Why Do We Go to Zoos?
Why do we go to zoos? What are we looking for? What do we hope to see? For many of us, the sight of a lion or giraffe or buffalo offers a unique experience, something exotic, mysterious. But more often that not, that animal is sleeping, or, if we're lucky, sleepily looking around its artificial enclosure. The big moment on my most recent trip to the Montgomery Zoo was watching two anteaters and two gray wolves walk in circles, politely keeping out of each other's way.
Yet I was there, watching, looking, searching.
John Berger says "the zoo cannot but disappoint." What we're looking for, according to Berger, is a lost relationship with animals, one we lost with the rise of industrialization and capitalism in the nineteenth century--at the very same time, zoos came into existence. As animals withdrew from every day life, they reappeared in artificial forms: stuffed animals, pets, cartoons, exhibits at the zoo. We go to the zoo hoping to regain a genuine connection to animals, but what we get is an epitaph of that lost relationship.
Yet we still go, watching, looking, searching.
And it seems we're not always disappointed. When I teach this course, I always plan a trip to the local zoo to "test" the theories we read about in class, such as Berger's analysis of the zoo, and, as the group photo above attests, our most recent trip was at least a partial success. Zoo goers are smiling, thinking, talking, interacting--if not with the animals, with each other (although I admit that I often talk to the animals when no one is looking). The zoo, as many of my students tell me, brings back memories of childhood excitement, and with that nostalgia, a feeling of renewed energy and joy. Even if we are disappointed in the animals, which appear to adult eyes as worn-down prisoners in a foreign world, we are satisfied by the opportunity to forge human relationships through a shared experience. And perhaps if we continue to look and to think, we can regain something of our lost relationship with animals
Yet I was there, watching, looking, searching.
John Berger says "the zoo cannot but disappoint." What we're looking for, according to Berger, is a lost relationship with animals, one we lost with the rise of industrialization and capitalism in the nineteenth century--at the very same time, zoos came into existence. As animals withdrew from every day life, they reappeared in artificial forms: stuffed animals, pets, cartoons, exhibits at the zoo. We go to the zoo hoping to regain a genuine connection to animals, but what we get is an epitaph of that lost relationship.
Yet we still go, watching, looking, searching.
And it seems we're not always disappointed. When I teach this course, I always plan a trip to the local zoo to "test" the theories we read about in class, such as Berger's analysis of the zoo, and, as the group photo above attests, our most recent trip was at least a partial success. Zoo goers are smiling, thinking, talking, interacting--if not with the animals, with each other (although I admit that I often talk to the animals when no one is looking). The zoo, as many of my students tell me, brings back memories of childhood excitement, and with that nostalgia, a feeling of renewed energy and joy. Even if we are disappointed in the animals, which appear to adult eyes as worn-down prisoners in a foreign world, we are satisfied by the opportunity to forge human relationships through a shared experience. And perhaps if we continue to look and to think, we can regain something of our lost relationship with animals