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ABSTRACT
In this article, I assess viral videos depicting environmental crises and species loss, theorizing the “eco-subjunctive voice” as a rhetorically productive perspective for engaging extinction imagery. Building on Barbie Zelizer's notion of the “subjunctive voice” in images, I explore how viral videos of a polar bear and a sea turtle in jeopardy unite despair and hopefulness, strategically deploy “about-to-die” moments, and make the “hyperobjects” of climate catastrophe more intelligible. Additionally, an eco-subjunctive reading of each video demonstrates the limits of the synecdochic logic commonly employed in ecological discourse. The eco-subjunctive voice is an analytic useful for academics, activists, and audiences. Its capacious character and ability to accommodate contingency and complexity make the eco-subjunctive voice a powerful rhetorical resource in the effort to combat ecological disaster.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank several people for their generous feedback on this article. To Robert Terrill and Saul Kutnicki for their ample and insightful comments and support. To Donica O’Malley and Cami Lind for their unflagging reassurance and advice. To the anonymous reviewers for generous and astute suggestions that guided my thinking. To John Lucaites, Edward Linenthal, and Joshua Malitsky for encouraging this piece. And appreciation to the AARRG writing group for their instructive advice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Eli Rosenberg, “‘We Stood There Crying’: Emaciated Polar Bear Seen in ‘Gut-Wrenching’ Video and Photos,” Washington Post, December 9, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/12/09/we-stood-there-crying-the-story-behind-the-emotional-video-of-a-starving-polar-bear/?utm_term=.2ae29311d727.
2 Stephen Leahy, “Polar Bears Really are Starving Because of Global Warming, Study Shows,” National Geographic, February 1, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2018/02/polar-bears-really-are-starving-because-of-global-warming-study-shows.
3 Sea Turtle Biologist, “Sea Turtle with Straw up its Nostril – ‘NO’ TO PLASTIC STRAWS,” YouTube, August 10, 2015, 8:07, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH878t78bw.
4 Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Elizabeth Glazner, “The Turtle that Became the Anti-Plastic Straw Poster Child,” Plastic Pollution Coalition, November 11, 2015, https://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2015/10/27/the-turtle-that-became-the-anti-plastic-straw-poster-child.
5 Barbie Zelizer, About to Die: How News Images Move the Public (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14.
6 Zelizer, About to Die, 14.
7 Zelizer, About to Die, 14.
8 Zelizer, About to Die, 14.
9 Zelizer, About to Die, 18.
10 Zelizer, About to Die, 14.
11 Barbie Zelizer, “The Voice of the Visual in Memory,” in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 165.
12 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 165.
13 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1981) 42–49; Hayden White, “Writing in the Middle Voice,” Stanford Literature Review 9, no. 2 (1992): 179–187.
14 Michelle Murray Yang, “Still Burning: Self-Immolation as Photographic Protest,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 1 (2011): 1–25, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2010.536565.
15 Yang, “Still Burning,” 12.
16 Blair et al. consider Zelizer's conceptualization of “voice” to be the relationship formed between the image and its spectator. See: Carole Blair, V. William Balthrop, and Neil Michel, “Mood of the Material: War Memory and Imagining Otherwise,” Cultural Studies ↔z Critical Methodologies 13, no. 1 (2013): 13, https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708612464632.
17 Yang, “Still Burning,” 21.
18 Yang, “Still Burning,” 13.
19 Zelizer, About to Die, 14.
20 United Nations, “UN Report: Nature's Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating,’” United Nations Department of Economic and Sustainable Affairs: Sustainable Development, May 6, 2019, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/.
21 Joshua Trey Barnett, “Toxic Portraits: Resisting Multiple Invisibilities in the Environmental Justice Movement,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 2 (2015): 413, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1561485.
22 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 164–165.
23 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 165.
24 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 167–168.
25 Over 109 million viewers have engaged the original video as of July 29, 2022: Sea Turtle Biologist, “Sea Turtle with Straw up its Nostril.” Meanwhile, the shorter version had over 85 million viewers (as of July 29, 2022): The Leatherback Trust, “Plastic Straw Removed from Sea Turtle's Nostril (Short Version),” YouTube, August 13, 2015, 2:23, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2J2qdOrW44. The starving polar bear video on National Geographic's YouTube page garnered 2.7 million viewers. National Geographic, “Heart-Wrenching Video: Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land | National Geographic,” YouTube, December 11, 2017, 1:22, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JhaVNJb3ag. The video also circulated on Facebook via pages like BuzzFeed News which garnered 2.1 million views, over 3.4 thousand comments, and 30,041 shares, accessed September 11, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedNews/videos/1726363764051301/.
