A Vivisection of Early Cinema: Animal Experimentation and the Beginnings of Film Industry

Marta Stańczyk

stanczyk.mrt@gmail.com
Jagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1698-7845

Abstract

The author focuses on the relations between the new film medium and empirical physiology research. Both areas share a similar attitude towards animals and their lives, which reveals a violent discourse. Although this discourse was not always obvious, it was immanently linked with the cultural dominance of the human species. The function of animals in cinema and science is strictly pragmatic – they are a material exploited by humans. This is sanctioned by the frame of cinematic spectacle. The main aims of this article are to find animal presence in early cinema and compare these examples with animal experimentation. The author examines early-cinema examples (such as Exiting the Factory /1895/ by Louis Lumière, Boxing Cats /1894/ by William K. L. Dickson, or Electrocuting an Elephant /1903/ by Edwin S. Porter) with contemporary tools: posthumanism and animal studies.


Keywords:

animals, early cinema, vivisection, scientific discourse, violence

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Published
2021-05-13

Cited by

Stańczyk, M. (2021) “A Vivisection of Early Cinema: Animal Experimentation and the Beginnings of Film Industry”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (113), pp. 50–67. doi: 10.36744/kf.526.

Authors

Marta Stańczyk 
stanczyk.mrt@gmail.com
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1698-7845

PhD; her doctoral thesis dealt with sensuous theory and embodied cinematic experience. She is an editor of the film magazine Ekrany. She co-edited a volume dedicated to the concept of para-cinema, Poszukiwacze zaginionych znaczeń [Raiders of the Lost Meanings] (2016), and authored the monograph Czas w kinie. Doświadczenie temporalne w “slow cinema” [Time in Cinema: Temporal Experience in Slow Cinema] (2019).



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