The celluloid specimen : moving image research into animal life / Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schultz-Figueroa, Benjamin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animals in motion pictures.

Animals in motion pictures--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 259 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, 2023.

Summary:

"The Celluloid Specimen examines twentieth-century behaviorist films that captured animal experiments, revealing the central role of cinema in generating psychosocial definitions of species, race, identity, and culture that continue to shape our contemporary political and scientific discourses. Benjami̹n Schultz-Figueroa analyzes rarely seen archival films made by Robert Yerkes in the 1930s at the first experimental primate colonies in North America, the rat films made to simulate human society at Yale University in the 1930s and 1940s, and the promotional films made by B.F. Skinner to sell the U.S. military on his design for a pigeon-guided missile during World War II. These laboratory films have long been categorized as passive recordings of scientific research, but when examined in their own right, they become rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in the history of science" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. The celluloid specimen : moving image research into animal life

Stimulating intelligence : IQ exams and the cinema

"Getting a feeling for the animal :" ape affects onscreen

Primate figures : social darwinism, anthropology, and ingagi

Rodent simulations : stimulus-response, laboratory rats and a southern lynch mob

Distributed suffering : animal experiments, speculative modeling, and their effects

From lab to classroom : animal testing and educational film

Project pigeon : rendering the war animal through optical technology

A trip through the senses : the media theory of radical behaviorism

Utopian behavior : the televisual figure of a pigeon that hailed the future

Conclusion : sensing our place in history.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.