Anthropocentric approach - Madagascar

Madagascar is one of the American animations that encompass the themes of friendship,
teamwork and adventure to the wildlife. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) The comedian
expression of anthropomorphic animals partially fosters the success of this film as well as the
interesting representation between humans and animals. However, the animals and human
relationship have continuously been discussed in different approaches, such as moral and
ethical researches in recent years. It has always been argued that anthropomorphic animations
are normally associated with the ideas of anthropocentrism. In regard to this consideration,
the representation of animals is the central analysis in the discussion of whether it is an
anthropocentric movie by taking the human-animal relationship and animal-nature
relationship into consideration.
Human-animal relationships
To examine how Madagascar is an anthropocentric movie, it is unavoidably looking into
the illustration of human-animal relationships, in which its representations prominently
romanticize captivity, normalize human-animal dualism and represent anthropomorphic
animals from the interests of the human species.

In the very beginning, the story starts with four animals – a lion (Alex), a hippo (Glo), a
giraffe (Melman), and a zebra (Marty), who gave their unique performances to the tourists
who came to the field trip day at the zoo. Before the start of the day, Alex was extremely
excited and was singing and dancing all the time because he thought there would be soon a
bunch of people coming to see him. When he came up the stage, the crowd was cheering for
him as if he was a celebrity. At the same time, Marty referred to Alex’s suggestion that to
make himself “fresh” so as to throw out the bored and repeated life routine by delivering fun
yet fresh juggling for people. When tourists were amazed by Glo’s swimming performance,
Glo seemed quite enjoying the moment and making different kinds of sexy poses. And Marty
was also offered different medical checks as he desired. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) Such
enjoyment and happiness represented amongst the four of them make the audience hard to
remember this is actually a zoo where animals were all in fact kept either inside a cage or
surrounded by tall fences. By utilizing several techniques ranging from giving big shots,
capturing their poses in front of the camera, decorating with comedic music, effects, to jokes,
which typically applies to animals representations but not that of humans, all together create a
sense of excitement and harmony in a place where animals themselves seemly loved the way
how they engaged with human beings.

Afterward, as soon as night falls, they were each well served with specialized dinner and
specialized services like body massage, hair blowout, and body cleaning. As like what Glo
and Melman stated, they were rather living in heaven and what life is meant to be. (McGrath
& Darnell, 2005) In line with this kind of representation, it suggests that animals under
captivity can be way better than anyone thought, where the life of animals in zoos is being
romanticized as heaven, where offers sufficient care and food and having the possibility that
establishes bonding with other animals. In other words, these representations are narrowed
down merely on the benefits of animals living in the zoo while the representation that animals
were imprisoned as a means for human entertainment is eliminated and human manipulation
and control over other species is also legitimated as the accepted social norm.

Some might argue that anthropomorphic interpretation certainly brings about a preferable
human stance, an anthropocentric representation that humans rarely be wronged. Indeed, it is
noteworthy to associate anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism since the term
anthropomorphism itself has always been regarded as contradictory and wronged based on
the expression of allocating human traits upon non-human species, and as a result of the
manifestation of anthropocentric thinking. (Karlsson, 2012) However, a human must not be
anthropocentric. Anthropomorphism somehow breaks down the boundary between humans
and animals for matching similarities and creates the possibility of unknown animals traits
that no matter is similar to or different from human beings.

But then, what cannot be denied is that anthropomorphic expression can reinforce and
strengthen anthropocentric representations. The movie was going towards climax as Marty
slipped out from the zoo and the other three companions, especially Alex, his best friend,
were panicked by dealing with the accident. Alex was convincing Melman and Glo to go after
Marty because he thought that Marty was mere “not thinking straight.” (McGrath & Darnell,
2005) At the moment, he described the way that Marty slipped out from the zoo as “the
biggest mistake of his life” and was afraid of a condition that Marty out there might be “lost
and cold, confused.” (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) After Marty successfully went out, the
movie represents Marty as if taking a field trip – feeling extremely curious while walking on
a street, playing ice skating, and asking directions as a tourist. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005)
Under these representations, Marty is molded as a child who made mistakes out of curiosity,
a child who does not realize the “home good”, a child might not be able to take good care of
herself/himself. The problematic point is that an imprisoned zebra escaping from a zoo as the
desire of back to nature, which should initially blame it on humans’ unmorally control over
other species, is packaged and interpreted as a fun adventure triggered by immature thinking
of a cute zebra. Again, it romanticizes and diminishes the practices of human faults through
the interpretation in the human way of mindset.

Other than the four protagonists, there were also three penguins who first planned to
escape to the wild and knew to disguise themselves as cute animals in order to please the
human species. Whenever at the time that they were facing the tourists in the zoo or the
moment they were found at the grand central station, they tried to be “cute and cuddly” as a
kind of protection. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) In general, animals who have big eyes, short
legs, innocent looks, and so on, humans usually associate them with cuteness. It is undeniable
that anthropomorphic cartoons including Madagascar have invariably needed to shape or
forge animals into characters different from what they are, but distort their identity into the
way that humans liked. The representation of cuteness somehow blocks the human’s eye from
really discovering the original appearance and identity of animals and never treats them
equally as other species which might have similar traits with humans but have their
uniqueness as living beings at the same time.

