Chris, Cynthia 1961–

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Chris, Cynthia 1961–

PERSONAL:

Born July 18, 1961. Education: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, B.F.A., M.A.; University of California, San Diego, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Media Culture 1P-226, College of Staten Island, 2800 Victory Blvd., Staten Island, NY 10314.

CAREER:

Washington University, St. Louis, MO, Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in television studies; College of Staten Island, City University of New York, New York, NY, assistant professor, 2004—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund for Video Criticism Award, 1997.

WRITINGS:

Watching Wildlife, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 2006.

(Editor, with Sara Banet-Weiser and Anthony Freitas), Cable Visions: Television beyond Broadcasting, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Women, AIDS, and Activism, ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group, 1990; and Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film. Contributor to periodicals, including Afterimage, exposure, High Performance, Springerin, and Texte zur Kunst. Author of PBS viewer's guide to documentary The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords, by Stanley Nelson.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Watching Wildlife, Cynthia Chris subjects wildlife films to a feminist analysis, observing that the genre serves as "a prism through which we can examine investments in dominant ideologies of humanity and animality, nature and culture, sex, and race." Though audiences might assume that wildlife films are straightforward documentations of animal behavior, Chris argues that the genre is imbued with cultural assumptions about race, colonialism, imperialism, and sexuality.

In early examples of the genre such as Nanook of the North (1922), Chris writes, racist beliefs are often evident. That film, for example, juxtaposed footage of Inuits and of animals in ways that suggested that these human beings were as exotic as the wild beasts among which they lived. Chris also finds racism in the many "safari films" that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Set in Africa and invariably featuring white American or European protagonists, these films showed black Africans performing menial jobs for the safari participants and otherwise acting in a subservient role. At the same time, many safari films exploited racist stereotypes about sexuality. Ingagi (1931) dealt with this theme explicitly in its plot about white women being abducted and sexually assaulted by giant apes (an obvious allusion to white women's fear of black men's allegedly uncontrollable sexual appetites).

Chris finds other examples of sexism in safari films as well. Their plots were structured as sagas of typically masculine adventures, rather than quests to obtain deeper knowledge about African wildlife. When women were present they played secondary roles; indeed, in the films of husband-and-wife team Martin and Osa Johnson, Osa is often seen performing such typically feminine tasks as preparing and serving meals. Despite some stylistic changes in more recent nature films, Chris argues, sex roles have remained problematic. Even the appearances of primatologist Jane Goodall in National Geographic Specials, Chris writes, were "gendered" performances that communicated an "idealized feminine intimacy with nature" and provided viewers with "proof of our own good taste in reading material and television programs." Though he commended much in Chris's analysis, International Journal of Communication Web site reviewer Derek Bousé considered this judgment relatively harsh.

In her analysis of more recent wildlife films, Chris takes issue with the "orphan" theme that gives nature movies a convenient plot structure: a baby animal's mother is killed, and the young one must find another parent figure to teach him or her to survive. Though Chris dismisses this theme as "classic Disneyana," Bousé argues that many nature films, including Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Bear (1988) and Disney's Bambi, "came from literary sources, which, in turn, had their antecedents in mythic narratives." Adding that Chris "rightly questions why one adult grizzly (the mother) should be killed off, only to be replaced by another (the old male)," Bousé goes on to question her dismissal of archetypical elements in this dynamic and her view that The Bear "is an example of ‘the privileging of fatherhood, and the expendability of females.’"

Many critics found Chris's discussion of the depiction of animals' sexual behavior particularly important. Chris points out that in older films, directors often erred in interpreting animal behavior in terms of human behavior, while in recent years the danger is that animal behavior will be used to explain human behavior. This is especially troubling with the subject of rape. Chris criticizes David Attenborough for suggesting, in an episode of The Trials of Life (1989), that rape among some animals is a natural behavior. In Chris's view, this argument could be extended to humans—but should not be, because it would normalize a violent and debasing act. Yet she later criticizes a film that avoids comparing bonobos and humans with regard to homosexual behavior. "In a book so otherwise carefully argued," wrote Bousé, "the contradiction is surprising: if it naturalizes rape, it is to be confronted, opposed; if it naturalizes homosexuality, it us to be supported, encouraged. Is generalizing from animals to humans acceptable after all?"

A reviewer for the PopMatters Web site noted that Chris confronts a subject often ignored in nature films: the effects of environmental degradation on wildlife. Too often, Chris writes, films romanticize exotic animals and their habitat; the effect is to suggest that "whatever adversity human culture produces, nature in its precious, aesthetic splendor remains resilient, even eternal, thus relieving humanity of any immediate obligation to restrain abuses of it."