26 My sampling of critiques leveled at both videos includes the following: Terence Corcoran, “How Green Activists Manipulated Us into a Pointless War on Plastic,” Financial Post, April 25, 2018, https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-how-green-activists-manipulated-us-into-a-pointless-war-on-plastic; See also: “Polar Bear Video: Is it Really the ‘Face of Climate Change’?” BBC News, 12 December 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42322346; Margaret Wente, “The Starving Polar Bear Raises a Question: Is Fake News Okay for a Good Cause?” The Globe and Mail, December 11, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/is-fake-news-okay-if-the-cause-is-good/article37290997/.
27 Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 22–23.
28 Ursula K. Heise, “Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Cultures of Extinction.” Configurations 18, no. 1–2 (2010): 61, https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2010.0007.
29 Heise, “Cultures of Extinction,” 52.
30 Emma Frances Bloomfield and Angeline Sangalang, “Juxtaposition as Visual Argument: Health Rhetoric in Super Size Me and Fat Head,” Argumentation and Advocacy 50, no. 3 (2014): 147 and 154, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.2014.11821815.
31 Mark P. Moore, “Making Sense of Salmon: Synecdoche and Irony in a Natural Resource Crisis,” Western Journal of Communication 67, no. 1 (2003): 76, https://doi.org/10.1080/10570310309374759.
32 Kenneth Zagacki, “Spatial and Temporal Images in the Biodiversity Dispute,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 85, no. 4 (1999): 432, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639909384272.
33 Zagacki, “Spatial and Temporal Images,” 432.
34 Graham Huggan, “Never-Ending Stories, Ending Narratives: Polar Bears, Climate Change Populism, and the Recent History of British Nature Documentary Film,” in Affect, Space and Animals, eds. Jopi Nyman and Nora Schuurman (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 14.
35 Saffron J. O’Neill and Mike Hulme, “An Iconic Approach for Representing Climate Change,” Global Environmental Change 19, no. 4 (2009): 402–410, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.07.004; Janet K. Swim and Brittany Bloodhart, “Portraying the Perils to Polar Bears: The Role of Empathic and Objective Perspective-taking Toward Animals in Climate Change Communication,” Environmental Communication 9, no. 4 (2015): 446–468, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.987304; Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Richard S. Vachula, “Polar Bears and Ice: Cultural Connotations of Arctic Environments that Contradict the Science of Climate Change.” Media, Culture & Society 39, no. 2 (2017): 282–295, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716655985.
36 Dorothea Born, “Bearing Witness? Polar Bears as Icons for Climate Change Communication in National Geographic,” Environmental Communication 13, no. 5 (2019): 4, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1435557.
37 Fiona Shields, “Why We’re Rethinking the Images We Use for our Climate Journalism,” The Guardian, October 18, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/18/guardian-climate-pledge-2019-images-pictures-guidelines.
38 Here one might be reminded of Marita Sturken's work on trauma, memory, and the synecdochic teddy bear in Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
39 Heise, Imagining Extinction, 22–23.
40 Arctic wildlife biologist Jeff Higdon claims, “it's far more likely that it is starving due to health issues” in Wente, “Is Fake News Okay”; see also: BBC News, “‘Face of Climate Change’?”
41 Leahy, “Polar Bears Really are Starving.”
42 Ashifa Kassam, “‘Soul-Crushing’ Video of Starving Polar Bear Exposes Climate Crisis, Experts Say,” The Guardian, December 8, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/08/starving-polar-bear-arctic-climate-change-video.
43 Cristina Mittermeier, “Starving Polar Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong,” National Geographic Magazine, July 25, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/08/explore-through-the-lens-starving-polar-bear-photo.
44 Kassam, “‘Soul-Crushing’ Video.” Articles disparaged National Geographic for the video that “went too far” see also: BBC News, “‘Face of Climate Change?’”; Susan J. Crockford, “The Real Story Behind the Famous Starving Polar-Bear Video Reveals More Manipulation” Financial Post, October 9, 2018, https://financialpost.com/opinion/the-real-story-behind-the-famous-starving-polar-bear-video-reveals-more-manipulation; Kimberly Richards, “People Did Not See ‘Full Story’ Behind Iconic Starving Polar Bear Image, Photographer Says,” Independent, August 6, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/polar-bear-photo-starving-climate-change-nat-geo-cristina-g-mittermeier-a8479946.html.
