American Zoo by David Grazian

Author:David Grazian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

In a digital age of simulated reality, zoos and their audiences together draw on human imagination and cultural myth to construct the natural world as a collective fantasyland inhabited by animated dancing penguins, dinosaur robots, Lego polar bears, and clairvoyant groundhogs. The saturation of the urban entertainment landscape, rife with IMAX and 3D multiplex cinemas, themed restaurants, brand-name superstores, and downtown shopping plazas, practically requires even accredited American zoos to compete for attention-deficient consumers by enlisting the power of contemporary pop culture from Ghost Hunters to Animal Planet. Unfortunately the timing of the digital entertainment explosion coincides with our current moment of environmental catastrophe, when zoos should ideally be stirring audiences to action (in keeping with their organizational identity and goals), rather than selling them pizza and circuses.

Therefore, on our next safari stop we will take a critical look at how zoos attempt to fulfill their missions as environmental stewards and educators, with an eye toward recognizing the challenges that zoos face in both confronting the environmental crisis and communicating its urgency to their audiences, especially with regard to the human causes of global warming and climate change. Whether zoos can effectively meet these challenges—and thus serve as cultural and ecological change agents in the Anthropocene—will be determined by their capacity to transform how we think about nature in ways that go beyond conventional strategies of conservation branding and self-congratulation.

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