie thrives immediately. Ultimately, the zoo helps Mee reconcile
with his son, Dylan, and come to terms with his wife’s untimely death. Within this simple
narrative, however, are authentic portraits of a zoo and its animals, images that validate an
animal welfare approach that includes organismic environmental views drawn from Aldo
Leopold’s land ethic and an interdependent biotic community.
Benjamin Mee’s description of the zoo to his brother Duncan (Thomas Haden Church),
demonstrates one way the film moves beyond animal rights arguments because it emphasizes
the work of the zoo to preserve endangered species: “It’s only two zebras. And a lion, and
a jaguar and forty-seven other species, seven of which are endangered, and all of them are
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 631

saved the second we make this deal.” But it is Mee’s changing relationship with Spar, an
elderly tiger, that most illustrates the film’s more balanced approach to animal rights. Head
zookeeper Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson) provides details about Spar and a nonhuman
animal worthy of respect during a conversation she has with Rosie: “That guy there, that’s
Spar. He’s our oldest. He’s seventeen. He’s a Bengal tiger. You know tigers have a special
sensor in the front of their two-inch canines. They can actually detect the pulse in your
aorta. So when they attack, they bite you, take your pulse with their teeth, reposition those
suckers and boom! There goes your carotid.”
Benjamin Mee, however, makes a personal connection with Spar, perhaps using him
to help replace the loss of his wife, Katherine, so he attempts to prolong Spar’s life no
matter how difficult kidney disease and other ailments make it for him. When Walter
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Ferris (John Michael Higgins), the zoo regulator, explains that he should “begin to draw
up an end of life plan” as “art of the humane care of an animal,” Mee denies the “end
game of [this] big cat” is near, claiming, instead, “it’s fine.” When Spar refuses to eat,
then, Mee attempts to coax him, seemingly connecting Spar’s situation to that of his wife,
declaring, “Come on, man. We talked about this. You’ve gotta eat that food. It’s got all
the meds. You know, there’s a major buzz for you inside that meat. Your neurotransmitters
are gonna be firin’ away all the way to the moon and back. . . . Buddy, if you don’t
eat the food, and you don’t get your meds in you, it all goes downhill very fast. I’m
telling you the truth.” Just like his wife during her illness, Spar too might go downhill
fast.
Yet the film argues against this anthropomorphizing of Spar. Instead, Mee’s evolution
as a zookeeper and father are demonstrated by his acceptance of Spar as a suffering animal,
who deserves an end of life plan. After Spar’s humane passing, they post a plaque in
remembrance and use a drawing of Spar that Dylan created as the new zoo logo. Other
scenes highlight the film’s attempt to provide an authentic picture of zoo ethics. Enclosures
are expanded, for example, to better accommodate some species. But the film also maintains
a clear separation between human and nonhuman animals. Humans care for the zoo animals
but also provide them with lives as close to that they would live in the wild as possible.
Instead of equating zoo animals with humans as in Zookeeper, We Bought a Zoo provides
a balance of animal welfare and conservation ethics, even within a primarily comic family
melodrama.
Zoo and Nenette provide a direct cinema approach to the modern zoo that demonstrates
the conflict between animal welfare, conservation, and entertainment, and the profits that
sustain them. Zoo documents the days and nights of a zoo, its animals, zookeepers, and
veterinarians without comment or clearly structured conventional narrative. The film intro-
duces the variety of zoo animals with its opening shots of a lion looking directly in a camera
and shots of a zebra, hippopotamus, drinking giraffe, vulture, ostrich, pink flamingo, and a
white tiger. The white tiger blends into his temple-like enclosure while families of human
visitors look on. The white tiger growls quietly while visitors buy tickets at the gate. A
sign reads, “Miami Metro Big Zoo,” introducing a trained elephant show where a trainer
yells commands while spectators look on from concrete bleachers. Music accompanies the
elephants’ dance, and children dance along before the elephants march on, waving good-
bye with their trunks as they leave. The next scene also focuses on children, this time in a
petting zoo with goats, deer, and other animals. A train whistles sounds in the background,
and a sign reads, “Caution. Slippery when wet.” One goat head butts a child. Other children
ride a camel.
The scene switches from shots of children with animals to flamingos in a small lake.
They seem to be fighting. A stork stands in the distance. Adults with cameras walk through
 632 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