Above all, the core issue is neither the way of how humans romanticize captivity nor how
anthropomorphic expression helps reinforce the ideas of anthropocentrism, rather, that is the
human-animal dualism, in which human species are always superior to or thought apart from
non-animals species. Beyond mere the romanticization of human faults, the fundamental
problem is that animals in Madagascar were clearly separated apart from humans, regarded as
inferior living “objects”, as something should be under control, utilized, and gazed at.

One obvious manifestation of the human gaze, from which animals were objectified as
something meant to be entertained for the human species. Nearly at the end of the field trip
day, Alex friendly reminded tourists to check out his website including the available “twenty-
four-hour Alex Cam” to watch him sleep. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) This is actually the
same way as to how they were being gazed at in the zoo although it had been distorted as
somehow like celebrities performing a show. Different from the way of people watch a live
show through media, animals were treated literary as objects that can be confined and gazed
at any time, any place because objects have no ability to be conscious about the human gaze.
As a matter of fact, visitor contact has been proved for decades that can affect zoo animals’
behavior in either a negative, positive, or neutral way. (Sherwen & Hemsworth, 2019)

Apart from that, there are prominently two scenes in Madagascar revealing that human
has never thought to communicate with animals or ever try to establish bonding with them
equally. One is when Alex called humans for help after realizing Marty had gone out of the
zoo, but then the people who received the call heard only a sound of Alex roaring. And, he
thought Marty should not slip out of the zoo because “you don’t bite the hand (of human) that
feeds you.” (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) Another one is the scene that Alex explained at great
pains why they were at the grand central station when a bunch of armed police surrounded all
of them. Unsurprisingly, polices were extremely frightened of a lion who was walking all
around and roaring all the time and finally shot him down with anesthesia guns.

Here, two messages involved should be criticized based on these representations. First,
human is controlling the lives of animals through imperialism, in which human is the superior
master of animals, military force is the reasonable solution once they are out of control.
Second, the disconnection between humans and animals is represented as because animals do
not speak languages so that humans cannot communicate with non-human species. In fact,
human-animals dualism is somehow the same as racism in that humans tend to use the
differences from other species or entities to make humans more superior to others. There are
different specialists who distinguish humans from non-human species based on different
standards. For example, humans can be separated from non-animals species because humans
have moral systems and values; or because humans have the ability of reflective
consciousness based on the notion of personhood. (Gruen, 2021) However, the point is not to
discuss whether animals should be morally wronged but they are the victims suffering moral
wrongs and there are also several kinds of humans who do not require the capability of
reflective consciousness like infants or a human in a coma. Therefore, it is not the dilemma of
how humans should set animals apart based on differences. In view of Tom Regen, who
argues the consideration of morals which should refer to similarities but not differences – “As
the same is true of…animals…they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life
with the inherent value of their own.” (Gruen, 2021) In view of this, humans have first
learned to treat non-animals as valued individuals and start to embrace their similarities
instead of using different standards as a tool to establish human supremacy and uniqueness.

Nature-animals relationships

Secondly, there are numerous representations of animals in association with natural

bonding that have shown anthropocentric implications. That humans invade, manipulate and
exploit animals and nature at their own will or benefits by either intentionally or
unintentionally changing the nature-animals bonding. Due to the human colonization upon
animals species, animals might have largely lost the survival instinct after back to nature or
the indigenous place.

Non-human species are pretty the same as human species that they were born to belong to
a certain environment based on biological features and certain living behavior in order to suit
the certain natural setting, like people in different geographical locations might have different
physical characteristics. Nonetheless, there is a trend that humans gather different
nonindigenous species and put them into an artificial location for their own benefits and
purposes, the same as how Europeans introduced numbers of nonindigenous plants to New
England during its colonization. (Mehrhoff, 2000) In fact, the movie has indeed shown out
the problem of the anthropocentric way of captivity. Back to the very beginning, one penguin
told Marty why they planned to escape to the wildlife by questioning him: “Do you ever see
any penguins running free around New York City?” and pointing out that the circumstance
was not natural as they did not initially belong to that place. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) Yet,
most of the representations tend to normalize the colonial act put upon animals by showing
how animals well adapted to the artificial environment in the zoo. Take the environmental
setting at the zoo as an example, there were different artificial elements that offered the
animals different purposes ranging from the mural of the view of Madagascar, Marty’s
treadmill for exercise, the heater shown at the place where Alex slept to even the ambiance
playing the artificial sound of birds. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) In view of this, these
representations normalize the human practice of colonialism that it seems nothing wrong to
alter, manipulate and exploit animals and nature, and even part of them can be replaced by
technology or artificial natural elements. Again, it reflects the human-nature dualism that
humans and technology have always been on top of non-human species and nature.

