Animals on Television

Brett Mills is Senior Lecturer in Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His work on animals in media has been published in Screen, Continuum, Critical Studies in Television, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Environmental Communication and Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. He has been profiled in the Journal of Wild Culture.

1.0 Introduction: Dumb.- 1.1 i.        They’re Out There.- 1.2 ii.        Four Dogs.- 1.3 iii.        Noticing Animals.- 1.4 iv.        The Animal Turn.- 1.5 v.        Dumb.- 1.6 vi.        Television and the Public.- 1.7 vii.        Unseen/Unheard/Unsmelled….- 2.0 Human.- 2.1 i.        Alien/Human.- 2.2 ii.       The Species Problem.- 2.3 iii.        The Dominance of Science.- 2.4 iv.        The Humanities and Humanism.- 2.5 v.        Posthumanism.- 2.6 vi.        Case Study: Peppa Pig.- 3.0 Wild.- 3.1 i.        The Best TV Series Ever.- 3.2 ii.        Documentary.- 3.3 iii.        The Social Construction of Nature.- 3.5 iv.        The Anthropocene.- 3.5 v.        The Anthroposcene.- 3.6 vi.        Case Study: The Hunt.- 4.0 Zoo.- 4.1 i.        Standard Practice.- 4.2 ii.        An Unnatural History.- 4.3 iii.        To Be Seen.- 4.4 iv.        For Their Own Good.- 4.5 v.        Case Study: Our Zoo.- 5.0 Pet.- 5.1 i.        In the Home.- 5.2 ii.        Animal Ownership.- 5.3 iii.        Animal Labour.- 5.4 iv.        Dominance and Affection.- 5.5 v.        Case Study: Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan.- 5.0 Chapter 5: Meat.- 5.1 i.        A Chilling Artefact.- 5.2 ii.        Making Meat.- 5.3 iii.        Cooking Meat.- 5.4 iv.        Case Study: Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast<.- 6.0 Conclusion: Undumb.- 6.1 i.        DogTV.- 6.2 ii.        Species.- 6.3 iii.       Subjectivity.- 6.4 iv.        Looking.- 6.5 v.        Seeing.- 6.6 vi.        Television.- 6.7 vii.        Animalities.

“Mills’s book has much to offer those interested in rethinking animal representation and human–animal relationships. The breadth of his scholarly engagement is particularly impressive: Mills brings together work from fields such as the sciences, ethics, disability studies and philosophy, along with frameworks from film and television studies. His ability, both to make complex ideas accessible to non-specialists … and to demonstrate how disparate disciplines effectively ask the same sets of questions, offers a model for the kind of interdisciplinary scholarship to which many of us aspire.” (Zoë Shacklock, Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 14 (3), September, 2019)