exhibits while a monorail rolls overhead. An orangutan with a burlap blanket entertains
families with cameras. “They’re eating bananas,” a child states. Zookeepers race by on three
wheelers. Gazelles lie in the shade. Other workers ride in a golf cart. At the Lemur exhibit,
adults speak in Spanish. A mother monkey cares for her child. Another shot reveals the
camera hidden behind grasses and held by helpers filming tigers in a moat. The cameramen’s
muttered voices accompany their slow walk to capture the shot. One steadies the camera
behind the cameraman, capturing a close up of a tiger’s face and a pan of the tiger’s ascent
from the moat to its habitat. More families watch on amid the sound of spraying water and
a scene of two tigers briefly playing together, this time accompanied by birdcalls.
A behind-the scene look at chimpanzees in cages beyond their outdoor habitat shows
zookeepers opening doors to move monkeys and bathe them as they clean their cage with
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a hose. One keeper calls to the chimpanzees by name and feeds them water from her hose.
She lets them drink and chastises those who fight, smiling at them and calling to them
before spraying the cage. The chimps bang on the cage. Mothers protect their infants, and
the zookeeper gives one young chimpanzee motherly advice.
Outside these enclosures, elephants stroll down a road together with a trainer. A
monorail rolls above guests chatting over a zoo map. They watch a gorilla with a burlap
blanket and talk in Spanish. One man mimics the ape. Another takes pictures while the
gorilla runs away. A vet talks to the crowd about the differences between chimps and
gorillas. Chimps are more like humans, she says, but notes Koko the gorilla learned sign
language, but they haven’t bred her and don’t know if she would pass on the language to her
child. As she talks, the gorilla feeds on leaves. One guest in a wheelchair asks questions.
A child retrieves an animal trading card from the vet. When a rhino appears in another
scene, guests laugh at its ears. Workers clean cages as the rhino bathes, and guests watch it
walking through water. They speak in multiple languages.
The film also highlights multiple births in the zoo. The rhino guests had been watching
earlier walks away, but in another scene, workers watch a pregnant rhino prepare for birth.
The watch goes into the night, but when the baby is born and workers take it out of its cage,
the vet is unable to revive it, even after giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, so the baby
is declared dead. Another worker later helps the mother rhino cope with her loss. Others
spray water on elephants in a pool. A pregnant alligator is caught and quarantined, while
iguanas are fed in another part of the zoo. A gorilla is documented in a hospital, as well, with
a news channel’s reporter recording it. In the animal clinic, the vet talks about the death
of the rhinoceros infant and documents it with photographs of the corpse and placenta.
Samples are taken during an autopsy. After the corpse is cleaned and photographed, it is
tossed into an incinerator, a tribute to the life and death cycle on display in this direct
cinema documentary.
People watch zookeepers providing food for animals in other scenes, highlighting
feeding times for otters, birds of multiple species, elephants, and other animals. The animals’
meals coincide with vendors feeding guests and entertaining them with a merry-go-round.
The camera is watching people in this scene, just as the guests watch the animals in the zoo.
Other behind-the-scenes shots show trucks picking up garbage. The camera captures the
mother alligator laying her eggs, and then shows a tent with robotic animals and a haircut
fundraiser. The monorail rolls high above a cameraman filming lions while they are fed
and their cage is cleaned. The kitchen chef preparing meals on a tray highlights feeding
time. Workers feed multiple animals from a truck, placing buckets of food beside fences.
One feeds a bunny to a snake. Animals feed, but in the clinic, a wolf is castrated. Ostriches
and a giraffe are shown, but during the night, feral dogs killed deer and other animals. The
 Filmic Representations of Animal Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo 633