To some extent, Madagascar is delivering a human friendship kind of story but merely
represents the story through anthropomorphic characters, especially to take the
anthropocentric representation of Alex who tried to fight against its animal nature as well as
the connection with nature.

The story comes to the climax since Alex gradually realized he was actually a Carnivora
animal and was hard to control himself not to bite his best friend Marty under the hunger
driven on the island of Madagascar. In order to protect his other three best friends, he
confined himself by surrounding himself with a pile of sharpened wooden sticks with the
struggle of starving and his survival instinct. Whenever he felt extreme hunger, his eyes
turned into blue color and roaring was no longer lovely as he previously was in the zoo, even
Alex called himself “a monster.” (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) And this “problem” got solved
after penguins made sushi on top of fish as the food resource for Alex.

The question lying behind such interpretation is that - Is the problem of Alex hunting
Marty or of a lion who wants to eat a zebra a problem as what the story represents?
Obviously, human emotions and moral standards have molded the survival instinct into
something negative and it can be altered by changing the original way of eating behavior, not
to mention the representation of why animals would cook like a human before eating. Other
than the against of survival animality, another representation shows the human stance that
fights against natural bonding from the animals’ interpretation. Alex had described his own
interpretation of the wild as “live in a mud hut, wipe yourself with a leaf” but named the zoo
as the place of home. (McGrath & Darnell, 2005) On one hand, it shows the problematic and
yet anthropocentric representation of human-nature dualism that the wild, rural island is
somewhere that is not suitable for living, full of dangers, and without civilization. On the
other hand, the importance of bonding with nature to animals is eliminated and marked as
inferior by stressing out the good of the zoo as a comfortable place of home. However, the
connection with nature is a crucial part of animals to have the basic survival instinct, skills,
and protect themselves under the laws of jungle and evolution of natural selection. For
example, the case when animals choose the food with more nutrients or a safer place in a
certain selection of elements or conditions. In which, the dynamic factors of the natural
environment, such as weather, experience with other species, and resource predictability, can
in fact influence the animal behaviors and way of living. (Amdam and Hovland, 2011)
Therefore, the movie has wrongly represented not merely the inferior status of animals and
nature but also eliminated the important bonding of nature taken in part of animals’ life as a
whole.

Till the end of the story, the unions of four of the animals decided to return to the zoo in
New York, however, which marks the movie as completely anthropocentric by seemly
suggesting that animals should belong to the zoological park instead of wildlife nature
environment. One can be sure that captivity animals in real life indeed have no ability to
survive in competitive wildlife nature after returning back to it since they are lacking the
fundamental survival ability or skilled in adapting to nature. That means the animals which
have already adapted to zoological parks, have no way to return to nature for freedom
because of the high fatality rate. Instead of dealing with this dilemma, the crucial
fundamental problem, as well as shown in the movie, is the humans’ manipulation of animals,
who should not be kept inside the zoological park for entertainment. Although different zoo
institutions or conservationists claim that modern zoos have a positive association with
education and connection with animals. More importantly, they declare that zoo is provided
for endangered species that needs human preservation from extinction. However, all of these
claims are just a myth covering the truth – 70 to 75 percent of animals in European zoos are
not endangered and only 5% of close to 850 mammal species are endangered based on the red
list of Conservation of Nature. (Aspinall, 2019) Apart from that, zoo animals are proven to
suffer “boredom, stress and confinement” and the vast numbers of animals’ offspring
undertake captivity breeding programs are not back to wildlife but they might be sold,
transferred away from parents, and even killed by zoos.

All of these reveal the existence of zoos itself is problematic and anthropocentric,
especially by the words of a leading conservationist, Damian Aspinall, who stated that “there
is no need for any wild animal to be in captivity in a zoo.” (2019) What beneath such problem
is human, still, neglect the issue of the rights of animals. Once people do not resist going into
a zoo, zoos would no longer disappear. And the paradox of animal welfare or animal rights in
society or even worldwide nowadays is humans have not even yet considered animals as
living beings who deserve enough protection from laws and moral considerations. In western
culture, the practice of laws exist for humans and protect only human, as such all non-human
species are legitimately viewed as “property”, which does not have any right and protection.
In the year 2012 of Los Angeles, three elephants were required to be freed from the zoo
because of the mistreatment and, without surprise, the case failed because those elephants are
just property of the zoo. (Mountain, 2016) What can be seen is that almost most of the human
practices are anthropocentric by excluding other species in different domains and
considerations. The unequal human-animal relationship is not unsolved, however, it takes
time to raise awareness in the public through educations and also the practices by leading
authorities and powers to treat animals with their deserved rights as a living species like
humans do.

In sum, the representations of animals in this movie are undoubtedly anthropocentric

which reflects human beliefs, norms and practices in association with animals in captivity as
well as the manipulation of human imperialism over non-human species in both real-life
circumstances and the interpretation of the story. The crucial argument is how humans should
maintain the proper relationship with animals and treat them with rights, respect and love by
giving enough protection from inhumane social practices and moral, ethical consideration and
treatment in human practices.
Reference

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