45 Kevin McGwin, “National Geographic Admits Skeletal Polar Bear-Global Warming Link ‘Went Too Far’” Arctic Today, August 3, 2018, https://www.arctictoday.com/national-geographic-admits-skeletal-polar-bear-global-warming-link-went-far/.
46 Richards, “‘Full Story.’”
47 Scott Simon, “‘They’ll All Be Gone’: Video of Starving Polar Bear Highlights Effects of Melting Ice,” Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio, December 16, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/12/16/571305462/the-future-of-polar-bears.
48 Rosenberg, “‘We Stood There Crying.’”
49 Yang, “Still Burning,” 20.
50 Cristina Mittermeier, “Starving Polar Bear Photographer Explains Why She Couldn't Help,” Photography: Picture Stories, National Geographic, Dec 10, 2017. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/12/mittermeier-polar-bear-starving-climate-change/.
51 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 167.
52 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 164.
53 Zelizer, “Voice of the Visual,” 167.
54 Rosenberg, “‘We Stood There Crying.’”
55 Rosenberg, “‘We Stood There Crying.’”
56 Eva J. Golden, “Sea Turtles and Response to Climate Change: Analyzing Current and Predicting Future Impacts on Populations, Habitats, and Prey Populations,” (honors theses, University of New Hampshire, Spring 2016), 7 and 25, https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/291.
57 Sea Turtle Island Restoration Network, “Sea Turtles Rally on Climate Change Day of Action,” Seaturtles.org, October 25, 2009, https://seaturtles.org/sea-turtles-rally-on-climate-change-day-of-action/.
58 Clement Allen Tisdell and Clevo Wilson, “Does Tourism Contribute to Sea Turtle Conservation? Is the Flagship Status of Turtles Advantageous?” MAST 3, no. 2 (2005): 145–167, https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.48971.
59 Bianca S. Santos and Larry B. Crowder, “Online News Media Coverage of Sea Turtles and Their Conservation,” BioScience 71, no. 3 (2021): 305.
60 Tisdell and Wilson, “Does Tourism Contribute to Sea Turtle Conservation?” 145.
61 Tisdell and Wilson, “Does Tourism Contribute to Sea Turtle Conservation?” 145.
62 Santos and Crowder, “Coverage of Sea Turtles,” 305.
63 Santos and Crowder, “Coverage of Sea Turtles,” 305.
64 Brenna Houck, “Why the World is Hating on Plastic Straws Right Now: Everything You Need to Know about the Now-Ubiquitous Movement to #StopSucking.” Eater, July 12, 2018. https://www.eater.com/2018/7/12/17555880/plastic-straws-environment-pollution-banned-alternatives-ocean-sea-turtle-viral-video.
65 Houck, “Hating on Plastic Straws.”
66 Hanna Chiu, “The Sea Turtle as a Marketing Symbol for the Anti-Plastics Movement” (senior thesis, Pitzer College, 2019), 4.
67 Siegmund Cuda and Glazner, “Poster Child.”
68 Fefe, “Why Are Plastic Straws So Bad for Sea Turtles?” Greens Steel, August 19, 2020, https://greenssteel.com/blogs/news/why-are-plastic-straws-so-bad-for-sea-turtles.
69 Houck, “Hating on Plastic Straws.”
70 Corcoran, “Pointless War on Plastic.”
71 As of July 22, 2022, the 8:07 min version of the sea turtle video had 109 million views while the 2:24 min video had 85 million views.
72 Jessica A. Knoblauch, “Environmental Toll of Plastics,” Environmental Health News, February 1, 2022, https://www.ehn.org/plastic-environmental-impact-2501923191/particle-7.
73 Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
74 Morton, Hyperobjects.
75 Jenna R. Jambeck, et al. “Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean,” Science, vol. 347, no. 6223 (2015): 770, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260352.
76 Carolyn Kormann, “The Widening Gyre,” New Yorker, vol. SCIV, no. 47 (2019), 42.
77 Kormann, “The Widening Gyre,” 42; see also Fefe, Greens Steel “Why Are Plastic Straws So Bad.”
78 The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released its Sixth Assessment Report on August 9, 2021, titled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis which stated that the effects of climate change are being observed in every region of the Earth. https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/.
79 Yang, “Still Burning,” 18.
80 Heise, Imagining Extinction, 11 and 13.
81 Heise, Imagining Extinction, 13.
82 Belinda Smaill, Regarding Life: Animals and the Documentary Moving Image (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2016), 73.
83 Smaill, Regarding Life, 77.