workers show tracks and help the surviving animals. They hunt in the brush for the dogs,
find one dead, and throw it in the incinerator.
Animal capture is illustrated in another scene of a meeting of the zoo board. They
explain that contacts in Indonesia are delivering animals. They also discuss the female
rhino’s stillborn calf. One donor wants to fund a Komodo Dragon and exhibit. Alligator
eggs are incubated in the clinic while tortoises also lay eggs. A fundraising dinner where
VIP guests eat meat while animals watch on in the background ends the film. The moon
overhead suggests another day has ended, and the film ends. A similar direct cinema
approach is used to focus on one animal with no shots of humans in Nenette. The film
provides a close reading of a forty-year-old orangutan captured in Borneo as an infant
and transported to Jardin des Plantes, a Parisian zoo, in 1972. As with Zoo, the film
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attempts to capture Nenette’s life in captivity without commentary from a narrator or talking
heads.
In Nenette, however, voices of visitors and workers discussing the orangutan from
outside her enclosure are caught on the film’s audio. While the camera provides extreme
close-ups of Nenette and her son and peers behind the exhibit glass, human commentary
remains off-screen and accompanies the orangutan’s daily life of food, play, and gazes from
their small enclosure. These human voices suggest Nenette is bored and explain how life
in Paris has grown more difficult. They admire Nenette’s red hair and discuss its symbolic
value in Egyptian and French culture. Infant orangutan’s play, and a child yells, “gorilla!”
while Nenette stays close to the window and looks on. While we watch her eat, hang
on a rope, and spread out her straw, she watches everyone outside her small enclosure.
Zookeepers discuss her life in the zoo and her aversion to new human companions. “If
she dies, we’ll miss her,” they explain. While the zookeepers talk, a crowd is reflected in
Nenette’s window. We see her in superimposed images of children. “How old are you?” a
child asks.
Later Nenette makes faces in the steaming glass. While watching through her window,
zoo visitors comment on her mood, talking directly to her, but the camera remains steady
on Nenette’s face. Only music interrupts the diegetic voices off screen. Even when in an
exterior cage, we only hear visitors in the background and the chants of protesters in the
distance voicing disagreement with layoffs. Although zookeepers talk about deep-seated
guilt held by all who work at the zoo, Nenette seems to remain unchanged, watching from
her cage perches while zookeepers and visitors project their own anthropomorphized beliefs
upon her. Some say she’s mimicking those around her. Others say she lives in the “now” or
is “drained of curiosity” by the crowds who watch her. Although we learn about Nenette’s
life in captivity from the voices we hear off screen that describe her multiple husbands and
children, we are drawn only to the image of Nenette and her offspring and peers, who live
captive lives within small glass enclosures. Unlike Zoo, Nenette uses images of a particular
orangutan to comment on the human experience, but at the same time, poignant images
of an aging human-like Nenette behind glass encourage discussions regarding the ethical
nature of zoos.
Despite changes in zoos and the movies that illustrate their changing habitats and
enclosures, they both demonstrate and “adhere to their original mission: recreation, ed-
ucation, conservation, and scientific research” (184). As Elizabeth Hanson explains, “a
hundred years ago, menageries became zoological gardens; now the old zoos have become
conservation parks and bioparks” (163). Yet, despite emphasis on conservation that has
reinvigorated both the research and education aspects of zoos’ mission, “entertainment
generally remains a higher priority than species preservation” (163) primarily because
 634 Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann

entertainment still remains the main source of income for zoos, drawing in the revenue
necessary to sustain its conservation and education agendas.
The documentary Milking the Rhino, however, demonstrates that the conflict between a
zoo’s biodiversity ideals and its economic survival need not erase the conservation benefits
of the new bio-parks. As “the first major documentary to explore wildlife conservation from
the perspective of people who live with wild animals,” Milking the Rhino “offers complex,
intimate portraits of rural Africans at the forefront of community-based conservation: a
revolution that is turning poachers into preservationists and local people into the stewards
of their land” (Milkingtherhino.org). As Leslie Felperin explains in a Variety review, “now
there’s more money in what narration describes as ‘grassroots conservation,”’ community-
based conservation Maureen M. Hart of the Chicago Tribune describes as “managing
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wildlife populations for the benefit of the humans with whom they coexist.” Milking the
rhino means “drawing tourist trade and sustainable income” from preserved wildlife, Hart
explains, a goal seemingly shared by contemporary zoos and the films that document them.

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